• Some people were pretty startled
• Some (apparently) didn't feel it
• Some stood in the doorway (it seemed like the right thing to do)

• Have a plan
• Stop drop and roll
• Twitter the event

Let's hear your thoughts: comment your earthquake experience.

(Also, peep Mike O. in the LA Times. Dope.)

Hello.

I am glad it wasn't beautiful, and then it was.

What you lost, and what you had.

What do you tell people always?

Friday, July 25
Betalevel
963 N. Hill Street
10pm
bar

Directions:
Find yourself in front of "FULL HOUSE RESTAURANT" located at 963 N. Hill Street in Chinatown.
Locate the alley on the left hand side of Full House.
Walk about 20 feet down the alley (away from the street).
Stop.
Notice dumpster on your right hand side.
Take a right and continue down the alley.
Exercise caution so as not trip on the wobbly cement blocks underfoot
The entrance to Betalevel is located 10 yards down on left side,
behind a red door, down a black staircase.

Saturday, July 26
meagan's house
250 North Avenue 57
LA, CA 90042
(you know where it is or you can google this one)
BYOB

See you there!










the details:

Booth Dance - Choreographed by Jennifer Lehman; Camera and Editing by Jacinto Astiazaran; with bodycity (Madeline Baugh, Betsy Hume, Jennifer Lehman, Cristina Paul, Molly Rodgveller, Lake Sharp, Meagan Yellott)

Found Dance at Echo Park - filmed and edited by Jacinto astiazaran
with bodycity members Ali Hyman, Jennifer Lehman & Cristina Paul

New Gree is a dance on tour that not only happens anywhere, but is happening all the time. The fashions worn on the road are the costumes of the dance. The terrain of the performance is demarcated by props; flags, lights, tarps, mirrors, jibs and projections. MGM's rock band concept is transformed into a band of cow-boygirls and the New Gree group is always on guard, ready for long stillnesses, quick getaways, telepathy and remonstrance. An aim, but not goal of New Gree, is to dance in complete unison with eyes closed, navigating safely through densities of people and space. Ulteriorly, the choreography works with shifting formations of energy and hyper-reality in relation to the mobile audience, building additive layers of past and future performances, past and future influences, and linking everyone and everything in the accumulative journey of now.

The Smell, Los Angeles - Thursday, July 10th
Highlights: Nite Jewel; the super friendly home-town crowd; Lemonade blew our minds.
Weirdlights: Having to sign release forms for standing within camera range of an ongoing indie film (but it was kind of cool too...they wanted to film our performance, but when it came down to it, it was their big lights or our dance floor....naturally they had to move).

House Party, San Diego - Friday, July 11
Highlights: all the cool kids in San Diego materialized at this party, then squeezed into what was the tinniest place we've ever danced, a baby basement about 7 feet tall; making tiny versions of our dances; dirty sweat flinging and shoving.
Weirdlights: traffic; having to change into our costumes in front of a giant window; no hoisting Molly into the air; having to go home almost immediately so we could hit the road to SF.

Grey Area Beacon, San Francisco - Saturday, July 12
Highlights: we rented a behemoth 15 passenger van; we got there in time for a romp with a ridiculous puppy, a reunion with our Norcal friends, and a round of Bloody Marys; we started a serious dance party; Evan SNJ let us crash all over his house in Modesto that night.
Weirdlights: mysterious banana disappearance

Bastille Day Celebration, W Hollywood - Sunday, July 13
Highlights: Adele Jacques, the event's coordinator, a new but already good friend who gave us the most touching and well-spoken introduction we've ever had; our "eF-it, I'm so freaking tired" attitude made this our best performance.
Weirdlights: the morning sun after 10 hours of sleep in 3 days knowing there's a good six hours of road ahead of you; too much Starbucks - it's creepy.

In other words: Success! Wicked Positive.

Also, we've gotta mention our newest member, Alisha Adams! bodycity is completely thrilled to have her, she is true blue.

Glasser was a stellar companion. Cameron, Matt, Rebecca and Madeline kept things real and were always bang-on come performance time.
And, though we saw little of them on the road, the Lemonade dudes are excellent humans and we are so grateful to them for their organizing prowess and easy attitudes.

