In the ever-changing world of the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria, one thing that remains consistent is a close connection with their ancestors. The ancestral spirits of the Yoruba are much more than just dead relatives, they play an active role in the daily life of the living. They are sought out for protection and guidance, and are believed to possess the ability to punish those who have forgotten their familial ties. While there are numerous ways the ancestors communicate with the living, one of the most unique is their manifestation on earth in the form of masked spirits known as Egungun.

The Yoruba believe that the transition from the realm of the living to the abode of the dead is not finite. It is just part of what African author Wole Soyinka describes as the “cyclical reality” of the “Yoruba world-view”. Each person comes to this life from the world of the unborn, through the “abyss of transition.” And each will leave again through this archetypal realm, as they make they way to the world of the ancestors.

When a child comes into this world, he or she is said to carry with them aspects of a former ancestor who is reborn in the child. This is not to say they are the ancestor reincarnate, but that there are certain features of their personality and elements of inborn knowledge that come from a previous relative. When the time comes to leave this earth, it is not the end of their existence either. Yoruba scholar Bòlaji Idowu explains: “Death is not the end of life. It is only a means whereby the present earthly existence is changed for another. After death, therefore, man passes into a ‘life beyond’ which is called Èhìn-Ìwà–‘After-Life’”

To be remembered is to be kept alive; to remain within the Sasa period, which is the realm of the living, the unborn and the ancestors.

Once an ancestor has been forgotten, they simply slip into the vast expanse of the Zamani, where the gods, divinities and spirits dwell. As long as an ancestor remains within the Sasa period, they have the ability to help those here on earth, because the living-dead are bilingual: they speak the language of men, with whom they lived until ‘recently’; and they speak the language of the spirits and of God, to Whom they are drawing nearer ontologically. In exchange for being ritually remembered, the living-dead watch over the family and can be contacted for advice and guidance.

Each Egungun may represent a particular person, a family lineage, or a broader concept of the ancestors. When contacted at a family shrine, the Egungun who appears is generally thought to represent the ancestor who is being summoned.

The Egungun is celebrated in festivals,  and in family ritual through the masquerade custom.  Through drumming and dance, these robed performers are believed to become possessed of the spirits of the ancestors as maifested as a single entity. The Egungun then spiritually clean the community and through exaggerated acting and miming, demonstrate both ethical and amoral behavior that occurred since their last visit.

“To be remembered is to be kept alive.”
~

* Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou’s photos led me to read about this subject. Even without their spiritual significance, they are sublime.

I knew immediately that Jean-Paul Gaultier’s spring 2012 couture collection was a tribute to Amy because I did the math. Behive + eyeliner+”Marilyn” stud = Amy Winehouse.

What a wonderful feast of crazy hives and mish-mash of retro vampy girly excess!

It makes me happy to know that Amy’s influence will live on. Her swagger and her vulnerability, her beautiful voice, her tiny little body supporting all that hair…she will haunt me forever. This collection is an homage that’s right on point, as Amy liked to say of her beehive.

Lindsey Wixson is especially adorable in her purple hive and I can’t get enough of her.

Check out the beauty details here.

Also, did everyone see the new Karl Lagerfeld stuff at net-a porter this morning?  Horrible, right? What is he thinking?!  Please let me know if any other runway shows are worth looking at. Right now, I only have eyes for Amy.

Finally, you can dress like a nun without being one.

This is a big deal. If you’re like me, and I know you are, you know that Nun’s habits can’t just be found on eBay. That’s because they’re sacraments or something.  And the Nun outfits made for Halloween are crap.

Artist Julia Sherman has changed all that by designing a collection of beautiful habits, using silk and velvet as well as traditional wool. The pieces include a hooded shift, a beaded collar, and flannel harem pants. The collection is available at JF & Son. Prices are $188 to $489.

