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.

Today I went to my favorite beauty supply shop, on a street in a wealthy community where everyone is too thin and the people sitting outside Peete’s Coffee are talking to their agents on their iPhones. It’s a great shop that carries every obscure brand you’ve ever heard of and the sales people leave you alone unless you want their help.

I picked out two hair products that won’t have any effect on the quality of my hair, but I enjoy the process of wasting money this way. At the counter, a woman was asking for help with her eyebrows. She was explaining that her eyebrow has a cowlick and nothing she’s tried could solve the problem.

I was fascinated. The sales person was eager to help, and obviously relished the opportunity. She suggested eyebrow gel, but the woman said that gels haven’t worked. I managed to suppress my urge to butt in. Personally, I swear by Lancome eyebrow gel in Brunet. It grooms the brows nicely and makes them look nice and full.

The sales person suggested mustache wax to tame the problem hair. I thought this was a great idea, even though I know you can actually get eyebrow wax at Bloomingdales or somewhere. It’s probably the same stuff, right? But the woman balked at mustache wax. She changed the subject to the dark circles under her eyes but continued to complain about her eyebrows. They were the bane of her existence, she said bitterly.

Finally, I couldn’t stand it. “Just pull that fucker out!” I snapped helpfully. Everyone turned to look at me. The sales woman smiled and said, “You’re so funny!” the way people do when they’re shocked by your candor. The eyebrow lady whined, “No, then I’ll have a bald spot!”

Now that I was involved, I offered a barrage of solutions but the eyebrow lady shot down each one. I began to realize how agitated she was. Maybe she didn’t really want help. Now she was complaining about the concealer she’d been offered and she refused to try the moustache wax.  The sales woman turned to assist another customer and the eyebrow lady announced that she would try a department store, where “someone has the time” to give her their “complete attention.”

I realized that she was nuts. Not in any dramatic way, but still nuts. One of the things I love about the beauty supply store is listening to women explain what they’re looking for, in a beseeching tone that reveals their absolute belief that something will make them beautiful and happy. I find it so poignant. The belief and the hope in that beauty supply store could fill several churches.

The eyebrow lady was an anomaly that almost ruined my pleasure in wasting $42. Almost. But when she left the store, everything was restored to normal.  I was disappointed that the nail polish I wanted was discontinued: it’s called “Bring on the Bling” and I tried it on last week when my BFF was having a manicure. It was like an entire Mardis Gras in a bottle.

Thank god I can still enjoy beauty products and I’m not a crazy eyebrow lady. That is my affirmation for today.

Meet Cindy Jacobs, a self-proclaimed prophet and right-wing supporter of fellow moron Gov. Rick Perry.

Watch her explain how Rick Perry’s Jesuspalooza broke the curse of “Native American Cannibals.”

Cindy and other members of the Apostolic Reformation movement will descend upon Washington, D.C. with  ”DC 40: Forty Days of Light Over D.C“, to do whatever it is they do.

Laugh, but be afraid.

“Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics.

You are all stardust.

You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded. Because the elements, the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars. And the only way they could get into your body is if the stars were kind enough to explode.

So forget Jesus. The stars died so you could be here today.”

- Lawrence Krauss

Today I went to see my psychiatrist but he forgot to tell me he’d be out of town. His office is in a studio behind his house, which has a large front courtyard.

Two beautiful young women appeared in the courtyard and explained that they were houseguests. They invited me inside to have a glass of wine and hang out. I laughed and said no, but when I found out that they were in a band, I changed my mind.

I went into the house and we talked about their band. One girl played violin and the other was a singer. I didn’t drink the wine, but for the next three hours we talked about everything there is to talk about.

We talked about death, family, sex, love, religion, childhood, bluegrass, jazz, fado and lipstick. The singer asked if I was wearing MAC Ruby Woo.  Naturally, we high-fived to the goodness of Ruby Woo. I shared my grown-up wisdom with them: Wear shorts as much as you can while you’re young! They were already wearing shorts, so they probably knew this intuitively.

I told them about my sons and they were incredibly sweet and compassionate. Then, they offered to play a song for me.