With our first tour under the bodycity belt, we have brave new thoughts on future tours and can't wait to tell you about new stuff happening soon...

I often forget that because the Internet is the same everywhere, anyone can read what you post. I mean I don't FORGET, I think about it all the time. I think about how cool the universality of the Internet is. But let me tell you, it is also EVIL. You can get supremely burned over something you wrote. Half of the time I forget this (the other half I'm too wasted to care jkjkjkjk). So what should you do? Blog anonymously? Maybe. People do that. It's a little too late for me. If it is for you too, here are some guidelines I read this week that seem to be a good place to start.

General Rules of the Internet:

1. Never post anything you wouldn't want the potential boss at your dream job to read.
2. Never post something that you wouldn't want the mother of the person you are in love with to read.
3. Never post something that you wouldn't want to be grilled about if you chose to run for public office.

--Frank

Thursday July, 10 2008 at the Smell
w/ glasser, Lemonade & Nite Jewel
247 South Main Street, los angeles, California
$5
doors open at 9pm

Friday July, 11 2008 at TBA w/ glasser & Lemonade
House Party at 2220 Front Street, San Diego, California

Saturday July, 12 2008 at Grey Area Beacon w/ glasser & Lemonade
1515 Folsom, San Francisco, California

Sunday July, 13 Celebrate Bastille Day at the Southland's Best French Festival!
In the West Hollywood Park
647 N. San Vicente Blvd.
noon-10pm
we play with glasser at 3:55pm

We have merch now. Beautiful hand made bandannas and tote bags with silk screened designs by Claire and Tucker. Made by, for and out of bodycity.

It's just a question.

If visible language is "a transformation of the physiological impulse towards syntax into a final product, speech, which is not heard with the ears, but beheld with the eyes... This means that at the organismic level we associate a higher signal clarity with visual input, and on DMT and other tryptamine psychedelics you actually experience the field of language both heard and self generated as something that is visibly beheld. It's almost as though the project of communication becomes high-speed sculpture in a conceptual dimension made of light and intentionality."

"To My Teenage Self"

I've been talking to this blogger for many reasons. One of them is because of my job. The others are obvious. When I asked her who she most wanted to reach with her blog, she said:

"The answer to this is easy: teenage girls. I've said on several occasions that I'm writing the blog for my teenage self, and in so many ways, that's true. I wish she had understood how amazing and strong and full of potential she was. I wish she'd been more outgoing, pursued her secret dreams, tried out for cheerleading, acted in the school play, and done sports even if she wasn't the best at it. I wish she'd believed that people thought she was pretty--and that if they didn't, it was their problem, not hers. I wish she hadn't been governed so much by fear and self-loathing, had been a little braver and a whole lot more confident. I wish she'd known how beautiful she was. And there are armies and armies of teenage girls out there who feel that same paralyzing insecurity. And those are the girls I'm talking to when I say beauty standards are impossible. Self-loathing is a waste of time. You should do all you can to understand the cultural forces that are trying to control you. You are so, so beautiful. Love yourself."

Time. Metaphor. Language. Clarity. (Non)Sense.

How much of our reality our language do we write and build and shape for our "self" of "another time"? If time is visual language, if it is a product of our syntax of sight, time is one of the most heartbreaking (yes, that complex emotion, dare I say it again, heartbreaking) collective art pieces of all time. Would you dare!

If the building blocks/pixels/cells of language is words, what then, my dearest reader, is time? Is it a words counter part, it's other? No. I don't think so. If it is itself a syntax, influencing syntax, but a creation thereof, could it then be... yes, that is what I am getting at, just words. It is languages teenage self, making her regret even though she (time) is a complete creation of the present (and there is no past), always self. Maybe.

I guess what I'm saying is, I was thinking about how often that idea resurfaces, "What I wish someone would have said to me," and that person makes a point of being that person that says those words. This desire we have has everything to do with regret and consequently time. But time is full of inconsistencies. "I am saying this to myself."

Anyways.

The Container Store on the Avenue of the Stars is the worst place in the world. Just TRY and make a decision in there. I dare you. Actually, I do not wish that horror on anyone. It is a mockery. I am sorry for ever thinking it would improve my life or sooth my anxiety.

Knock Knock.

Window we Ketchup?

And, "Hamburgers and blue-jeans are over, brother.

