i keep coming back here.

maybe i just so desperately need to know that there is something more than the streets and sidewalks, than rushing from place to place, than the rat race and the job hunt and multitasking and networking.. maybe this — sitting here on my perch before sea and sky, the grass and the rocks and the ruin, the manmade empire — maybe this helps me to remember the rest of the world, the endless expanse.

i can see the river moving for what seems like miles and miles, and it’s free. it isn’t worried about health concerns, about articles to write, about finding a job, about being on time — it just is. now i know why emerson wrote the things he did, the way he did — or at least i have a glimpse. words fall short and pictures can’t capture it — just how refreshing it is to be here. maybe this isn’t the most practical way to be spending my time — but i need it. i’m recharging myself.

i keep coming back here, and it’s odd — i feel antisocial, and can’t seem to ever shake the fear of missing something — but the silence sings to you in a way few other things do. it seems there is my family, my love, and silence. the time you must allow yourself to settle into the space of existence. it’s so much more difficult than it sounds..

i can’t help but wonder what this river has seen — the secrets it keeps about all the people who come to see it. the kids cutting class and joking loud, the couples talking low on the bench near the tree, women coming to practice santeria — dumping the remnants of their rituals.. all amongst volunteers cleaning, artists working, photographers framing, and someone like me — just a few blocks from home but still in need of a reminder that the world can turn slower, and moments can last longer, if you want them to.

so many seek solace but the river still moves, undeterred by its wordless burdens. this is our true nature, if we can grasp it — flow on, carry on, humble yet limitless, inspiring yet silent. unpretentious and indescribably beautiful. i wonder how many others sit on what has become my perch — how many before me, and how many after? it all flows on. and sometimes the most important questions are the ones we are all asking silently. silently but in unison — held together by the force that brings us here to watch the river, as if we all somehow know the answers it holds — as if we all somehow know the answers we are still holding within ourselves — even at that very moment.

does the wind blow in silent confirmation?

from this perch, yea, the earth speaks.

are you listening?

ajd
10.22.09

see more of audrey’s photos from this session, shot at socrates sculpture park in long island city, queens, on flickr.

Exploding Head

With the release of their second full length album, Exploding Head, the best and most recent musical analogy that comes to mind is Interpol’s Antics released way back in 2004. In other words, for those familiar with the New York-based trio will notice very subtle changes in their sound – especially after repeated listens. On their first, self-titled effort, A Place to Bury Srangers will bring about comparisons to the Jesus and Mary Chain, the MC5, Siamese Dream-era Smashing Pumpkins, the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and the Raveonettes as most of the songs have layers of psychedelic, droning and buzzing guitars following behind Jay Space’s drumming which at times has a propulsive, mechanical and exacting precision – almost to the point of sounding much like the drumbeats on early era New Order (think of songs like “Blue Monday,” “Thieves Like Us” on Substance and you may have a pretty good idea of what I’m getting at). Ackerman’s voice is frequently a plaintive, yearning whisper which seems to be dragged under the layers of guitar fuzz and drums to float and then drown under it all. Granted, so far Ackerman’s voice only allows for a limited emotional range before sounding implausible but it works for the music.

And sure, it may be difficult to follow the lyrics – and the lyrics may not even be the point – but the music offers some auditory revelations. You can hear Ackerman’s chords being played through distortion and delay pedals to create a dreamy, drowsy effect while Mofo’s bass is often played with fat, rolling chords.

On Exploding Head you will hear the same drone and buzz, the same plaintive yearning but there’s a tighter, sleazier punk feel on songs such as “Deadbeat” and “Exploding Head,” that adds a slight tone of menace to the proceedings. With repeated listens, you’ll hear APTBS slowly breaking away from some of their major influences and creating their own unique sound. Unlike the first album, there are at least two songs which fade into one another but overall the songs seem to start and stop at will. This isn’t the old-fashioned verse-chorus-verse or the quiet, loud, quiet of Nirvana, the Pixies and others; the songs are consistently loud, followed by loud and are much more like experiencing a fugue. It may take some time to see how their music develops further but I’m excited to see what they come up with next.

