AUTOMATIC WRITING // VOGUE // FEBRUARY 2017
By an open window overlooking a cobbled yard, a cobweb covered urinal in the corner of the room, the iron gates of her mother’s Hollywood Hills house creep open. Whirring drones and glowing screens filled the hillsides and are gesticulating wildly on the color set outside on the balcony table. I light my cigarette and walk through the sliding door, "Have you heard? The sky is falling, and, quite apropos: Chicken is king!” My only real interest is butterfly hunting. Butterflies are the material for a visual revolution and accommodate my appetite for trying to hit a moving target. Patrick, the last vestige of Britain’s vanished empire appears without stubble and wearing his best ostrich-leather boots. He has a knack for mixing avant-garde ideas with more traditional techniques and convincingly using words like ‘night-blooming’ to describe our evening expedition. Tonight we will be exploring uncharted territory with seven bottles instead of one ranging from shades of honey to amber.
We pass through a bubble gum pink décor as we find the curb and follow it to the bounds of the historic city. What was then a semirural part of town, where they grew their own vegetables and had a menagerie of ducks, geese, a goat and many dogs and cats was now searing hot and there wasn’t any running water Somehow, I feel more amoeba more than anything else, an ethereal love affair in what was an iconic watery landscape.
We begin rolling for a film that hopefully taps into nostalgia. The stripped tangelos, pomelos, and satsumas lining the shelves begin to slow our pace and so we stop to build a fire. A healthy dose of torrid infatuation takes over as Patrick describes a Monarch he pinned last year that possessed lacquered lips and pronounced curves. Seems that on that particular day millions of butterflies composed an American patchwork of love and loss across a river valley.
Our path in the morning, whirling like a dervish in illogical directions, dances the jitterbug across the sun-dazzled ochre of the African plains. Our anthem for a period of time becomes Mark Twain: “Quitting is easy; I’ve done it a thousand times.” We had our antennae scanning for each and every underground rumbling and by sunset we had amassed an inclusive palette that ran from neutral to plush magenta. And the footnote? Someday I will travel the world like Pippi Longstocking and tell our stories. those tales of a souvenir stolen from the boy.
SOURCE MATERIAL
60. starring in a money-spinning global juggernaut
60. had androgen insensitivity syndrome when she wasn’t even a month old
49-52. beautiful full page images for montaging
68. we met in the middle of a blackout
68. people were sweaty and edgy, thronging the streets, leaking heat and anxiety
68. the ATMs didn't work and bodegas were charging insane amounts for bottled water and I was thirsty, hungover, and almost out of cash
70. past an intersection where a girl in a sunsuit dress was directing traffic
70. window after window teeming with powerless, shimmering chandeliers, the people in the apartments above drinking beer on the fire escapes – the city seemed less like a nightmare and more like a carnival.
70. I felt as if I had conjured her out of the dark
70. lived in rentals furnished with dusty junk
70. Lucy grew up in a little town outside Portland, where you could smell wood pulp from the paper mills when the wind blew.
78. gorgeously bishop sleeved sweatshirts, and exaggeratedly tuned-up pants
80. I’ve been taking a bright and bold departure from my usual comfort zone
83. tinkered through Madrid’s botanical garden in soaring crystal stilettos at a recent exhibition opening
84. the bright green powder is a natural antioxidant that lives in an elegant little jar
85. steamed, air dried, and stone ground
87. intersex is perhaps the last taboo
87. was born with internal testes, and without a uterus or ovaries
91. Is that who I am deep inside? A human confection?
94. down to the wiring
94. switch to a type of Vitamin B12 better suited for her body
96. “I Am Not Your Negro”
96. seemingly inescapable bonds and barriers between blacks and whites
96. from the streets to the voting booths to the silver screen
96. he captured how it feels to be black
100. “can lead to feeling like an alien in your own skin.”