Also, "Pinkberry is so passé."

I spend lots of time trying to catalogue possibilities. I think about division and multiplication, both sides of the coin.

Everything is Enumerated.

Proper nouns and common nouns. Words that whittle and words that group. We meet a sudden difference between mountains and MOUNTAINS, birds and BIRDS. MOUNTAINS and BIRDS can only be spotted by experts who've made careful eliminations.

A dogged little question: Do you understand 'singular'? How about now? Are we like that thin coin of love? Heads: our hearts in our mouths; Tails: OUR HEARTS in OUR MOUTHS.

The woman who told us that the art of losing isn't hard to master, also wrote this:

The tumult in the heart keeps asking questions. And then it stops and undertakes to answer in the same tone of voice. No one could tell the difference.

Uninnocent, these conversations start,
and then engage the senses,
only half-meaning to.
And then there is no choice,
and then there is no sense;

until a name
and all its connotation are the same.

And now--because things start, and then, and then--I'm just (nay)saying what I want.

23.

there isn't much left to explore
i laughed at the face on a hydrant

i am not a buddhist
i don't like the tones buddhists take with people

i am the ball at the end of a slack pendulum
this is my compassion

you can't have your contempt unless you brought enough for everyone
some people think filth is charming

there's a stone figure with a large hat across the street
he looks like he's drowning in a bell

when i moved my dad bought me a clean refrigerator
i saw a dress with one button at each peak of collarbone

i want all my things to be double breasted
no one is that anchored that whole

a space always filling with air
balloons foreheads

bells
lift-off

I can't say anything more about it here, but if you want to be a Naysayer, send me your address. I'm not joking, I wouldn't embarrass you like that. Send your address to alisha@existentialmedia.org, and wait. Impatiently. I'm just gonna send something back to you, it's not a big deal. NBD.

So email me. I have INTENTIONS.

"Of all the scientific intangibles that shape our lives, time is arguably the most elusive - and the most powerful.. . .Stealthy, imperceptible, time makes its presence known by transforming our sense of it into sensation."

Time on its legs, Time in bloom, Time gone swimming, Time from the wing of a plane--there are endless ways to reckon Time.

At Griffith Observatory, a "Foo-coe" pendulum oscillates relative to the earth and fixed stars, letting us indirectly observe sidereal time; or, time reckoned by the stars, rather than the sun.

The Aymara of South America are the only people known to visualize the future behind them and the past ahead.

In near death experiences, our brains process information more quickly, which means time actually slows. In fact, every time we alter our perception, we alter time, too.

It's all about the Clockworks. This dude knows. And so do these dudes.

To the tautest-tongued swimmer,
The moon-eyed sage
Wanderin' them lonely beets--kickin' up dust,
We raise a glass, dot an eye,
Show some skin... and paint our nails
For our brightest and bushiest tale, Alisha!

To 23/23!

So what are you doing to keep cool or enjoy the first day of summer? Me? I'm in my air conditioned office. Others are going to see Sex in the City. Cold movie theater. Whatever you decide to do today, enjoy this day. Today. The first day of summer.

Also, Tony is leaving us.

In celebration of this discovery we are asking you to literally B.Y.O.D. for wikidance 2.0

Originally conceived during the Ultimate Blogger 3, we solicited all users of the internet to share their sweet moves with the promise that we would turn them into a dance.

These were the moves:

wikidance creators! from bodycity on Vimeo.

And what we did with them:

The Wikidance from bodycity on Vimeo.

Post your moves on vimeo or youtube and be sure to tag them with "wikidance2.0"!

Bring it!

This is where we all take a picture of ourselves each day and post it in one place. It's as simple as that, but you'll be surprised by the creative possibilities, emerging themes, and endless opportunities to ogle, giggle and make-fun. It's like standing in front of a great, slow, collective, rotating closet! Check it out!

EVERYONE IS WELCOME TO PARTICIPATE.

See and be seen, in all your textured variance. What I Wore Today wants YOU to show-off your workday strictures, Sunday sweats, well-worn favorites, and back-of-the-closet dredge. If there is anything the great fashion blogs of our day have to say to us, it's this: Be unashamed! Be as silly, serious or sexy as your please.

