edit: JUNE (2020)
hey there,
Since my last letter a lot of things have steered unexpected ways. Or if you consider how the human psyche works, I would say - predictable but shockingly uncomfortable directions. Riots after weeks of sitting in a lockdown, fearing to get infected or losing your job. The least enjoyable WAYS resulting in itchy questions or perhaps just confirming how societies work. Everything that we see happen could benefit from a collective psychotherapy. Which is kind of impossible, as it would require a total, complete, worldwide living soul software reset. It’s like we just discovered that our realities are projected on the stone wall in a cave. Anyway, it’s a long and painful discussion with no answers. How funny.
Change is always positive, that’s my stand. It gets you out of the status quo. It moves waters. It brings new ideas. It inspires people to move their asses, rethink the "normal". It gives new meaning to your life and new aspects of it to savor. Because our brain gets accustomed to routines and constantly longs for newness.
Right now, as a society, we are trying to cancel the “you can’t sit with us” concept. This constant comparison among peers. Which is a core idea of all societies? How fucking radical is it?
AND who are we anyway? What are we doing on this earth? Birdwatching. Race and power, nationalism, gender, cultures, prejudice, inequality are always nearby. Road longer and rockier, born with a silver spoon - questions we want to bypass? Helicopters circling in your neighborhood. Life will always be uncertain. People are human. There is no other word to describe it, to translate the grit and the fragility of us - human sums it up so well. We are all alive. We are all kids, we all seek pleasure, recognition by a parent figure. There will always be deviance and violence in societies, said Emile Durkheim. AND suddenly I see a very grim picture: no eternal love, no eternal life, no equality. Just a taste of moments of joy, savoring a view of the sun go down and flower petals touch the ground, or experiencing love that comes to an end, or ecstasy that sometimes boils up to riots in the streets & ends up breaking windows with bricks to release the anger.
7.594 billion people (2018) with the need of being heard, appreciated, hugged, loved, cared for. What drama do we live in - coronavirus made it all so raw and so exposed. But this is kind of how we operate, isn't it? We bottle it up until it steams out with a boom, AND then we move forward.
YES, we need to have a conversation, let it all out, and stop spending life doing things we don’t want, playing a plastered society that is a little domino house. I was blown away when I heard that fifty thousand of retired hospital workers signed up in NYC to help fight the virus. How amazing is that?! They are all seniors - risking their lives to save yours. Being sentimental & naive vs being greedy / and selfish. Caring for others and not only for yourself. Facts vs opinions. Power vs empathy. Stepping into someone else's shoes. Violence and pure ecstasy of being intimate with someone you have just met. I always confront people, I don’t like repressing my feelings, however, I also kneel and hug, and touch your cheek, and call you everyday to know how you are doing. What about you? Are you living with an open heart? “I am just a dreamer but you are just a dream.” DO I SOUND like a kid?! Tell me what you think!!
This all sucks but also makes me feel good. 2020 is on fire.
Goodnight. x
// June 2020
Chilling in Palanga, looking at the sea from the shore. Always make agreements with people on the coastland, don’t go into the water without figuring out the rules because you might regret it later.
& my soothing list:
1) Falling asleep to Philip Glass. Stormy, comforting, almost cathartic. Put it on my phone and switch it off just before I pass out.
2) Branching into colors. I’ve just repainted one of my studio walls into soft peachy orange. It looks a bit cheesy, unusual for an addict of white. A bit like a golden hour sunbath, it makes me strangely alive. AND then, the next step - surround yourself with freshly cut irises, astilbes, and lilacs. Killing combination for those who suffer from migraines (me), but you just put them away from your bedroom or hide in the shower. Wearing pink and yellow dresses is a whole new level of fun.
3) Ruth Lewandowski Wines and their Cuvée Rosé Zero, 2018. The name of the company was taken from a book in the old testament that addresses the cycle of life and death, reflecting Evan’s (the owner’s) belief that wine is alive but also springs from death. “There is beautiful organic and / or biodynamic fruit that is grown only to be pulled in, inoculated and manipulated to high holy hell”, that’s why Evan makes it without any added sugar or alcohol, and doesn’t spray his vines with Roundup as well.
4) Making meringues, which is my favorite pastry choice, but, unfortunately I am failing every time I make them. Remember my mum baking them with us, when we were small and plunging their white airy sharp peak into liquid glaze. Work in progress.
5) Listening to Mariana Mazzucato theories.
6) Hiking with Stephanie on Mulholland drive and spying David Hockney’s studio through the fence. Him on living in LA: “I guess I have always been running away from London, too many distractions, I want just to work, to do my work”.
7) Preserving lemons. AKA making something else than lemonade out of lemons life gave us in 2020.
8) Enjoying my Panic Button bracelet. AND not panicking that much anymore.
9) Smiling more than usual.
10) Wearing slippery dresses to be able to undress more quickly.