I closed my eyes and was transported by the sound of a soulful violin and a gorgeous smoky voice that soared and dipped in Spanish, a level of passion and musicianship that blew me away. When the song ended, we were all knocked out by how great it was. They weren’t used to paying as a duo.

They played another song and I imagined a huge career for them. Their beauty would be a bonus, I told them. We exchanged email addresses and it was hard to part. They walked me to my car and we hugged. One smelled like patchouli and one smelled like flowers.

I drove home feeling grateful that I could give myself over to happiness when the opportunity presented itself. I thought about how Max would have loved the singer, who wore winged black eyeliner.

When I got home, no one wanted to hear my amazing story. Regular people are hungry and cranky or exhausted, and don’t give a shit about your magical day. They just want dinner.

After coming across this photo last week, I couldn’t get it out of my mind.  It’s a stage in Austria’s Lake Constance, for Kieth Warner’s production of Umberto Giordano’s opera “Andrea Chénier”, which will open to the public in July.

Here’s a description:

The first performance of the four-act opera, based on the life of the eponymous French poet who was executed during the French revolution, will take place on 20 July at the Bregenz festival in Austria.

Lake Constance is often used during the festival as an extension of the stage, which this year is being transformed into a 24 metre-high figure of Jean-Paul Marat, inspired by the depiction of his death in the 1793 painting by Jacques-Louis David.

The stage design also includes an open book from which members of the cast will emerge, and a large gold mirror.

Shit! How wonderful! I love the monumentalness  of this enterprise. I wish I could transport myself to Austria. If you find this image compelling, see more here.

~

Here’s another piece of art that blows my mind. It’s a van I’ve seen around Venice lately, and yesterday I got to see it up close when I went to get groceries and there it was in the parking lot.  A slightly-built man emerged and he was very nice when I asked if I could take a picture.

I walked around and around the van, trying to take in all its wacky glory. It’s completely covered in black and white leather, heavily studded and topped off with realistic-looking stuffed tigers.  There are religious plaques on both sides of the van, praising the lord.  I believe this van is a tribute to the owner’s loved one, Shirley Ann, his “Queen in Life and Death,” “Together for Eternity.”

It’s uplifting to see artistic commitment of this magnitude.  Whether it’s part of a prestigious festival or one man’s expression of devotion, real art is transcendent, isn’t it. I’m grateful for these glimpses of it.

*van photos via

I always enjoy the discovery of a scholarly approach to a silly or lowbrow subject. Remember when Camille Paglia used to write about Madonna?

I had no idea that Black Metal Theory is now a philosophy and field of study complete with international symposia and experts  who say things like this:

We have been told by the living that the idea of a vital world is that of comfort and warmth. [Writer] Dominic Fox assures us that this is not the case. With an unparalleled militant efficiency, Cold World [a book about Black Metal] blackens the lines between poetics and politics, music and negative resistance. It is a haunting sermon from the world of the dead exhorting the living to revolt in the name of a life whose vitality has been disenchanted by coldness and whose sacredness has been profaned by nigredo. Reza Negarestan - Author of Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction

God. What the hell is “nigredo,” right? I looked it up and you can, too. But there’s no way that Black Metal Theory can be taken seriously, especially when it’s discussed in dense academic mumbo jumbo of the first oder.  Here is Scott Wilson, a professor of Media and Cultural Studies at Kingston University in London:

Black Metal is clearly a form of environmental writing, but one that could not easily be accommodated into current ecological discourse. Participants seriously considered the idea of melancology both as black ecology, exploring black metal as a geophilosophy of real and psychic spaces (the frozen desert is not so much ‘out there’ but inside you), and as an ethos, looking at black metal as the re-occultation of black blood and bile in rituals of mourning and celebration for the death of God and the extinction of his creation, particularly humanity, under the black sun of melancholy. As such, the symposium connected with a new strain in contemporary philosophy that regards extinction as a speculative opportunity for thought. Black metal resounds from the abyss and it is precisely only in relation to its sonic forces that the question of intervention in the environment arises in the articulation of melancology with ethics. That is, in deciding ‘which way out’ we should take, in deciding with what surpluses to dwell, with what waste, what detritus or decay in a process of unbinding with sonic forces that traverse an earth choking in wealth and death.