JOIN NOW

People are so excited that they are even throwing parties.

So what should you do? Do it. Pledge. Download. I mean how cute is that little fox? I'm going to. So there's that. One thing to worry about is your add-ons. They might not be ready for FF3, but all the legit add-ons are.

Yeah, that's right. We are taking NEWS to a new level: daily columns spanning the genres of linguistics, pop culture, open source, nutrition, whatevah. It's comin' at you. It's comin' daily. We'll even throw in some limericks just for your trouble. Check it. We promise to keep it short, sweet, and satisfying.

Yo, we just gettin' started.

Here's proof:

Lady Stranger from bodycity on Vimeo.

I've been reading a little about animal cognition and communication (Shhhhh, its research!). The mystery of "what goes on inside" an elephant's head is not really what interests me; it's what animals reveal about the relationship of perception, language and knowledge. If language is what we use to segment and inform the continuum of our perceptions, then language is knowledge (and knowledge is language) and the knowledge of animals must be very, very foreign. Learning about non-human life forms continually confirms my suspicions: (1) We aren't shaped by language, we are language (whatever language that may be), and (2) Many of us have aliens living in our own homes.

Wittgenstein gave us this famous verdict on animal language and consciousness: "If a lion could talk, we would not understand him." Some people think he was saying that animals can't have language as advanced as our own. I think he was saying that lions have different perceptual apparatus, and a different symbology, so even if a lion could communicate in English, or sign language, the words and metaphors it would draw upon would follow a completely different logic. This is exactly why I have always been freaked out by the idea of pets. We're so casual about having animals live with us, and strangely confident that all our one-sided conversations are penetrating them just as they would a baby, or a mute uncle. Yet animals, so long as we don't speak their language, should silence us like contemplation of the galaxies.

Think of all the pictures of cats on the web. No matter how much we learn about their bodies and brains, no matter how much we live and interact with them, they remain icons, or symbols, or something. We gaze at them like stars and predicate their meaning and identity with our own image.

The questions that haunt us are: Do they understand me? Do they appreciate beauty? Do they have memories? Do they make meaning? Do they have anything at all like story and narrative? Do they differentiate right and wrong? As this line of questioning continues, it becomes more and more obvious that the answer is no. Well, at least not like that, right? The problem is we have no idea how to phrase the questions so they even make sense in the context of a dolphin's experience (or an ant's, or a rabbit's, or a dinosaur's, or a blue jay's).

We know that animals can see, hear, smell, taste, touch and feel; we imagine that they think, reason, and abstract from their own histories of sensory information. We try and put ourselves inside a dog's colorblind, scent-swamped, ear-pricked experience, marveling at how differently they see the world. But it's not as though we could simply heighten and dampen certain senses and brain capacities and arrive at a dog's interpretation of the world. It's not as if the world is a fixed text, or dataset, seen from various angles, or interpreted through different lenses, which we can compare and contrast. It is dynamic, existing in relationship and process.

Remember triads? All of our information comes to us via "a cooperation of three subjects": sign, object, and interpretant. According to Charles Pierce, as quoted in this essay, "this tri-relative influence" is not "in any way resolvable into actions between pairs." It's not just the world and it's interpreters, there are these little guys called signs--the words and symbols we use to communicate our perceptions--aiding and interfering. The "tri-relative world" exists in the interface. Animal signs and sign-functions are not like our own. And with this brilliant kernel of evidence *wink*, I suggest that animals do not live on Earth, as we know it: they are aliens on planets that may as well be light years away.

Thomas Sebeok, the semiotician who applied sign study to the study of evolution of life systems, and popularized Biosemiotics, believed that "semiosis [or sign behavior] must be recognized as a pervasive fact of nature as well as of culture." "The significance circuit," as Sebeok calls it in his essay, "The Sign Science and The Life Science," is "based on construction by the observer-participancy of some carbon-based life." Animal, vegetable, mineral--each the locus of its Umvelt. Not vessels of communication, transmitting information and receiving knowledge, but communication itself, constituting what is seen, known and understood.

Mostly, I just I love the way we talk about our furrier friends, attributing cunning and emotion, and imagining inner monologues.

Check out his speech.