+ ALSO >
NEWS WITH NO NOISE from Jessica Yellin
A Reckoning At Bon Appetit edition on THE SPORKFUL
& visual board for June:
Henry Taylor painting Elan Supreme at Venice Biennial 2019. Mesmerizing. On living in Los Angeles and being humble about his own talent (from Dorothee Perret interview in Purple magazine): “I wasn’t aware of the scene. I was just trying to learn because there was nothing in Oxnard. With Jarvaise, I started painting, and he opened me up to more contemporary art, people like Philip Guston and Richard Diebenkorn. That was part of my education, looking at magazines like Art in America. I was intimidated by, and not really looking at, anything before the 20th century. When punk came out, it was something that could be achieved. People who became musicians didn’t necessarily go to college or study it formally. I grew up with people who had ska bands, and I thought, “If you can be in a ska band, you can be an artist.” It was slowly becoming an option, and knowing Mr. Jarvaise made it seem even more of a possibility. We were all trying to learn the fundamentals of painting. Very soon after that, I would create my own narratives. I did a lot of portraits because I’d go to parties and, if I got bored, would sit in a corner and draw people. I’d practice drawing eyes, noses, and lips from books. I just wanted to know that I could copy. At least do that. And after that, I started to loosen up.”
Breathtaking work of this Russian girl living in Paris - Alissa Volchkova - PINK GLASS from her “Stone Age” series // photo: AV
BEAUTIFUL IMPERFECT - from Alissa’s Wedgwood Series. She uses Wedgwood porcelain technique that originated from Josiah Wedgwood and Sons company associated with the "dry-bodied" (unglazed) stoneware Jasperware in contrasting colours, and in particular that in "Wedgwood blue" and white. Jasperware has been made continuously by the firm since 1775, and also much imitated. // photo: AV
Glossier founder Emily Weiss wearing JUNETHINGS serpent hoops (almost visible) in The Guardian. Wrong credits, but we are happy: one step forward, one step backwards but we are moving. I think it was a harsh Mercury retrograde just before C19 Wuhan phase. // styled by: Carolina Orrico // photo: Grant Cornett / The Observer
Power girls: Diana Vreeland (“Why not to bathe children in Champagne” type of gal) got her start working for Carmel Snow at Harper’s Bazaar in 1952. New icon is born this June - Samira Nasr, who most recently was the executive fashion director at Vanity Fair, has become the first-ever black editor of HB, established in 1867. // photo: Walter Sanders /Getty
SAMIRA NASR, June 2020.
LAST SUMMER IN PARIS: with Judith, wearing a diamond penis pendant. (Actually, I am wearing the same one, too, but it’s hidden in my jumpsuit).
JUNETHINGS silver Serpent earrings. Last photoshoot before quarantine. Incredible success, these earrings. Simple but so elegant. Would love to incrust them with crystals.
Vintage silk: dresses to make love in them, from Eveliina Vintage shop in Los Angeles. Wear with sneakers or your new duck feet mules (aka “new bottega”).
Bottega Veneta RAMEN mules. How on earth he could have thought of this. SO GOOD. 2020 pre-fall collection. // photo: BV
Her kids, brother and sister, photo by Sarune Zurba. Tender love, 2020.
Mariana Mazzucato (“Christmas’s tree in Japanese”) says swimming makes her calm because it forces her to breathe: “when she’s not tackling the failings of modern capitalism, the Italian-American economist hits the swimming pool to unwind”. (Delphine Strauss, FT) // photo: Tori Ferenc
This photo reflects my current state of being: dawn, a bit stormy, in the middle of water, and I am not a very good swimmer. However, as says the author of this magic image, “what appears to be one thing may appear as something else to someone else.” Wolfgang Tillmans, Italian Coastal guard flying rescue mission over Lampedusa, 2008
Henry Taylor at Blum & Poe stand, Frieze 2019, LA. On working in the mental hospital: “Yeah, from 1984 to ’94. I was always drawing patients. Sometimes I’d watch somebody in restraints, so I’d draw people in restraints. If I’m sitting in the day hall, I’m drawing patients, so I did a lot of figurative work. A lot of observation, and stories that stay with you. I saw a lot. Kids were making their own toys. A lot of the kids in the mental hospital were, like, sculptors, and were really resourceful. It was paraphernalia to us, but to them it was their toys. They’d make guns and holsters out of eyeglass cases - just really amazing things.” (Purple)
Gordon Parks photo "Department Store, Mobile, Alabama" (1956) documents the era of segregation, with separate entrances for black and white. “Parks was a photographer, composer, filmmaker and writer who was born in 1912 and died in 2006 at the age 93. Henry Louis Gates Jr., literary critic and Harvard University professor, described him as “the most important black photographer in the history of photojournalism”.” (SFGATE) // photo: Frieze 2019, Los Angeles. // copyright The Gord.
Birthday flowers: THEY DID GIVE ME A GIGANTIC migraine the next day for sleeping nearby. But it was so pretty.
Look at her face. Look at those wrinkles. Look at her smile. I was building a mood board for a client and Andie whispered to me that this is what I want for me at 62. // photo: Kyle Johnson for NYT.
Obsessed by my Ruth Lewandowski Rosé Cuvée Zero, from DOMAINE LA.
Merengue dreams. It has been claimed that meringue was invented in the Swiss village of Meiringen and improved by an Italian chef named Gasparini between the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century. However, this claim is contested; the Oxford English Dictionary states that the French word is of unknown origin. MORE research to be done.
I guess the book is mediocre, but you can see that Simone de Beauvoir was human, too. Not everything you do needs to be perfect. Saint-Sulpice flea market in Paris.
To wear with your silk dresses. They come in multiple colors as well. Bottega Veneta.
This is what happens when happens. Check out our PENIS/ KEY ring.
Satellite Imagery: Washington, DC and BLACK LIVES MATTER Street Mural in June 2020. // Maxar Technologies handout / EPA
