1) Jenny Holzer and her Inflammatory Essays
Jenny Holzer is an American, feminist Neo-conceptualist artist that uses text to comment on social flaws and political inconsistencies. She's kind of angry and vicious and I want to marry her. She wrote 15 "Inflammatory Essays" that tear apart everything. She rages about revolution and gender roles and conformity and societal institutions. She's so bored of being polite. Mainly, I see a lot of value in her attacks via language and information systems; she doesn't just want to make noise, she wants to communicate. Ugh, Jenny Holzer is so cool.
2) Chad VanGaalen
Chad VanGaalen is this Canadian musician with a weird, creaky voice that also draws and animates his own music videos with gooey, crawly, fluorescent dead things and monsters and flowers and cars; he is so, so, so cool. He makes me feel really excited and gross in the same way that a good horror movie with a lot of gore makes me feel. I want to listen to the album Soft Airplane forever until I die.
3) Vampire Movies, All
In July I watched a different vampire movie every single day. And then I kept watching more after July was over because I am into vampires. I like that everyone is trying to come up with new ways to reinvent old vampire lore. I like the blood and sex and theatrics. Whether it's an undead motorcycle gang or an ancient vamp that plays a 1974 Les Paul or an angsty teen in the Pacific Northwest whose skin glitters in the sun (!!) or a slick half-breed that kills off vampires in a leather trench coat: IT'S A LOT OF FUN.
4) Larry, or: Teenage Fangirls Everywhere
Larry is the couple name for Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson, (beloved) members of the band One Direction who are speculated to be in love with one another. The thing that I'm so interested in is the power and ambition of teenage girls when it comes to fangirling. There's a really important episode of the podcast Reply All where Harry and Louis's relationship is put under the microscope and teenage girls from various Larry conspiracy Facebook pages and Youtube channels are interviewed about proof they've found that supports the Larry theory. The thing that's so critical about this podcast is that the hosts treat these young girls with nothing but confidence and appreciation. More than the Larry conspiracy, I totally dig teenage girls and the sheer size of their devotion, intensity, and ambition. I'm so into young girls liking stuff and believing in stuff and talking about it all in this big, global, positive way.
5) Weetzie Bat
Weetzie Bat is this sunny, sprawling, absurdist 1989 novel by Francesca Lia Block and I feel like it's this top secret bible for my entire life. I've told a lot of people that if they want to understand me -- Avery Jalaine Taylor -- they should just read Weetzie Bat and its sequel Witch Baby (which I'm even more obsessed with than the first book). The universe of Weetzie Bat is all cheerful and colorful and noisy, but also lonely and longing and restless, and full of real life issues like sexuality, substance abuse, heartbreak, death, disease, and divorce. I've read it four million times since I discovered it as this weird, furious, anxious, little 13-year-old who needed the kind of brutality and sugar that's inside this book. I think it's like 50% responsible for me becoming a film student.
6) Brandon Graham
Brandon Graham is my favorite cartoonist out of 10,000,000,000 cartoonists that I love. This guy is sexy. Everything he draws is soft and curvy and pinkish and full of girls and guns and monsters. He wrote/drew King City and Multiple Warheads and drew Prophet, all of which are so beautiful and bizarre that they make me feel like fainting. I'm obsessed with how simultaneously cute and CUTE and NASTY he can be. Just the basic aesthetic of his comics are so completely part of my brand, but then he also writes these silly and startling stories that are all sad and romantic and brave, and I love him.
7) Lester Bangs
Lester Bangs was a music journalist who died in 1982. (He was portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman in Cameron Crowe's 2000 Almost Famous, which is very good). I've been reading a lot of Bangs' work recently and not entirely because I always want to know his take on Iggy Pop or Captain Beefheart or whoever. Mostly, I'm obsessed with how fearless Bangs was and I kind of consult his old articles and essays like a weird, voodoo textbook to being brave in the 21st century. I mean, okay, he was kind of mean. He wasn't super forgiving and he was persnickety and fussy and sort of ruthless. But he was also bold and honest and gutsy and reasonable and tenacious: all things that I want to be, especially in the art that I make. He was this furious hurricane of a writer -- in the same Rolling Stone article he called Lou Reed "a prick and a jerkoff" but also said, "Lou, as you were courageous enough to be our mirror, so in turn we'll be your family." He had something to say about everything. The thing that I've written in literally every single journal that I've ever owned is: "Just for the record, I would like it known by anybody who cares that I don't think life is a perpetual dive...I suspect almost every day that I'm living for nothing, I get depressed and I feel self-destructive and a lot of the time I don't like myself. What's more, the proximity of other humans often fills me with overwhelming anxiety, but I also feel that this precarious sentience is all we've got and, simplistic as it may seem, it's a person's duty to the potentials of his own soul to make the best of it. We're all stuck on this often miserable earth where life is essentially tragic, but there are glints of beauty and bedrock joy that come shining through from time to precious time to remind anybody who cares to see that there is something higher and larger than ourselves. ...I am talking about a sense of wonder about life itself and the feeling that there is some redemptive factor you must at least search for until you drop dead of natural causes." Are you kidding me.