Oh! This would not be complete unless we called out some birthday bois. SO.
Happy Birthday Daniel Charles. Remember last year? Or just this in general? This man is golden. 24 years young! So let's see. He is a friend, future blogger ;), brother, brother-IN-LAW, guru, abbott, MC, OG. Happy Birthday my friend.
In other news, guess who was born on the same day. Brandon Swartzel? YES. Happy Birthday little man. If you know these men, and like, use Facebook, click here.
Also, lastly, there is one more birthday shout out. This man is technically part of THAT community, but we see him as one of own. So, Happy Birthday Alex Brown! Not only does this man makes some mean food or cater some rad weddings, he is an all around sweet guy.

So what should we do this summer?

Come and see this set!

new songs + new moves = Lucid Dreaming

THURSDAY - May, 29 2008 at Silverlake Lounge w/ Hecuba and Warpaint

$7

9:00pm

we play first!!!!!!!!!!

I would like to present to you Unalaska, a blog about beet farming in Alaska by Katie Bachler (pictured above).

Meagan notes: Katie + Blog = uncharted, supercontinental poetry and insight. I can't wait to have a regular peek into the outer reaches of existence. (As you can see in the image above.)

This is why I've jury rigged a new compass to keep me from walking in circles. It has only two cardinal points: plays other people expressly recommend, and plays by people I am already familiar with. In place of magnetic precision, my compass offers safe bets. More often than not, this means playwrights who were originally, or primarily, poets. I keep meaning to read Pinter and Albee and Labute, but when I see an e.e. cummings play, hot damn! How can that not be good?! It's led me to some interesting reads, and even more interesting questions, which keep me browsing those shelves.

Naturally, I've spent some time thinking about what differentiates a play from a poem, and how the mediums interact. I want to know if there is such a thing as writing-a-play-as-a-poet, and writing-a-poem-as-a-playwright, and whether the writing would be distinct as such. "Poem" and "Play" are constructs, but they're ingrained and operable; we know which one we're looking at, and I think it's safe to continue talking about them.

Certain poetic disciplines are also the building blocks, in my opinion, of a strong dramatic piece. For me, poems require close attention to structure--planned or unplanned, formal or informal--and a careful reduction of images. A poem places you in an elastically bound space, hands you the essential objects, then leaves. Plays do the same, only literally. Poets are deliberate with every syllable, treating linguistic minutiae like volatile genetic material. Similarly, playwrights are responsible for each word, considering how it reveals or masks a character.

Playwriting, in my very limited experience, is like stepping inside a poem and making its internal argument apparent. Any implicit tensions or questions are animated. The transition from poem to play is like taking a puzzling piece of machinery, separating all its parts, and laying them out so their relations to one another become obvious, if not explicable.

It's pretty stupid to talk about poems because they are what they are. Lyricism, nonsense, playfulness, stillness, description, intimacy, ambiguity--in a poem, anything can be an end. You know how when you read a poem, you kind of hear it in a voice that's coming from the place where your ribs join? Or how this knotted awareness forms in your stomach? I want to know how this can happen in a play without sacrificing narrative or always succumbing to surrealism. In other words, I want to write something accessible, relatable, easy to follow, and convincing, yet retain that feeling that it's all being spoken by a very beautiful voice inside you.

Maybe that's not the point of a play, though. Maybe the point is to make you face up to others and give equal attention to several incongruous voices at once. Can a poem do this? Probably. What is a poem again? A play? Fuck, maybe it's not safe to talk about this, after all. Form is important and inescapable (it all comes back to architecture), but as soon as you inhabit one, it yields itself.

I would be wise to give you an example before we all evaporate.

Under Milk Wood, by Dylan Thomas

This is technically "a play for voices," and was originally performed for radio. It was later made into a film featuring Elizabeth Taylor and Peter O'Toole, which, I must admit, is difficult for me to envision. Under Milk Wood is like music. It is written in the dialect of a small, Welsh, sea-side town--a dialect that was in Thomas' blood. It's rhythm is pronounced, and Thomas indulges--no, luxuriates--in consonance, alliteration and rhyme. I would love to hear it performed; even in reading the language is enough to carry the play without plot or content:

FIRST VOICE

Vegetables make love above the tenors.

SECOND VOICE
and dogs bark blue in the face.