Exploding Head Song List:

1. It Is Nothing
2. In Your Heart
3. Lost Feeling
4. Deadbeat
5. Keep Slipping Away
6. Ego Death
7. Smile When You Smile
8. Everything Always Goes Wrong
9. Exploding Head
10. I Lived My Life to Stand in the Shadow of Your Heart

Gaga Sphere

When most people hear the name Lady Gaga, they tend to go toward a place of pop, top 40 countdowns and gratuitous fashion for fashion’s sake. Before I saw her kick-off her new tour, the Fame Monster, in Montreal last week, I expected to be utterly annoyed by her mere presence in the room. I anticipated seeing a pop star who was like the dozens of other marketed cookie-cutter starlet wanna-be’s that had come before her, toting their feel-good dance music and frothy lyrics to numb today’s society. No, I was truly not in the mind frame to understand that I would be seeing a gifted artist perform. I was in for a surprising awakening.

Lady Gaga is a force to be reckoned with. She is the future of music. She is the new voice of a generation. You can say you hate her, loathe her, dislike her, but the truth is she’s got more to offer than your typical top pop 40 hits and in all frankness, even Madonna seems to be shaking ever so slightly in the her boots now that the new messiah of music has arrived. Once you can get past the fluffy froth that radio stations are trying to force down your throat and peel back the layers of her sound, it’s a whole other ball game.

I’ve heard people talk ish about Lady Gaga. She’s pretentious. What’s with the clothes? All her songs sound the same… it’s so in your face! I know this because I used to be one of them. What is often overlooked, however, is the fact Gaga herself (whose real name is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta) has spent a lot of time on the outside looking in. In a recent interview she stated that her whole aesthetic appeal, from the elaborate costumes to the scenery and her method of performance art is not only a way to uninhibit herself, but to create a safe place where her fans could do the same. Growing up she explained that she was the monster, the freak, the outsider, the kid who wanted to be popular but at the same time not enough to change who she really was…and let’s be honest here, haven’t the better half of us felt that way before too? Yet, instead of playing the bitter martyr and going the route most misunderstood musicians do, she decided to take her love of music and classical training in piano, and twist it into her own funky stylistic soundtrack, infusing fashion and vocals to create a new genre of sound. The result was chart-topping gold. In another interview she would go on to say that her first musical inspiration came when she heard her father playing Pink Floyd’s “Money”, which resulted in her first song written on the piano which she titled, “Dollar Bills”, when she was under the age of ten.

So, once I began to look through the dance groove beats and really focus on the nitty gritty of what this chick stood for, I realized I had hypocritically prejudged a performer who not only had more talent in her pinky finger than all the Britney’s, Miley’s and Justin Timberlake’s combined, she also had depth. She speaks from a place that so many of us know but either stifle or simply do not know how to release. A performer who is far grittier and darker than what is often portrayed on the radio, her live performance was a visual awakening and not as squeaky-clean as one might imagine.

The concert started off with the gritty musical stylings of New York City’s own Semi-Precious Weapons who opened off the tour with their glorious f-bombs and sassy vocals of Justin Tranter, who’s antics only proved to energize the crowded arena (which seats up to 21,273) full of screaming Gaga fans at the sold out concert. They rocked out a 45 minute set and then the stage was cleared to make way for the Lady of the evening herself. It was a bit of a wait, with the show running fashionably late and the main event starting at 10 PM, almost two hours later than the opening act, but with the technical contraptions used for the show I don’t blame the final checks before the first live run of the performance (and there was always the glorious beer and liquor for those of us who were over 18 to dull the pain).

When she did arrive, Montreal showed their approval with raucous, ear-splitting applause and a great show ensued. She opened with new songs from her album Fame Monster, a two- disc collaboration of her first hit album, ‘The Fame’ with a second CD of newly written songs recorded while on the road of her first tour. She chose the title The Fame Monster because her latest songs are compiled from her experiences on the road and the growing influences that her many fans (aka “monsters” as she calls them) have had on her life. If there is one thing that can be said about Gaga, it is that she is extremely thankful for and loyal to her adoring fans. Unlike most pop icons who wriggle through their playlist of concert songs, only to throw in a scattered “I love you, (insert city, town, country here)” here and there, Gaga gets down and personal with her audience. Every song is a power-house number, equipped with out-there costume changes, tricky choreography and stunning amplified vocals by the songstress. She gives her spectators 110% of herself and even when she stumbled on the slippery stage not once but a few times, she knew the formula to pulling it off before a crowded arena by shouting out “I’m like a drunken supermodel and I love it!” to which the crowd cheered boisterously in approval.

