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they’re the same, sometimes. I think.

don’t be afraid, it’s only love [love is simple!]

don’t be afraid, you’re already dead [love is simple!]

every so often it feels real good to rock out 1995 style. you know, like, family got their first cd-player boombox and someone gave you your 3rd cd for your birthday. (#1 was the beatles, “help,” #2 was no doubt’s “tragic kingdom” and #3 was, well… the barenaked ladies)

the first time i ever heard the barenaked ladies i was in traffic with my babysitter Amanda, we were in traffic on the beltway, headed to my best friend forever Becca’s house. (Amanda graduated from either George Mason or Mary Washington with a BA in architecture, went on to move to Australia to marry an Australian man, then get divorced and move back to McLean, Virginia– my mom ran into her at Safeway a few years ag0) it was 1995 and I was suuuuuper scandalized by the band name. this was probably during the same week that Amanda explained periods to me.

in 1995 bands took photos that looked like this

Becca and I loved “BNL” – as we called them, to avoid the embarrassment of saying ‘naked’ – we’d totally rock out to the whole “Stunt” album. We wanted to start a band. I thought of Becca yesterday when “Old Apartment” shuffled onto my ipod at the mixing bowl of the 10W and the 110N. what an awful intersection.

somehow, even though i know that the cars are all close and we all have our windows down and  i sing/listen to music really loudly – but somehow i feel like no one can hear me. when i was back home in DC last weekend i was quite self-conscious about my singing habits. not so much in la. it felt REAL good to rock out all those years of adolescence and heartbreak and apartment hunting and all that other stuff.

side note: this is the first time in all the years that i’ve been listening to “the old apartment” that i actually have an old apartment!

is it just me, or does the dumped dude on the double-decker bus look sort of like jeff buckley?

i guess all guys looked the same in 1995.

I felt a connection with Cy. In addition to being a big fan of his work (in the way all 20-something Art History majors are) Cy was a native Virginian who split the majority of his adult life living between Virginia and Rome. I am also a native Virginian, I had planned on becoming an expatriate as soon as I finished college [note: hasn't happened yet]. I also had (have) an intense love for abstraction since the 1950s. Basically, Cy and I had a lot in common.

My professor was a friend of Cy’s son. Growing up (also between the US and Rome) she spent many a-childhood afternoon doodlin’ with the Twombly boys. In my imagination, I’m doodling with them, drinking chianti and smoking little cigarettes and making up Italian words– because that’s what people do in Rome in the imagined 70s and 80s. In my alternate dream world of Cy friendship, he gives me style advice (after all, he was one of Vanity Fair’s best dressed of 2009)

None of that is particularly important. I couldn’t find that apartment today if you paid me. All I remember is that there was a large phallic sculpture outside the building, that there was a cafe near by and that it was old (note: that describes nearly every apartment in Rome). What is important is that today marks the end of an era. Cy Twombly inspired countless artists during his lifetime and will inspire countless more in the generations to come.

See Cy Twombly at LACMA, The Whitney,  MoMA and at The Menil Collection.

Yesterday I had a particularly good find when I stumbled across This Recording’s list of “100 Greatest Writers of All Time” No. 44: Charles Baudelaire. Not only did reading short blurbs on 100 writers make me feel super intelligent-and, let’s face it, just plain superior to you- it also gave me an EXCELLENT opportunity to do one of my most favorite activities: make nerdy photoshop images involving pictures of (my) animals. Hallie: 2. Not-Hallie: 0.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present you with Dandy-Cat, (Charles) Baudelaire Parker.  Bam. Eat it up, European Lit majors.

We’re doomed, lo-fi and in love