FIRST VOICE
Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard belches in a teeny hanky and chases the sunlight with a flywhisk, but even she cannot drive out the Spring: from one of the finger-bowls, a primrose grows.

C'mon, I could listen to lines like that on repeat, no context necessary.

Under Milk Wood presents a cycle, opening and closing at dawn. The day we observe (hear?) could be any day at all, the limited cast going about their chores and repeating well-worn gossip. This gives it a mythic quality; the town may as well be the only existence, and its people eternal. The language supports this quality, reminding us of oracle and, well, poetry. Even when you're not sure what's happening, you can remain present with each line, and sense the earthy magic of the town and people.

FIRST VOICE (very softly)

Listen. It is night in the chill, squat chapel, hymning in bonnet and brooch and bombazine black, butterfly choker and bootlace bow, coughing like nannygoats, sucking mintoes, fortywinking hallelujah; night in the four-ale, quiet as a domino; in Ocky Milkman's lofts like a mouse with gloves; in Dai Bread's bakery flying like black flour. It is to-night in Donkey Street, trotting silent, with seaweed on its hooves, along the cockled cobbles, past curtained fernpot, text and trinket, harmonium, holy dresser, watercolours done by hand, chinadog and rosy tin teacaddy. It is night neddying among the snuggeries of babies.

The story is narrated by these Voices, but specific characters also speak, relieving the heavy flow of third-person description. People with names like Mrs. Ogmore Pritchard, Gossamer Beynon, Willy Nilly and Polly Garter often speak in playful, rhyming stanzas. This acts like a cue for the listener--someone is speaking now. The polished, plain verse of the characters stands in contrast to the detailed, near-stream-of-consciousness narration. The Voices immerse the listener and build like waves, then break against a person. The effect is that these persons feel crisp and real.

SECOND VOICE

The lust and lilt and lather and emerald breeze and crackle of the bird-praise and body of Spring with its breasts full of rivering May-milk, means, to that lorldly fish-head nibbler, nothing but another nearness to the tribes and navies of the Last Black Day who'll sear and pillage down Armageddon hill to his double-locked rusty-shuttered tick-tock dust-scrabbled shack at the bottom of the town that has fallen head over bells in love.

POLLY GARTER
And I'll never have such loving again,

SECOND VOICE
Pretty Polly hums and longs.

POLLY GARTER (sings)
Now when farmers boys on the first fair day
Come down from the hills to drink and be gay,
Before the sun sinks I'll lie there in their arms
For they're good bad boys from the lonely farms...

Isn't it beautiful? You can listen to the full thing here and here.

* If you're unsure if what you're looking at is a musical, ask yourself, Does the title end in an exclamation point? If yes, you've got a musical on your hands. Fortunately, there are many other obvious indicators that should tip you off before you even look at a title. Also, nobody reads musicals.

So here's the plan. Tonight!, May 2nd, HERE, we (you) will be singing into the wee hours of the morning.

Over the course of my twenty five years of life, I have experienced the loss of three grandparents, one aunt, one uncle, one brother, three friends, a dog and two cats. And those are just the deaths immediate to me - while it may not be directly intimate, we tend to feel deeply when our friends experience death in their own families. Also, it is not uncommon to be greatly impacted by the death of a celebrity or important public figure.

I guess it might seem strange to be quantifying things like this; counting deaths like keeping score. But the thing is that I think about death and grief like I think about commuting to work. It's second nature. It's a part of what I do each day.

At first, after the suicide of my brother Michael (he was 21, I was 18 at the time. He purchased a hand gun from an Albuquerque pawn shop and shot himself that same day), I felt a bit like this guy --------------------------->

Existence became totally stunning. Traversing through time and space, I was ill-equipped and the battery in my emotional headlamp kept fritzing out. I was a solitary nomad in a cave full of reflective planes that offered little in the way of nourishment or direction.

I am writing this now just after the seven year mark of that event has come and gone and I no longer feel like I'm tromping around on scary shards of suprisingly organic materials.

Now, it's a bit more like this. ------------------------>

I know this place. It is a part of my familiar scenery and I have memories and sensations associated with it that I can call up or be surprised by. I can come here whenever I need to. I can make full circles for as long as I want, so long as I am mindful of other travelers, or I can splay off in whatever direction I choose. It's real.