Normally not a fan of new songs that I don’t have the chance to listen to and get to know beforehand, 90% of her new material is now playing back to back on my Ipod playlist. Whatever Gaga is doing, it’s working. Her latest album hits “Alejandro”, “Dance in the Dark” (her opening number) and songs like “Monster” (which she wrote to describe her fans) are all songs that will take her to the next level of rock stardom. The lyrics and dance moves would prove to be anything less than PG with her references to sex in songs like the shadowy “Teeth” (not to mention her colorful way of call the male member a “vertical stick”) are by no means teeny-bopper-ish…

Don’t want no money (want your money)
That shit’s is ugly
Just want your sex (want your sex)
Take a bite of my bad girl meat (bad girl meat)
Take a bite of me
Show me your teeth

Aside from her titillating usage of vernacular, Gaga proved she was not shy with her fashion choices either. Her show-stopping costumes were chaotic and all over the place in a good way, ranging from a super sexy cross between the gold bikini Princess Leia wore in Star Wars and a femininely-constructed Gladiator suit, to the complexly structured “sphere” costume she has made famous from numerous concert performances like on SNL. There were impressive onstage costume changes and risqué leotards that left little to the imagination so I hate to disappoint, but for those of you vying to prove that Gaga is a hermaphrodite, it’s a no-go unless she is hiding it extremely well! What I found the most fascinating about her clothing choices was that despite how avant-garde they were or how toweringly tall her heels became, she performed as well as if she had been doing it since the womb. As a fellow female, I applaud.

Throughout the rest of the concert she followed closely by with the fan favorites, even playing a cabaret version of her Kanye West, Common and Kid Cudi classic “I Poke Her Face”, when to all of our great amazement, Kid Cudi himself bounced out onto the stage to sing a duet version with Lady Gaga. Another highlight of the concert was when she announced that her father was there watching her show and how much it meant to her. She then opened up about how she had written a song from her album called “Speechless” for him when she found out he had cancer and had refused treatment. She solemnly took her place at the piano and with over twenty thousand pairs of eyes watching, launched into a performance of the song that was so genuine and emotionally wrenching, it was hard to believe she was able to compose herself afterwards. It was just another layer of the artist we know as Lady Gaga showing us her true colors. She closed the show with two rousing encores featuring her latest chart-toppers, “Paparazzi” and the recent hit “Bad Romance” to which the crowd was literally out of control for. When the lights came up and the curtains closed we were more than just fans, we were monsters, and it was sad to see such a fleeting tiem come to an end.

What evidently dawned on me during the concert was that this girl before me had some savage mass appeal. I saw goth rockers seated around me, prima donnas, punk-ska skater types and then the people like me, who weren’t sure what they were getting into. Yet, there we were, wigging out to the same musical talent and loving every minute of it. So the question stands, does Gaga create a space where her fans can be just who they want to be when they want to be? Undoubtedly.

In the famous words of the Lady herself, “Everything’s gonna be okay…just dance.”

Miami, FLA.

What do you think about it?:

My affinities to Miami are: family, cafe con leche, croquettes, tostadas and cumulonimbus clouds.

What is Wreckio?:

A group of friends that like playing together.

What makes Wreckio provocative?:

We take risks in our work, in each stage of development and performance. We offer each other the opportunity to explore all artistic facets of ourselves. Even if it’s a first for someone, we all jump off the cliff together. We’ve been around for over nine years and each process is completely different. At first, this was unsettling, but we’ve accepted that we are constantly changing and that works for us.

Explain your roles with Wreckio:

Each Co-Artistic Director takes on multiple roles. We each have strengths in different areas of the organization. I’m a Co-Artistic Director, playwright, actor (hanging it up for a while to solely focus on writing, but I’m sure I’ll hit it again), board member, friend, fundraiser, grant writer, light hanger, set builder, but mostly whatever I need to be in the moment to get things done.

Favorite painter:

I can’t think of a painter. Gregory Crewdson’s photography stimulates my imagination.

Favorite band:

Radiohead is my favorite group of musicians. I love that they are unafraid of taking risks in their work. Each album is an evolution and almost a rebellion of their previous work like, “We didn’t find the answer here! Dig deeper!” They always find something, explode it and move on.

What inspires your work?:

Usually hopelessness, but I’m becoming more mindful of the kind of energy I put out into the universe. My next play is still pretty dark, but there is hope.

Why so hopeless?:

I’ve always been sensitive; every emotion/thought is magnified and all consuming. I had apocalyptic dreams when I was growing up, I still do. I’ve spent the last eight years numbing and shielding myself with cynicism in order to cope with my crappy outlook. I’m done with that. I figure the more energy I give to those thoughts, the less likely I’ll turn out to be the person I see making a positive contribution in the world.