8) Orc Stain
James Stokoe's Orc Stain comic series is totally *heart eyes emoji*. The art is all ramble-y and gross and chaotic, and the storylines are fierce and fun and nonsensical. I'm so into the blasé violence in Orc Stain, which isn't a senseless or underhanded approach to killing and conquering but rather a commentary on war and power. Orc Stain is ballsy and irreverent, but it's also whip-smart. I think Bowie -- this poison-thrower with purple skin and killer legs -- is the coolest thing in the world.
9) Anne Carson
I've been systematically devouring the collected works of poet/essayist Anne Carson for the past year. She writes about being hungry and filthy and unbearable; sometimes reading her work feels like being flayed alive or lit on fire or being in church or reading my own diary. I showed her stuff to one of my friends who said she was "noxious" and "unreadable." So maybe the altar of Anne Carson isn't a popular place to worship, but I think I'm so attracted to the vinegar of her because it speaks to the vinegar of me. Her collection Red Doc is so outstanding -- so impossibly and unfeasibly visceral and savage and smart -- that I sometimes can't even read it because it's too good.
10) Howl's Moving Castle
I don't even think I need to explain this at all. It's just so sweet and beautiful and gentle and smart and pure-hearted that every time I watch it my stupid dumb heart grows a million sizes like the Grinch's and I write big weepy journal entires about how freaky and mushy I feel about it.
10.5) Literally Everybody and Everything
I'm such a complete and total sucker. I kind of went crazy tearing through this humongous roulette of everything that I love, trying to figure out whether to choose Neil Gaiman or opera music or fishnet tights or Malcom Liepke or Velvet Goldmine or Belle & Sebastian or Louie or videos of raccoons or The New Yorker or Margaret Atwood or The Talking Heads or John Kacere or Dorm Life or vegetarianism or America's Next Top Model or Mint Juleps lipscrub from Lush or flash-fiction or Thomas Pynchon or dogs or David Bowie or fleece-lined leggings or the Faroe Islands or the gurlesque movement or Andy Warhol or the collected works of Arthur Rimbaud or Kim Deal or new school supplies or Lagoon or The Social Network or #FreeTheNipple or Phillip Larkin or good hair days or Mark Rothko or The Virgin Suicides or Kurt Vonnegut to talk about in this blog post, because I'm basically dying to talk about everything to everyone all the time. Everything is so cool. Music is cool, literature is cool, cartoons are cool, animals are cool, TV is cool, etc., etc., etc. But I feel like the coolest thing ever is when someone I love comes over and talks to me about, like, what crappy YA novel that I just read or whether they've seen this new movie and if they think it sucked or not. Everybody is so, so good. Everybody is so interesting, and funny, and smart, and fun to eat ice cream with, and wonderful to take Sunday naps with. I'm such a giant sap, but I love everything so much that sometimes it feels like I'm going to explode just because of how big and terrible and consuming my love for everything and everyone is.
1/10/16, 3:51 AM
Avery, this is simultaneously exactly what I expected and nothing like I expected. The only thing on your list that I had prior knowledge of was Howl's Moving Castle (awesome movie). I was fascinated to read about topics that may seem off-putting, strange, or gross to others, but the excitement and joy that you got out of talking about these things was fun to read. It's obvious that you get pleasure from the strange and bizarre, which is really refreshing and interesting.
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ReplyDeleteI hadn’t heard of quite a few of these things before so thanks for introducing me to them! I really liked that you included Fangirls since normally that is seen as an uncool thing. You have a unique taste which is awesome.
ReplyDeleteI love what you said about fangirls. I think there is something so pure and wonderful about just loving things with every part of who you are. They get a lot of haters for LOVING things, which is so convoluted. I love how much you love things which is why 10.5 is my favorite thing
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ReplyDeletehahaha, you sure said it all. I am left speechless!
Boo you're too cool for me and have too good of taste. Give me some of your sparkly powers so I can be powerful too.
ReplyDelete10.5 makes me feel so good and crazy inside.
Also that Lester Bangs (lol) quote IS so good and I don't think I fully appreciated it @ 2:00 in the morning when you read it to me.
I was hoping that I would know at least one or two of the things on your list, and number 10 was it! Howl's Moving Castle is an awe inspiring film. Even 12 year-old Dhane liked it watching Toonami all those years ago. And the Brandon Graham teaser definitely seems your cup of tea. You've got a voice that will clearly be heard amongst others.
ReplyDeleteI was hoping that I would know at least one or two of the things on your list, and number 10 was it! Howl's Moving Castle is an awe inspiring film. Even 12 year-old Dhane liked it watching Toonami all those years ago. And the Brandon Graham teaser definitely seems your cup of tea. You've got a voice that will clearly be heard amongst others.
ReplyDeleteI find it really cool how inspired you are by literature, including non fiction stuff. I also love vampire films. I think my altime favorite is The Lost Boys.
ReplyDeleteFor me, the most enjoyable part of all of this was reading your thoughts about everything on your list. You have a talent with words and strong opinions. You could definitely be a great columnist or blogger personality if you wanted.
ReplyDeleteI have some looking up to do. I haven't heard of too many things on your list but that is cool because it will broaden my horizons. I have seen my fair share of vampire movies though. I did like Van Helsing. I will be honest.
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