Sherman, who is Jewish, was originally commissioned to make the pieces by Mother Mary Magdalene, who had started a new Anglican Catholic order in Fort Worth. She had seen Sherman’s photos of the Nun dolls at The National Shrine of the Cross in the Woods.

I love Nuns. I have a small collection of Nunobilia that I cherish. And nothing would make me happier than to own one of these pieces by Julia Sherman, god willing, Inshallah

Read more about her here and here.

The eccentric photographer known as Disfarmer (1884-1959) seemed to be a man determined to shroud himself in mystery. Born Mike Meyers, the sixth of seven children in a German immigrant family, Disfarmer rejected the Arkansas farming world and the family in which he was raised. He even claimed at one point in his life that a tornado had lifted him up from places unknown and deposited him into the Meyers family.

In time Mike expressed his discontent with his family and farming by changing his name to Disfarmer. In modern German “meier” means dairy farmer, and since he thought of himself as neither a “Meyer” nor a “farmer,” Mike Meyer became “dis”- farmer. *

I fucking love him. Even before I knew about his made-up name, I fell in love with him. The photo above just stopped me in my tracks. Unlike Diane Arbus, he doesn’t seem to be unduly drawn to the grotesque. But he does manage to create an almost alarming sense of intimacy.

Explore his work here.

Last night I discovered a girl named Chrissy who killed herself after several years of paralysis caused by a swimming pool accident.

I learned about her in a forum on the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation website. I came upon the website a few months ago, and struggled with the mystery of why some people want to go on living and some do not.

Chrissy was a beautiful girl who had recently fallen in love and was looking forward to everything. The story of her accident and its aftermath is horrifying but it happened and I had to read it. Horrible things happen but few things can be this horrible. Still, Chrissy endured for several years. In the end, she simply didn’t want to continue a life under the circumstances dictated by her condition.

On her blog, she explained:

A big part of me died back on June 5, 2005 and my life was never the same. Everything has felt empty, and bittersweet. Every memory tainted with sadness, over everything that I’ve lost, everything I miss doing, and everything I had planned to do, and hoped to be.

I understand. Max left me a message saying something similar, even though his disabilities weren’t as extreme as Chrissy’s. For him, they were intolerable.  Going back to her blog just now, I couldn’t help but cry. What a brave girl she was. I salute her honesty and her incredible, heroic struggle.

~

Tonight, I learned about a photographer and writer, Édouard Levé, who shot himself a few days after completing a novel called Suicide. The novel is fiction but obviously reflects Levé’s preoccupation with suicide. Perhaps he he planned his death as an artistic statement. Or perhaps he lingered too long on the subject of death, turning it over in his mind until it seemed like the only rational conclusion to his obsessive and inward-looking existence. He was only 42 but seemed to have focused closely on life’s absurdity.  Here is what the narrator of Suicide says:

“You didn’t like the selfishness of your suicide. But, on balance, death’s reprieve won out over the painful agitation of life.”

It bothers me that Levé threw his life away even though he wasn’t paralyzed. It bothers me that I can’t understand why some people are resilient and some aren’t. It bothers me that you can’t leave this world without smashing everyone around you. It bothers me that no one has the power to decide which suicide is justified. It bothers me that I don’t know where Chrissy is, meaning I don’t know where Max is. It bothers me that I can’t forgive Levé for hanging himself because I can’t find the compassion for his obscure suffering.

It bothers me that I have to keep pondering death like a difficult math problem that might yield an answer if I stick with it. It beckons to me and repels me and it continues to break my broken heart.

A company called SRANGEBEAUTIFUL has come up with some sets of nail polish designed to appeal to the Proustian-minded among us.

“….a range of 10 diaphanous veils of wildly haunting colors with inspiration ranging from the vampiric gradations of a healing bruise; the moody rusts of menstrual blood; sooty, phantasmal India ink; the profile of a gray blue Heron scooping fish against a background of gooey river runoff and the apocalyptic color palette of Medieval Flemish paintings. Visceral and private, each shade cloaks the finger in an aqueous film of color for an effect that is strange, beautiful, and impossible to forget.”