Best “I’m an artist and I’m broke” moment:

I’m adding an ‘n’ at the end of “broke?” I broke as an artist watching opening night of a play that I wrote and directed. It was my first attempt at both and I bit off way more than I could chew. The second to last scene began to unravel and I watched in horror as I realized how I should have ended it and that it was too late to change. I finally understood the desperate need to be swallowed by a vortex and never return.

Which play broke you?:

Gravediggers was a tremendous undertaking. I was actually in the process of writing Rooftops (one of the fifty versions of it) and then Bush was reelected. That night, I went into a tailspin of despair. I thought, as Americans, we’re all digging our graves and eureka, I started writing Gravediggers. Gravediggers embodied my disgust with politics, of my own apathy, and humanity. I look back on that time and I was extremely depressed, I mourned my loss of courage and what I thought we lost as Americans. As far as seeing my vision come to fruition…I had too many ideas I wanted to explode. It was my first attempt at directing and my first solo effort at a full-length play. I hadn’t finished writing the piece and we were about to go into tech. The actors surrounded me one night and were like “You need to finish the play,” so I went home and wrote all night and “finished” it. The next day we read it and we were all excited to have an ending, then I was supposed to direct it, needless to say I had no idea what I was doing. I knew the ending wasn’t right, but I felt like I couldn’t change it again because I would push the cast to a breaking point. I knew the one saving grace for the piece was the acting. The ensemble was extraordinary. As difficult as it was, it was a remarkable learning experience for me and the company. Since I’ve had time away from it, I am able to experience it with a great pride.

Okay but seriously…BROKE moment:

A few years ago I was working at Starbucks in Barnes and Noble, one of the many many many mind-numbing jobs that I’ve had in NYC. It was a real shitty.  We were in rehearsal/production of our first collaboratively written piece, Wrestling Porcelain. Rehearsals would usually go til about 10p or so. I would wake up at 4:30 to open the cafe at 6am. I would steal a sesame bagel every morning and house it in the back area. If I would have been caught, I would have been fired, which was perposterous to me because they only paid us $7.25 an hour. I’d drink my tall, double-shot caramel soy macchiato in defiance as my manager would turn her back, real brave-like.  It was around 2PM when there was this angry mob of CEOs demanding their grande, triple-shot lattes with a hit of vanilla and I just froze. An earth-shattering scream was ringing in my head, it was a real Stephen King ‘Carrie’ moment. I would look at those fuckers and try to blast them away with my stare, but of course I started crying . “What the fuck am I doing?!” kept ringing in my head…I’m pretty sure that was one of the last weeks I worked there, but it wasn’t the last time that I cried in front of customers at some crappy job.

A secret you’re willing to admit:

I peed my pants a little when I saw Radiohead in concert. It was towards the end of the show, Thom Yorke was sitting on the speaker, the lights were on the audience, eveyone was up and he just took everyone in…he held the mic out and we all sang so hard. He looked like he was really enjoying the moment…how could I leave to pee?

Wreckio’s (wreckio.com) current production Bail Out the Musical is directed by Kimberlea Kressal; Dec. 9- 12, 17-19 at 8PM, Under St. Marks, 94 St. Marks Place, New York, NY (btn 1st Ave and Ave A), $20, Purchase at Smarttix.

Homemade film Shot on a Sony handycam between August and October 2009 for the San Francisco band OXBOW(Hydrahead)

Film contains elements of 3rd generation footage:Third generation (shot… then shot off the TV… then shot off the TV again)

…..1st generation footage includes clips from Amalgam dir Craig Murray (2007), Adult webcams (Internet, 2003 – 2006) and Nostalgia dir Andrei Tarkovsky(1983)

Go here for more.

OXBOW: COALKING ( *Caution required* ) from CRAIG MURRAY on Vimeo.

will i rail forever
against the moments past–
eternally reigniting
what has long since grown cold?
reanimating our bodies
our touches, words, and embraces–

who falls asleep and dreams it
and believes in a glimpse of the truth?

only i am left to navigate
my dog-eared, weary calendar,
my fractured timepiece–
this clock turned to compass
and astrolabe–
guiding me forth into dark seas
of memory
and moments i have stolen
from time.

i am still in search–
my beacon is dim but i doubt
it will ever go out.
i toss and turn in this makeshift
sea-faring bed
searching for the snag, the wrinkle,
the rip– in my chronology
the chance to sail beyond
a horizontal plane and spill off
into star-speckled eternity.
ship and sea and space, all one–
and me.. existing in a place
that has no place for me.

yet here i am, in the cosmos
having freed myself from the day
and night which limit me..
feeding warm light from my mind
to darkness, as all around me
the sky crackles into true being–
a back lit, scratched projector
for my memories.

will i ever go home?, i ask, to nothing..
away from my past-collided present,
and fragmentary strains
of perfect light–
or will i always come back
out of fear of nothing to suffer–

and nothing to write?

i am the navigator
who spilled off his course
and into unlimited being.
i write this line and wish
i could fall into the infinite depth
inside each tiny scrawl of ink..
the journey isn’t over.