102. a soprano capable of roller coaster worthy loops
102. the trouble with perfection is you start looking for cracks
106. who wears a burka and drives a motorcycle
121. honeymoon phase
123. bewitched, bothered, bewildered
160. foster a sense of intimacy with her regulars
160. tact, negotiation, seduction and education
171. bursting with retro femininity
126. I got you balloons!
126. a dense tangle of helium-filled Mylar
126. a strip club in Thai town
133. escaped to a succession of celluloid obsessions
139. dedicated an atrium wall to a giant garden of succulent varieties, a kind of living, linear ode to the forest
143. painting portraits of undocumented immigrants
144. sold everything, put the money into a diamond, and brought it over sewn into his daughter’s favorite floppy doll
158. terms of adornment
158. a plastic bag full of pliable, braided loops
160. chart-topping new record
160. rival sensation
160. a rhythmic manifesto about the sacredness of individuality
AUTOMATIC WRITING // VOGUE // JANUARY 2017
40. City of Light
74. “I have no recollection of that free fall.” 77. The filter between my thoughts and my language is much thinner, so things just flow. I found myself in 53. an urban landscape whose ground was shifting beneath my feet. 74. World weary and childlike 107. hiking up dunes and scaling up volcanoes, crawling through salt-cave labyrinths or clambering through river gorges. 34. It looked like the moon; 98. a mountain of pulsating chicken protoplasm swinging long, carved, razor-sharp blades, and sliced off thick slabs of flesh. 119. A switch was flipped in my entorhinal cortex? 40. Would Jacques Derrida, father of deconstruction and a Parisian professor himself, have been amused? 98. Coalescing into a perfectly awful storm 74. the adrenaline made every six seconds feel like a single second, time collapsed.
107. Watching plumes of geothermal spray burst from the moonscape, 53. three kinds of scenes: fights, seductions, and negotiations yielded 53. dovetailing storylines. 77. The wife of a lighthouse keeper who takes in a baby carried ashore in a lifeboat and 53. a fighter who must battle segregation and his own demons as much as his white opponent to capture the heavyweight crown.
The wife, 38. one of the first women scuba divers, walks the shoreline in 38. a captain’s mess jacket (now a deftly cut blazer) with 38. sleek, elongating, high-waisted pants with a neoprene gleam. Is it possible that 38. jellyfish may have roamed the sea for 500 million years. The fighter, 111. though not talkative, likes to recite poems by Neruda.
Our evening walk led us to 111. picking out Orion and Gemini in the Southern Hemisphere. 111. Flamingos flocking at salty pools and 111. stark peaks – terra cotta, gray, or white – rising from parched earth like the plates on a stegosaurus’s back; cactus-spiked cliffs; rushing cataracts. We had arrived 53. to the deathbed of the matriarch guarded by 53. one uncannily sympathetic squirrel. We opened 107. the red stained wood reveiling107. skin-smoothing goat’s milk flecked with lavender and mint, admiring the snapdragons that frisked beyond the tub’s round rim.
SOURCE MATERIAL
40. Life-size paper dolls fell from the sky.
39. scalloped origami – like applique
38. you say jellyfish
39. set tongues wagging for its balance of youthful attitude and Parisian design rigor.
39. snap-stud miniskirts in camel suede… silver go-go boots
40. postmodern bebe
40. life-size paper dolls
40. holdover from the designer’s childhood
42. (caption) view finder. a pop-out bedroom designed by Frank Gehry captures the moon’s trajectory
50. strung-out hitmaker
51. bohemian cabin suites kitted out with vintage nautical details and private tiled courtyards.
77. insects took over the kitchen
98. in vitro hamburger
98. a vast mass of living flesh kept alive by nutrients circulating through a network of pipes and tubes that run around and through her
98. start eating our pets
101. female Viagra
101. aspires to the metaphysical, targeting brain chemistry in order to boost desire
37. curious hybrid of bi-city newsroom and elementary school
75. python-print leather skirt
74. his scarlet cargo waiting behind tinted windows
77. TITLE. northern lights
76. I don’t like pain, exactly, but as a ballerina I lived in constant pain
76. if someone had been to the doctor and gotten painkillers, we divided them among us. After I quite dancing, for a while it felt strange to not be in pain.