Hahahahaha! Isn’t that fantastic???? Other sets are avilable, each absurdly pretentious.

I like how this set includes the color “Menstrual Last Day.” Hopefully they have “First Day of Menstruation” in one of the other sets.

I love colors and the names for colors. I loved my box of crayola crayons as much for the names as the actual colors. When Max was little, we deferred to his acute appreciation of color by showing him something of indeterminate hue and asking him, “What do you call this color, Max?” He would take a moment to consider and say something like, “I call it tan.”

In the spirit of STRANGEBEAUTIFUL, I want to invent my own set of nail polish colors:

Cubism
Gruyere
Still Spotting
Hep C
Wittgenstein
Virgin Birth
Mishima Cultist Coral
Clogged Drain
Hypothermia Blue

Have a look at the nail polish here.  $85 per set.

And contribute your own colors if you are so inclined!

Today I had the privilege of another colonoscopy. My mother had colon cancer, so this is her gift to me. I looked forward to the propofol, but little else. The fasting and the nauseating potion you have to drink are an ordeal, even for someone who is used to ordeals.

I felt strongly that I would have cancer. Then, as I waited for the lady with the propofol, I felt Max’s presense. I felt so sure I was going to join him, I figured I would die during the procedure.

The Doctor appeared and exclaimed at how pretty I looked. I told her that I wore lipstick* just for her. The next thing I knew, I heard her voice telling me: “It’s all over, your colon is beautiful!”

If I can’t just be dead, at least I know I have a beautiful colon. Feel free to admire it in the pictures  below!

* M.A.C. Russian Red

Mary Coble is a dedicated artist whose 2005 performance piece, Note to Self, involved being tattooed with the names of 436 gay, lesbian, bi and transgendered people who died as a result of hate crimes.  The performance took 12 hours.

On the one hand, wow. On the other hand, is this art?

Here is a parallel, under the category of Too Much Information:

Late at night, I like to pick at my legs. “Like” isn’t the right word. It’s more, I have to pick at my legs. This has been going on long enough that I know it’s a form of OCD because I don’t want to do it but I do it anyway.

It started with a tweezer and a couple of ingrown hairs. I hate shaving my legs but I hate ingrown hairs even more. Soon, you get a little scab and the next night, you need to  pick off the scab. Pretty soon, it’s war. My legs are a battlefield and no one is winning. I stopped for a few months but then started again.

I know this is a response to intolerable anxiety. I know I should wear mittens at night, or take up knitting or wear high boots until I get into bed.

Nevertheless, I haven’t managed to stop.

Mary Coble has inspired me to ask the question: IS THIS ART?!? How about if I call this a six month performance piece, with my husband the sole spectator??

I think that having only one spectator makes it super arty!

I already feel kind of important about my work!

What do you think?

Look at this nice person I met at the mall today! I asked him about his sit-ups and whether he did a lot of crunches. But he was too nice to talk about his work-out regime.

All he wanted to do was to pull me close and put his chiseled arm around me.

I was going to take my shirt off too, but it all happened so fast.

Later I bought a Chanel nail polish and a red chiffon prom dress. but who cares, you know? It’s really all about connecting with nice male models people.

Remember Sruli Recht, the Israeli/Australian designer with a studio in Iceland?

His ready-to-wear menswear is now available online!

The sweater and shorts above are made from the wool of Icelandic sheep who “have been bred unmixed for 11 hundred years.”  Good to know.  But here’s more:

Garment description:

Fitted Single breasted Icelandic woolen-felt Jacket, draped as a sole rectangle, shaped with one dart running from the scapula through to the nape – draped entirely on a K&L 38 stand and on the body of a man named Emil in Reykjavik.

The shorts were also draped entirely on Emil’s legs. Not only that, but they’re lined in Japanese silk and cotton.  I would buy them just to feel close to Sruli.