.. it’s all in what you think.

ajd
8.23.09

Some of our experiments were accidental but she would disagree with me by countering that no accidents were truly coincidental. Everything had a purpose and was pushed and pulled by only two forces, which she called emptiness and fulfillment. Light and dark. Life and death. To accept both is to accept a basic lesson but in time this would complicate our relationship. It wasn’t that I couldn’t buy into it. It was because she was more extreme than I as all teachers and philosophers are.

Admittedly, Gretchen’s violent and aggressive qualities made her alluring — the equivalent of a cookie laced with strychnine and baked with dog shit instead of love but topped with swiss chocolate chips produced by a world master choclatier.

She had a vast collection of syringes in a box that she stored in her closet and a faded-yellow grocery bag of flexible plastic tubes to fashion a tourniquet from. One evening, after we had consumed two bottles of red Chilean wine, she tied a long tube around her arm, flexing her forearm until a thick green line formed in the cusp of her elbow. The vein grew like an erect penis hidden beneath her thin, pockmarked skin. When it reached an ideal size, she grabbed a medium sized syringe and eased the needle in.

She held the loose end of the tube between her teeth and grunted, “Cah ooo pease liff uh punger?”

I slowly pulled it back. Blood began to fill the plastic chamber, climbing up the measurement notches until there was only a short breath between the end and the plunger.

“Dohn ‘et oh.”

“What?” I said. Her face had blurred into an image of a three-dimension object in a three-dimensional world from the alcohol’s effects to make me nine dimensions away from her. My hands shook due to the advanced nature of this intimacy and so, by accident, I let go of the plunger as it snapped back against the chamber.

She screamed, her mouth letting loose the tube as it dropped into her lap. “You asshole!” Gretchen grabbed her elbow, holding it tightly as blood dripped between her fingers, staining the white rug with the red raindrops. “I said ‘don’t let go’!”

I was embarassed to foil her blueprint for this romantic moment. I fetched a brown bath towel from the closet and handed it to her. Gretchen pressed it against the hole in her arm. She writhed in pain, her mouth grimaced and her eyebrows furrowed like a betrayed child. I was thankful that the air bubble that had shot into her vein hadn’t killed her.

“You’re a jerk. This was supposed to be a gift for you.” She took the syringe in one hand and cocked her injured arm into a plastic shopping bag that rattled with glass objects. She produced a vile, slipped the needle into its black rubber top, gently pressing on the plunger until the vile had filled. With the remaining blood left in the syringe, she squirted its contents all over my shirt into a little circular design. “There,” she said. “Now we’re even.”

The moment had become tense. I tried as hard as I could to keep a guffaw from escaping my tightly pressed lips but then I lost it, bellowing raw laughter. Gretchen pursed her lips to conceal a giggle.

“It’s not funny.”

“Oh yes it is, you freak.” I rubbed my hands on my shirt and jumped on top of her, wiping my palms on her face. “Is this what you want? Is this what you wanted?”

“I was trying to do something nice and you ruined it.”

“I don’t know what the fuck you were doing but here…” I pressed my tongue into her mouth, releasing saliva onto her tongue. She pressed the tip of her tongue against the flat surface of mine as I tilted my head sideways so that the left side of my face would be doused in her blood. “There’s no such things as accidents or coincidence, right?”

She reached backward into her drawer of specialized hand weapons and pulled out a knife with a black handle. I mouthed something like, “What are you doing?” but the razor had cut through a flap of skin on my back. The sting had a cool, glassy feel to it; clean and indiscriminate. I used the adrenalin rush to clamp my teeth onto her tongue, making a small cut on the tip. She bit back tenderly but not hard. The endorphins rushed to the place of my injury, siphoning the pain out from the nerves while Gretchen rubbed me through my pants and then unzipped them. Her cold fingers clung onto me, which only made me want to stab her more.