Ha! Blah blah blah. What a bunch of fucking wankers. All I know is that Varg Vikernes,  leader of the band Burzum, was released from jail after serving 16 years for killing a guy from Mayhem, a rival band, and burning down some churches.

Now he has a website, http://www.burzum.org, and two new albums. For some reason he hates Black people,  despite all the dark black negredo of his chosen musical genre. He probably needs to study the Theory.

I’ve tried to include Houseboys for all tastes but in fact they are all my favorites for this week. They can serve drinks and do odd jobs around the house, like fluff up your pillows.

Take your pick and have a relaxing weekend.  xo

First of all, that Hermes lady is fucking nuts about her photos. She doesn’t want her photos used to mock her. They are there for praise only! They are there for gloating, not for you internet people to copy and ridicule. I found this picture on flickr, Hermes Lady, so relax.

I wasn’t able to force myself to go through 30something pages of her boasting about her Hermes purchases and the attendant ass-kissing. But I think I got the gist of it.

Here is the situation. Hermes is a symbol of wealth and success. Nothing more or less. A woman who spends a fortune at Hermes and then documents it online is a person desperately in need of love and self-esteem. There isn’t enough Hermes in the whole world to assure her of her intrinsic worth.  It’s a mug’s game.

Consumption at this level is very sad. All shopping is a defense against the knowledge of our mortality. It’s a stupid distraction that exists to enrich corporations and to numb the appetites of the soul.

Look in your closet and think about which outfits would make you happy if a family member died in a car crash. Look at your shoes and then look at this picture.

The Hermes Lady is a picture of insecurity, distorted by money and self-delusion. She is a waste of our time. Turn your eyes away from that lady and her ridiculous merchandise.

You already have everything you need to be happy.

Don’t worry about shoes or handbags. Listen to music, look at some art or have sex instead. You’ll thank me later.

Few things are more delightful than a well-executed prank.  A good prank is a noble creative endeavor – that’s what I tell myself about the ones I’ve engaged in.

The Nat Tate prank was devised by British novelist William Boyd with the help of David Bowie and a few other collaborators, including Gore Vidal. Boyd wanted to create a fictional artist whose underrated work he would introduce to the art world, via a book on the subject.

Bowie held a launch party for the book on April 1, 1998, and read extracts from the book to the collected celebrities and art enthusiasts. One of the collaborators went around asking people if they were familiar with Tate’s work.  Poor Tate had burned 99% of his work before his tragic early death in 1960.

In the end, someone revealed the hoax. But William Boyd says that Nat Tate lives on: every so often, one of his paintings comes up for auction.

The more I learn about this prank the more I fucking love it! It reminds me of my Phyllis Willis-Barbour prank with my friend Mark, and it makes me wish we had taken it further. We planned to have our fake poet appear at readings, wearing  a mask to hide her face (deformed in a terrible fire.)

**UPDATE: Just found the link to PWB’s bio, one of the greatest things ever written. Ever.

But our best prank, the one that brought us the most joy, was the Ed and Paige Project.

Ed was a guy we had good reason to detest. Among his loathsome activities was an unending search for hot chicks in the personal ads at nerve.com, even though he was married to a woman who supported him. Since we knew his taste in women, we created one as bait. We set up her profile, and waited. It took a week, and we had almost given up when Ed contacted Paige, calling her a “long tall drink of water” and complementing her physique.

Here is Paige, who I found at hotornot.com

But wait: Paige isn’t just hot and skanky looking, she is a commodities broker and a graduate of the Wharton School of Business! Her favorite book is Ulysses.

The resulting email love affair between Ed and Paige was a soap opera that all our friends enjoyed, but not with the delirious religious ecstasy that Mark and I experienced. The email they exchanged was beyond belief. It was like Christmas morning all the time.

I am too tired and lazy to elaborate on the Ed and Paige Project, but I know that Nat Tate would have risen from the dead just to be a part of it.