Thoughts last night and this morning after meeting Elle Luna and being in a room full of empowered attentive people

With my pals Amanda and Allie, I went to an instance of Women Catalysts last night. 

  1. Your must is a form of self-care. Doing things you must do appears to the outside world that you are being selfish. You must turn that critique off, however, and dive in. 
  2. External critique is almost as loud as internal critique. They are both imposters. 
  3. It’s getting easier and easier to be distracted; this comes in many forms. What’s everyone else reading / sketching / dribbbling / thinking / listening to? Sometimes this will gratefully spurn a new direction for something you’re working on, but it will likely detract from your flow. Focus your attention!
  4. Doing the work / showing up is the process and the project. (Surprise! Road trips aren’t just about the destination!)
  5. I love how thoughtful Elle was in her responses. That pause before speaking made us all pay attention. 
  6. Being entrepreneurial, it’s easier to listen to your must, but it takes a board / advisors / friends who’ll go out with you for pancakes (but never waffle!) to keep you on track.
  7. Walking back to Bart with Amanda, we talked about both being lifelong learners who are constantly & consistently evolving & growing. Some people are stuck in one place, and they tend to be attracted to those whose energy feels exciting, but that can be a drain. Save some chi for yourself!

Meyer Lemon Sorbet and Jarry

I met Lukas Volger, one of the co-founders of Jarry, at a StartOut event in New York. We talked about my old place in the Mission, and what I was doing with the beautiful meyer lemon tree in my backyard — making meyer lemon sorbet, of course, and crafting a cocktail I call the Mission Sunset (recipe below). I conveyed my appreciation for harvesting the fruit each time I’d go outside to pick. Lukas asked me if I wanted to write a piece for Jarry, and I was absolutely delighted for the opportunity.

The piece is a conversation with my favorite cooking buddy, Stephen Willson, about food, family, and being gay. You’ll have to purchase a copy of Issue #1 to read the full text! 

I also Kickstarted the first issue. I’m happy to be a part of first successes.

Mission Sunset cocktail

one big ice cube in a double old-fashioned glass

add a few dashes of orange bitters, then add in:

1/3 part your brown liquor of choice (mine’s usually Maker’s)

1/3 part antica formula vermouth

stir

finish with 1/3 part blood orange soda

twist of meyer lemon peel around the rim and in the glass

serve & enjoy!

Poem, 7/29

we gave good bones

and skin within

our years. 

 

slow moves 

the globe, despite

my hummingbird heart. 

 

one center, two extremes.

two paths, twice converged.

 

and yet, yet now:

is my heart where

is my body  

Beyond words.

A few weeks ago I had the maximum pleasure of attending an evening conceived of, curated, and hosted by James Buckhouse — called Sensorium. Prior to the event I’d only seen two dance performances in my life — one traditional ballet, and one at Jacob’s Pillow, which featured Stephen Petronio Dance Company. It was seeing the latter company together on stage that — for a moment — I saw the dance, not the dancers; I saw every body moving as one unit. But even that slight reorientation didn’t prepare me for Sensorium. In increasing order from most traditional to most modern, Buckhouse’s movements were intentionally interspersed with moments of pause. There was his intro, his personal story about being first moved by dance, delivered in a very Laurie Anderson cadence. Then, a moment to tweet about and share our impressions of the evening using #HopeCadenza. The final moment was a nearly 20-minute powerhouse piece, Hummingbird, beautiful to hear and see and behold. Colors and light were as minimal and intricate as the accompanying Glass score. (Philip remains one of my favorites — it’s deceivingly simple.)

What moved me beyond words was the narrative expressed through the body. What moved me beyond words was how that narrative was translated through the body and through space and time, how the story was expressed without using words. Two sets of main characters (as I saw them, identified through their clothing) moved together and moved apart. They were intimate and connected, feeling each other’s presence (lifting each other up), and then they were not (pushing each other away). Supporting characters (again, different clothing, and more of them) interacted and entwined, then drifted. I thought about my love in Brooklyn, about his body and how he moves through space, and moving through space together with him. I thought about how he and I originally connected, and how years later our paths crossed again, and are crossing, still entwined.

James’s hypothesis was that after seeing dance, we would express taking it in with shaking it out — so he booked a DJ to spin in the basement (I caught several songs with dance in the title or lyrics, but couldn’t stay for the length of the party). I had the opposite response — I had to go rest my body, yet my mind was spinning about the evening until 2am (rare for me to be up that late, but I was moved and parts of me still moving).

Bodies are false boundaries. Ultimately, we are all made of light and return to light. One masterfully curated evening has made me (re)consider how bodies are (and aren’t) subject to gravity. And it made me love dance.

More on James’s creation of the event here.