After we finished making love, we rushed to the bathroom mirror. There before us, was the reflection of two lovers drenched in each other’s blood, gashes scarred in sporadic places on our bodies. A slice to the thigh. A slice to the arm, breast, stomach. We were painted like the undead, smiling with red stained teeth and dark oval patterns around our eyes due to a range of sleepless nights. My blood was inseparable from her blood. A thick pale gelatinous liquid secreted down her leg, collecting with the red crude and becoming pink. Life and death commingled in a collective lump of DNA. We looked like lovely lepers embracing each other’s deformities.

A couple of  mornings later, she awoke, ran to the bathroom and vomited all over the floor and toilet. I went to her and held her naked shoulder that had been covered in scabs. She wretched again into the toilet bowl, breathing shortly as a long string of drool dripped like a spider dipping from its web. She wiped her mouth and said, “Jesus, Nico, I think I’m pregnant.”

The old portable X-ray unit was balking and whining it’s way to the service elevator.

It stopped dead two feet in front of the sliding cage door. Its huge lead cell battery was spasmodically powering the large electric motor that drove the two-foot diameter hard rubber rear wheels.

“ahh…sonnafabitch!”

That really hurt. Red had just slammed his right ankle into the immobile portable. It was like kicking a parked car.

“Fucker… you are going down to the sub-basement whether you like it or not!”

It was like the old unit knew she was going to the Elephant Burial Ground of decrepit medical equipment deep in the bowels of Bellevue Hospital. This was one of the three elevators that actually went all of the way down to B7… the seventh sub-basement.

“I’ll bring you down in pieces if I have to!” The X-ray tech cursed as he jiggled the key. It leaped to life and surged ahead four feet… and died again… but just far enough inside to be able to close the gate and push the ‘B7′ button. All of the buttons on the elevator were gleaming shiny metal from many years of jabbing fingers wearing away the Bakelite caps… all except B7, that button looked complete and brand new, in a grimy sort of way.

All of the way down, down, down… the cage slowly quivered and shuddered. The rays of light that slipped through the grating got dimmer, dimmer and dimmer.

“Why me?” The tech kept saying out loud. “Why me?”

“Why did Doctor Gray single me out to bring this piece of shit to the lower basement? I thought he liked me!”

He had told him to wheel or drag this beast all of the way to the back area where the old iron lungs were lined up like a small armada of lonely one-manned submarines. They’d been there since the early 50’s. Some people, it was said, spent most of their adult lives inside those things after contracting Polio.

Thank you Dr. Jonas Salk, thank you.

Hmmmmmm.

Doc Gray had been getting pretty big these days too. Like, scary big. The techs in Main Radiology were all talking about how much muscle he’d been putting on. It was like he must be living under barbells now. A homeless drunk with TB had given him some lip when asked to put his mask back on in the chest x-ray area.

“Fuck you! When’s lunccccckkkk…”

Doc Gray grabbed him by the throat and lifted him clean off of the floor like a bag of garbage.

“Pleeeeeeease!”

The drunk gurgled and weakly nodded okay.

“Ah shit!”

The old portable would go no further. It had traveled a mere ten feet from the elevator’s entrance upon arrival at B7. Luckily the coiled on board three pronged grounded cable that recharged the tired old thing was just within the reach of and an old three post outlet that looked as if it were installed by Thomas Edison himself.

“Okaaaaaay…. this will take a while, might as well look around.”

“Boy, the Ghost Hunters would have a ball down here!”

“Give us a sign of your presence.” Red uttered earnestly, in his most Ghost Hunter Investigator like manner.

The unexpected disembodied echo hit his nerve endings like a dentist’s pick inside a cavity.

He shivered involuntarily.

Red was actually glad that the spirits were not cooperating. He may have had to change his underwear.

Sniff.

There was a faint musty-organic smell that hung in the still dank air. It didn’t seem right down here with all of this ancient apparatus.

Dead mice and rats… they had laid out strychnine a few months ago, that’s gotta be it.

What was this stuff worth anyway? Why didn’t they just sell it for scrap? How long has it been here?

Can you Ebay an old iron lung?

……. and what else did Doctor Gray say? How did he get so big?

“Dry aged meat! There’s nothing like it. Melts in your mouth. Pure protein, can’t build muscle without protein!”

He must be eating whole cows by now, horns and all.

The tech ambled gingerly over to the first iron lung. That musty odor was particularly strong over here.

To Red, it looked like the H. L. Hunley, the confederate submarine that drowned her crew, three separate times.

