Relax and Fall

I miss the River

SLEEP NO MORE

My friend Liz and I had the amazing chance to be a "friend" at the first running of this play, although only now am I writing about it. My good friend Becky Elle, along with an array of craftspeople, toiled on the details of this mansion for hours, days, weeks, months, years meticulously painting, arranging, building, distressing, antiquing, pinning, nailing, covering, hiding, embellishing, and creating the vibe that is The McKittrick Hotel. Everything is legit, everything has been purchased through antique stores and the like to create a total  Sleep No More is literally something that will keep you up the night you experience it, and perhaps many more nights following. Think Shakespeare meets Kubrick meets Hitchcock. Only you're in the building. You hear solemn ambient sounds mixed with haunting melodies. You feel chills, and smell earth, dust, mildew, and smoke. You see the smoke, fog or a trail of blood drips, and follow it into the next room. That room may have someone crying in it, wringing their hands in despair, and in a flash they start tearing at their hair and running from the room, down the hall, and up the stairs to the next level as fast as they can, a stream of masked onlookers desperately trying to keep up. 

At the beginning there was a mutual respect for this experience. Unfortunately there are some who don't understand what can happen if they let go and feel. If you enter happily, parade around foolishly, disturbing the effect, and leave unchanged...well then you are at a disadvantage. Words do little to describe... this thing enters your soul, filling the deepest, strangest memories, reverting your heart to that point some of us have felt, when you are so wretched that you go mad, and your skin crawls. When there is only total agony. 

Only here you are on the outside secretly looking in.

On a lighter note, in this issue of Interior Design we see what few have been able to capture on film; 

the interior of the haunted McKittrick Hotel...

The actors are dancers of many years, who crawl the walls, jump from cabinets, writhe and wail while they co-mingle bodies like silk rope twisting in on itself. It's erotic, daring and to the untrained eye can seem dangerous how they gracefully fall over furniture in angst. Yet the ebb and flow stay completely fluid as if each pair of dancers were born twins, the psychic connection pulsing through trained muscles.

more from that day

more pictures

Missing Mexico

JEFF THE BROTHERHOOD IN ROLLING STONE

JEFF THE BROTHERHOOD

Rolling Stones gather no moss, but what a beautiful polish!

Looking like the reincarnate of early Led Zeppelin, sounding like freedom, and smelling like Rock N Roll,
they kill the stage with a never fail performance.
They are fucking awesome live, I suggest you get out to a show.
If you try and let yourself get into it, you'll emerge sweaty and wild-eyed,
with a faint glimmer of childhood returning to your memory.
Their lyrics seem to be spawned from observations of a close companion who's
as rowdy as a 1980's WWF Wrestler, and as adventuresome as that day you decided-WTF let's fucking LIVE, but somewhere around the energetic age of 11.
It could be in a basement, a dorm, or an actual venue, but no matter what you'll regret not checking it out.

If you like what you hear, check out The Needy Visions, and Ty Segall
whom I've seen play all together in Jamaica Plain, Ma
at an event created by Needy Visions
front man Dan Shea (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/BOWSHOWS).

My Cadillac Will Shoot Rainbows At You

This is a shot I took while driving after it had rained

 I know, I know...

unsafe... but unbelievable!!!

The Truth Is In The Dirt

You see me there, my long black hair. Never forget Me...

I see you there
Your long black hair
Your eyes just stare
Your mind is turning

You know I'll laugh
And I won't take it back
I've seen your eyes I know
What your thinking

And one by one
We'll shoot our guns
We'll have fun
Don't ever doubt it

And when I say
Fare thee well
My only friend
Oh how the days go

Your setting sun
Your broken drum
Your little drugs

I'll never forget you
Never
Forget
You

All Seeing, All Telling Eye...look closely

 

Ouiji board and placard I made for an art show in June.

My friend Nico Stone jigsawed the pieces,

and cut metal pegs from a shopping cart for the flys' legs

I traced and I used acrylic and marker.

In the dark the placard glows to light the way

since who ever heard of using one in the daylight

Flick of the set up at the show, complete with neon window sign,
crystals, and candle

Half Abandoned, Half In Use, Fully Spooky

Fernald School, Waltham, Ma.

Used to be the State Emergency Center and now the Department of Retardation Center. 

Across the street from the old State Hospital which is now closed.

History

Social reformer Samuel Gridley Howe founded the school in 1848 with a $2,500

appropriation from the Legislature. Records of Dr. Howe and the beginnings

of mental retardation services in the United States reside in Fernald’s

Howe Library. Under its first resident superintendent, Walter E. Fernald

 (1887-1924), the school became a model educational facility in the field

of mental retardation.

In addition to developing the school, Dr. Fernald

promoted greater public awareness of mental retardation by participating

in national conferences, including two World fairs. In 1925, the Legislature

passed a bill officially naming the school the Walter E. Fernald State

School. Since then, dramatic improvements have taken place in the quality

of individual's lives, and in the quality of services they receive. In

1993, due to the concern and lobbying efforts of many Fernald parents,

The Fernald Center merged with the Metro Boston Region with a focus on

opportunities in the community for individuals to live and work.

Scarier History

Lawyers have filed a $60 million federal lawsuit against MIT, Quaker Oats and several doctors at the Fernald School in Waltham, charging that they exposed institutionalized children to radioactive materials in research intended to give Quaker Oats a competitive advantage over its rival, Cream of Wheat.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of 15 people used as test subjects at the Fernald School in the 1940s and 1950s, charges that the researchers tricked the children into participating in hazardous experiments by telling them they were part of a "science club."

info creds; www.highbeam.com, www.fernaldassociation.com/fernaldCenter.htm