76. first known gender-confirmation surgery
76. discriminated against… this is a civil rights movement
77. In ballet school we all had very good grades – she recalls – but not because you needed to be smart to dance.
AUTOMATIC WRITING // VOGUE // JANUARY 2017
ANIMAL MAGNETISM
$2,280... animal magnetism. $2,280... animal magnetism. $2,280... animal magnetism (266) the sign continued to blink as I drove up the hill across the dusted paper-white substrate dotted with freckles (118) that had already conformed to gravity. The cake competition (259) was about to begin. Myself and the Anglican Vicar (258) were serving as judges to select the most original design. The pastry chefs were instructed to pay careful attention to silliness, drunkenness, parody, vituperatively personal... + { }.(259) The various other attics and wardrobes (215) would serve as prep and cooking areas. It is this same space where the The Modern Slavery Act (2015), that penalized human traffickers with life sentences, was signed into existence. (258) Doll-like and startled in pictures, and with a borderline personality disorder, I provided the fourth chef with a pair of jeans and fluffy slippers (208) and proffered a digestive biscuit. (212) Dazzle is always in the undertow! (206)
The elixir is electric greenish-yellow. (202)
SOURCE MATERIAL
[p] [plagiarism/not plagiarism]
16. Rejuvenating jolt of repair
For four. Redeem a dearth of snow
170. high-end facial menus
84. A more pluralistic idea of beauty to the runway
116. Smear his tiny fingers across the glowing screen
118. Miles of sheep farms, horse paddock's, and winding road
118. Tea rooms where waitresses in eyelet oxford shirts serve scones with strawberry preserves on doily-covered plates
118. Paper-white skin, dotted with freckles
128. A quiet underwater video
133. Panty-hose leg cinched do my eyebrows
133. The age when every curb and ledge is a balance beam
133. Indecipherable to me as laundry-label symbols
154. Crisscrossing of multi-strapped satin sandals in dusty pink or cobalt
162. Globally sourced stone set with single diamonds
162. Suitcases full of firs and Manolos descends on this sleepy village
162. Snowflakes... can make a more scant appearance
162. Old bearded mountain man blowing into his alphorn
168. Her angular features
168. Her authenticity is her beauty
168. Early memories of her mother railing against heavy, sixties-era makeup, and dabbing on blush in a taxi
168. A trio of eye kohls
170. L.E.D. lights wound-healing... and age delaying promise
186. A backyard meth lab
186. In the digital age, the lives of glamorous others have never felt more tantalizingly
186. Survival is about conjuring lost voices-- irascible, elegiac
186. Edgar and Lucy
186. Sticks her hand up an elephant's trunk
186. Overcame a famously reclusive life to become a poet of consummate artistry
186. Tad stiff and theatrical
186. Succulents in beachy hues
186. Antique store's curio cabinet
188. Protofeminist literature
190. Totalitarian theocracy that forcibly imposes 'traditional' gender roles.
190. Sexual servitude
190. Fellow handmaid
190. Women surrounded by retrograde men
190. A feminist paradise
193. Quirky-cool bags
196. After-church Sunday barbecues
196. Texan childhood
196. A puddle of lime juice
200. Doll-like and startled in pictures
202. The elixir is electric greenish-yellow
206. Neville Chamberlain's policy of capitulating to Hitler
206. Particularly pugilistic performance
206. Dazzle is always in the undertow
206. Carefully preserved carapace of conformity
208. Wearing jeans and fluffy slippers... a pot of homemade porridge
208. Gravitas and authority of nineteenth century portraits
211. What it means to grow up black in a white society
212. I caged her in a wasp waisted - corset... teased into an immense beehive and wrapped in a silk scarf
212. Proffered a digestive biscuit
212. A box was duly produced - one layered with a mille-feuille of tissue paper and babies' robes
215. Various other attics and wardrobes
256. Borderline personality disorder
256. High-profile doping scandal
258. The Modern Slavery Act (2015), penalized human traffickers with life sentences
258. Anglican vicar
259. It specialized in silliness, but its stable could also, reportedly, be caustic, drunken, parodic, and vituperatively personal... brandishing a meat tenderizer in place of a gavel
259. Recently judged a cake competition
260. Man and bird regard each other with intensity. A brushy yellow, red, and orange background accentuates the man's dark skin
266. $2,280... animal magnetism