Rivets were plainly seen on its sides. Like the tin man from Oz, not ground aerodynamically flush to the skin like the fuselage of some kind of World War II airplane. It was a mish-mash of several things.

A lifetime spent inside one of these monsters. How horrible was that!

Phew! It stunk over here!

He realized that these were probably the first generation of iron lungs. Prototypes. Perhaps dating from the mid to late 40’s. The occupants were entirely inside. No large side view windows. No exposed heads poking out of the front end. There were rungs on the side to allow access to the top where the sole window and latches were located. Hermetically sealed to maintain negative air pressure.

A people-pressure cooker.

Red tried very hard to shake that imagery from his mind.

The inverted, angled mirrors were still in place and the porthole window directly below it had a thin film of dust.

Wiping the grime with the sleeve of his lab coat… issued clothing, it wasn’t his, so who cared…he shined the ARC AAA Flashlight that was on his key ring inside the tempered window glass…

A sepia colored face stared back, mouth agape!

Startled, he tumbled backwards and almost landed on the concrete floor… he was caught like a football by two large beefy arms.

“Doctor Gray!”

“Hey Red, are you okay? You look upset.”

“I…. I thought I saw somebody inside that thing!”

“Awwww… hey, it’s dark and spooky down here, let’s have a look.”

The two of them climbed back up the iron lung and Dr. Gray borrowed the key chain light.

Twisting the head on the small LED he shone its blue-white beam through the window, quickly drew back, and gave a soft low whistle.

“Holy shit man, I think you’re right!”

“See! See! I told you!”

“Go take a look at that other one over there will ya … here, catch”

He flipped the key chain over to the tech.

Red scrambled up over the other iron lung… feeling more confident that big Ol’ Doctor Gray was right there with him.

“I don’t see nothin’!”

“Open the latches… there on the side. Don’t worry, I’m here with you. I’ve got your back.”

He shot Red a wink.

Red formed a tremulous grin and turned back to the machine.

He flipped the two latches up and lifted the top hatch open.

He furtively reached his left hand inside desperately hoping not to find anything… bony. Precariously perched on one knee with the right arm extended holding up the lid. It smelled like an old suit that a very old man had lived in for a long time… but worse.

“Nope, nobody in here.”

A voice very close to his left ear hissed.

“This one is yours.”

And so… with that… Doctor Gray shoved a bewildered Red inside and slammed the lid shut, securing both latches.

The muffled yells, shrieks, wails and thumping emanating from the cylindrical- metallic coffin had echoed off the grim gray walls for a good forty minutes.

After a while, they softened and eventually stopped all together.

Doctor Gray stuck around for an extra fifteen minutes. He cleaned his fingernails with a tongue depressor and glanced at his watch, just to be sure.

He indifferently stopped and walked over to the now silent iron lung. First, putting his hand on the cold gray metal to get a sense of any possible vibrations, then his ear.

He remained so for two minutes. He looked like his right ear was frozen to the device.

“Good… very good.”

Wiping his hands and smiling he headed back to the elevator. Repeating over and over very quietly. Almost a fevered chanting.

“Protein, can’t build good muscle without protein.”

As he pulled the gate closed he flexed his biceps and gave it a loving squeeze with his free hand.

“Very good.”

He pressed the “G” button, stood back and looked upwards towards the lights and sounds that were oh so faintly filtering downward from the surface above.

The counter weight, strobing through the lights above was now hurtling along its black greased track towards him. The cables tightened. His weight seemed to increase at the soles of his feet, the knees buckled slightly but the strong thick lower limbs recovered swiftly.

It was like he was ascending from Hell.

He smiled.

Yes, it was all good, it was all good indeed.

, Pulitzer-Prize winning fashion journalist together in one room? You get some of the most brilliant minds in fashion today giving their insights on the world and the future of this fascinating field.

In a 90 minute panel discussion orchestrated by Cindi Lieve of Glamour magazine, the floor was opened up to a variety of topics ranging from the comeback of the first lady to what fashion holds for our society in the years to come. The event, The Future of Fashion, took place at the NYC 92nd Street Y on Oct. 21st and cost audience members only $27 to attend, a small price to pay to get up close and personal with such famous names in the world of style.

Ashley Olsen, the youngest of the group, came decked out in a Grecian style floor-length gown, black fitted blazer and red-hot platform heels, looking very much the epitome of boho-chic meets NYC. She discussed her two clothing lines created with sister, Mary-Kate, The Row and Elizabeth & James (the latter named after the twins’ own siblings). Though they differ slightly in their styles, The Row is more couture while Elizabeth and James offers more of a trendy, edgy feel, their sales are expected to go up to 30% this year alone.

