Brilliant

Sometimes you just get lucky. A few days ago I happened upon Phone Joan. This blues band from Oslo, Norway has the sexiest sound. It's raunch. It's interesting. They sound like Dead Weather but grittier. I haven't been able to stop listening. If you can find their track, "Scary Dog" it's amazing. This is their first video, "Fast Lane." If Jack White had babies, this is what they'd sound like.

Also, Jack White loves the ballet. The White Stripes ballet! OMFG. Brilliant! The National Ballet of Canada will be performing Chroma a ballet danced to avant garde orchestral arrangements of music by The White Stripes. It was impossible to get tickets when it was performed by The Royal Ballet in London in 2006. I read Jack White gave the project his blessing and considers it a great honour. A modern classic rock ballet. I have to go.

Spring

Images: Olga Maliuk in Vanity Fair 2009

Robert Pattinson

Images: Robert Pattinson in Details Magazine

Energy

A single lightening bolt has several hundred million volts. That's enough energy to light 150,000,000 light bulbs.

The human body is made up of approximately
100 trillion cells. And each cell has 1.17 volt capacity
(or 117 trillion volts). Which means, you have enough energy in your body to light up an entire city.

God Save The Queen

Don't be told about what you want. Don't be told about what you need. There is no future for you in other people's dreams. Don't live your life at Her Majesty's pleasure. Be bold and be free enough to choose your own future. And God save the Queen.



At Her Majesty's pleasure is a term originating in the U.K. that is used to describe detainment in prison for an indefinite length of time. A judge may rule that a person be "detained at Her Majesty's pleasure" for serious offences.

Saints are Sinners

Images: Camilla Akrans

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.

Je me souviens

"The stones Deucalion had thrown were formed as men, Those from Pyrrha's hand reshaped as women. Hence we are hard, we children of the earth, And in our lives of toil we prove our birth."
- Ovid's Metamorphoses

Je me souviens. I remember. It reads that at the bottom of Quebec license plates. The expression is intended as a reminder to remember the past and its lessons, the past and its misfortunes, the past and its glories. Je me souviens.

It was hot as hell that day. I was seeking sanctuary in a litttle boutique at the heart of the French Quarter sifting through jars and potions and dolls in what was a house of voodoo when a young attractive man beckoned me to the back of the shop.

When my eyes adjusted to the dark and dim candlelight, I saw the young man seated at a small table in front of an old stone fireplace. The fireplace was covered in trinkets. The room was filled with incense. He motioned for me to sit opposite him on an old wooden chair.

I sat down and looked at him. He had dark messy hair. Calm blue eyes. He was unshaven. He wore jeans and a faded Iron Maiden t-shirt. He was actually kinda sorta beautiful. I guessed him to be in his early thirties. He cracked a beautiful smile at me as though he had heard my last thought. (I not entirely sure he hadn't).

"You know, it's no accident that you're in New Orleans?" he began. It was meant rhetorically. Unabashedly, he divulged that he was "told" to do my reading and he remarked that I was a very old soul. He told me that he would consider it a great honour if I would allow him to conduct a reading, at no charge. I nodded for him to begin.

I quickly realised, this man was no con. He knew things. He knew things that made my bones quake. He told me the marked events of my life. He told me things he couldn't possibly know. Things he shouldn't know. This man told me things my family, my friends, and my lovers didn't know. I sat there quietly and listened as this familiar stranger told to me my lives. This one and past ones.

He told me my life was a disaster. He told me that my life energy had brought me to the centre of the storm, the very home of disaster: New Orleans. Two years of devastation had taken its toll on me. I had desperately needed to get away from Ottawa. By the time I arrived in New Orleans, I had to check myself into urgent care. I couldn't take another step. I quite literally, couldn't move. I would wake up screaming. My body was covered in mysterious bruises. The hospital staff thought I was a victim of abuse. They were right, in a way. The mental and emotional pain I was suffering had begun to manifest itself physically. I was battered. I was broken. Emotionally, mentally, physically... I was in agony. Every part of me ached with pain. Nobody around me noticed. But this attractive stranger sitting in front of me now acknowledged it and some. He told me my character. He told me my childhood. He told me my ambitions. This man knew me. And saw me to be a storm.

He told me my totem, was lightening. And I possessed a strong connection to New Orleans. That like the city itself, I too have a long history. And I too have suffered through disaster. He told me I was connected to the fleur-de-lis that symbolises light and life. He told me the fleur was my sign to restore, rebuild, and recover. After the storm. After my storm.