Funny enough, she claims her start in fashion came from a conversation she had with her father, where she relayed to him her desperate search for the “perfect white shirt” to no avail. His fatherly response was to simply make and market her own and a fashion line was born, but don’t expect to find Ashley among the other celebrity starlets who “slap their name” on a clothing brand to enhance their popularity. The Row is comprised of 9 people in total with Elizabeth and James not far behind with only 30 employees! Ashley has taken a hands-on approach to both lines and says that this new role in fashion is one she is excited to live out. This young designer is a future force to be reckoned with and also garnered much praise from the other speakers.

Robin Givhan is a fashion editor for the Washington Post, as well as a Pulitzer Prize winner for her caliber of stylistic criticism which shines through in her journalism. It’s her sharp tongue and wit that set her apart from the cookie-cutter style of writers today. She is, in one word, delightfully cynical in the best sense possible.

One crowd-pleasing moment came when she compared the mentality of fashion to that of sports when driving home her point of why some people (mostly the male population) feel that the art of couture is not as readily accepted as say, thousand dollar prime seats to a football game. Never one to shy away from controversial topics she even commented on how sad it was that much of the culture is still not ready to see fashion as an art-form, or how the recent weight obsession might be the result of a society of women who are “reacting in opposition”, or self-loathing as obesity sets our generation into a further downward spiral.

Isaac Mizrahi is no stranger to the world of fashion. He has not only hosted Bravo’s ‘The Fashion Show’, created an incredibly successful line for Target and attached his name to Liz Claiborne’s, but now he’s working on a new endeavor with QVC that involves cook ware as well.

One extraordinary characteristic about Isaac is the fact that he is always willing to push the envelope and reinvent himself as well as his style. His latest projects with Liz Claiborne and now QVC only prove to set new ground yet to be conquered in the arena of fashion. When most designers would shy away, Isaac welcomes the challenge head-on, whole-heartedly and without a second guess.

Thoughts on Michelle Obama…

One thing that everyone had in common was a great admiration for the First Lady. Every single person on the panel felt that Michelle Obama had changed the face of fashion in one way or another. She has favorably altered the image of the archetypal “First Lady”, in her drab uniforms so as not to outshine her husband. Through her style and her grace, she has become an inspiration for women everywhere and Mizrahi also commented on her ability to mix “high end and low end” pieces to create a perfectly balanced palette. She is dressing for the everyday woman and in doing so, has made herself extremely relatable to the American public. She is not stick thin, she doesn’t wear the standard “first wife” uniform or usual drab business suits, she has fun with her looks and plays with fashion the way a woman should.

The Cultural Conundrum on Skinny…

When the issue of the shrinking model came up, Robin brought forth the fact that in this day and age, the ideal of the perfect size gets smaller and smaller as the average woman gets larger and larger, even offering that this might be the cause of women’s own self-loathing in a world where thin is in. However, despite the recent downsizing in runway models and print ads featuring less than normal body images, Isaac was firm on the fact that, in reality, all of this hasn’t stopped the public from buying what these models are selling. In a society where the masses love reality shows like ‘The Biggest Loser’ and ‘Celebrity Fat Club’ it’s becoming easier to see that it’s not only the fashion world who is obsessed with this thin subculture.

When High-end & Low-end meet in the middle…

The recent dip in the economy has no doubt affected fashionistas all over but even the top designers can give a little advice when it comes to cutting corners. When it comes to shopping on a budget, Ashley swears by buying vintage to get the best deals for a low bargain price. Even Isaac said the chicest of ensembles can be made by mixing couture with inexpensive pieces for an unexpected twist and Robin stated that there are numerous magazines, Glamour being one of them that are presenting readers with more affordable choices when it comes to style, make-up and clothing options and has so far proven to be helpful.

The Inevitable Future of Fashion…

When asked what the future of fashion holds, there was a momentary pause from all the panelists. Robin said that she felt it would be “more democratic”, Isaac meditatively suggested that more mini-trends and fashion subcultures will result in the upcoming years, and Ashley, after much contemplation followed with “it will be more fun and exciting!”

And at the end of the day isn’t that exactly what fashion should be?

What was so refreshing about this entire evening was how laid back and at ease the discussions were structured. It was if we as audience were merely flies on the wall, simply catching a glimpse of these creative minds freely verbalizing over a cup of coffee.