It all seemed reminiscent in a way of the Greek myth about Deucalion and Pyrrha who survived the great deluge and met the oracle. What if there was truth to the ancient stories? What if, with the rocks left behind by total disaster we can repopulate our own lives with new life? And become great men. And become great women. And become a great people. Like Noah and his ark. Like Deucalion and Pyrrha. Like New Orleans after the storm. Like Haiti now. Rebuild. Restore. Recover. Have faith. Be light. Live life.

And so my familiar stranger taught me that great things can come out of disaster and he gave me a brave and fresh new hope. It was with him that I began my healing. It was in New Orleans that I found my soul. Oui, je me souviens.

Letters to dead people

Images: Letters to dead people

Free spirit

Images: Elle Greece; Feb ‘10 | Nataliya Gotsii by Dimitris Skoulos

My style this Winter has been somewhat edgy with a mix of 1960s references. And while I'm really going to miss (what have become) my signature white gogo boots (such a great conversational accessory), I will sadly have to retire them soon. But I am very much looking forward to all my fresh new fashion finds for this Spring!

I intend to carry the 1960s vibe forward. And the gypsetter in me has been begging me to channel my inner bohemian even further. But my edgy pleather jacket is totally staying. And so are my silky satin lingerie accents and corsets. This stellar spread in Elle Greece is a dead ringer for what I'm styling for. I think what makes it look so polished is that it is so messy.

Free spirit! I love it. Oh and the over-the-knee boots are absolutely on my must-have shopping list.

Je t'aime... moi non plus

The year is 1969. Serge Gainsbourg meets Jane Birkin. The most passionate and creative marriage of all time ensues. He as mentor. She as muse. Together, so fucking beautiful. It really doesn't get any better than these two.

Je t'aime... moi non plus is the sexiest love song ever made. The duet was originally recorded with Gainsbourg's then-lover Brigitte Bardot who was unhappily married to German millionaire Gunter Sachs. Bardot went back to her husband who demanded Gainsbourg not release their recorded version. A broken hearted Gainsbourg complied. Later that same year, Gainsbourg met and fell in love with the love of his life, Jane Birkin who replaced Bardot in the re-recorded version.



The release of Je t'aime... moi non plus caused a wicked scandal. The song was denounced by the Vatican and banned for its salacious lyrics and ecstatic moans that are intended as an imaginary dialogue between two lovers during sex.

So what happens to the great love story? Well, Gainsbourg sweeps Birkin off her feet on an all-night whirlwind nightclub tour of Paris. Bardot and Sachs soon divorce. Gainsbourg and Birkin marry. They have a daughter, the remarkably talented Charlotte. Their love affair lasts 13 years until Birkin leaves Gainsbourg when pregnant with her daughter, Lou by film director Jacques Doillon, whom she later marries. Bardot's recording with Gainsbourg is released in 1980. Gainsbourg dies of a heart attack in 1991. Bardot remarries Barnard d'Ormale in 1992. Fin.

Promise

Hello, my darlings. I've been unwell. Illness is violence. But the vampires drained my blood. And the necromancers used their magics. And out of the ash, they brought me back again. Like Lady Lazarus.

There are so many deaths in life. We all suffer losses -- small deaths -- throughout the course of our lives. Some return. Some we must let go. It is never easy. It is always agony.

But necromacy is a black magic. To hold on to something beyond its death, is dark and it is unnatural. What is dead, is gone and can't ever grow because it lacks hope and promise. What comes back from death can't hold the light like the living. We hate death. And we fear endings. But old endings bring new beginnings.

All of my past, lies in necromance. In the agony of being reborn. My necromancers courted me back beyond death again, and again. Back to a something. Back as a nothing. And it has taken me almost thirty years of pained life experience to realise that perhaps, immortality isn't so grand. After all, even the mythological phoenix firebird is only ever destined to live for as long as its old self. And in the end, the phoenix always burns to death in a fierce fire that reduces it back to black smoke and ash. Only to have to come back again, and again, to live out the same fate in a world without end. I'd rather not suffer my fate repeatedly, thank you.

Instead, I'd much prefer to live my deaths. And I will mourn them. And I want all my new beginnings to run their natural courses to become my old endings. Because in the end, what I want for my fate is for new life to breathe into me a fresh and happy hope.

I am back. I am well. Life is grand. And full of promise.