day #1 as a mute

so, the voice surgery was brilliant.

i'm already bored of being a mute.

but i like it, kinda.

brian the sweetheart picked me up at my house at 5:25 am and i got to the hospital by 6 am.

i spent an interesting time in the pre-operative room, curtained off and listening to all the hospital sounds.

man, hospitals are fucking surreal. every time i'm in one i imagine what it's like to work there day in and out.

no sun, on your feet all day and with sick and crazed and dying folks around you. crazed.

by 8 am i was seeing my surgeon in the OR getting shot up with general anesthesia and the surgery lasted over 2 hours, way longer than expected since he found all sorts of juicy new scar tissue to shave away. waking up was the worst part...i was back in the room of madness and a million pre- and post-op humans and the nurses running everywhere and i hadn't been given any pain medication. it felt like someone had roto-rootered my throat, i had to keep a steam mask over my face, and it hurt like hell just to breathe. then things got better, my mum came to pick me up, and they gave me a cup of liquid percocet. that was yummy.

i was out by noon. i left via wheelchair and came back to my folks house for convalescence.

i had some sort of bizarre vision in my head that i wouldn't be able to work or email for a few days but it's actually all i want to do right now since i have no other means of communication. and i'm treating this like a mini-vacation, so the internet actually becomes a fun tool (finally watching the cowbell video! i'd never seen it! wikapedia-ing jodie foster! all the things i am always too guilty to do because it will NOT HELP! i do also have a back-up pile of about 700+ emails. for real)

i have eaten two pints of dolce de leche ice cream.i have zoned out to several episodes of twin peaks (true brilliance).

my sister came over and the whole clan gathered at the family television for a screening of silence of the lambs. i think it's my 6th time.

damn, man. i think it might be the best film ever made. this time i watched the entire documentary as well. simply amazing. i would kill to work with people like that. so fucking smart.

and jodie foster. i mean, before we start getting started on madonna again. i'd just like to say the name jodie foster about 36 times. she is the other side. if you haven't seen her in hotel new hampshire, see it. then read it.

damn private life she's got. she and pj harvey should move in together.

i didn't know that my favorite image (hannibal's bloody artwork: the cop's corpse stretched across the cage and all lit up with stage lighting) was inspired by the paintings of francis bacon.

this being an internet holiday, i got to go on a little google image journey and find out more about him, i'd only heard the name. quite incredible

i loved this photo-of-art, something ominous about it. featuring a francis bacon triptych.


and i was reminded that i keep meaning to turn my favorite painting by max beckman ("the actors") into a stage design somehow...

i might need a bunch of very patient volunteers. or do it all cut-out sgt. peppers style:

my mind is starting to slowly turn to All Things Artwork...i can tell. i'm looking at everything greedily and visually.

things start to happen. This Painting Would Make a Great Album Cover. This Color Would Make a Great Album Cover.

My Cat Would Make a Great Album Cover. Your Mom Would Make a Great Album Cover. etc.

the mind wanders.

i am wandering around waving my hands when needed, getting more and more constant reminders that 94% of what we say is useless anyway,and finding that typing on large sticky notes on my laptop is 400% faster than handwriting.

i heard that blackberries for communication are big in the deaf/mute community.
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if you were living under a rock, by the way, brian plays drums on some tracks of the new NIN record.

go to the NIN site to download: nin.com

i'm so proud of him i can't tell you. he is a force of nature.

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from comments:
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lots of folks posted about a pull-out yoga section for the book. that could be so creative and yet is totally anathema to the coffee-table vibe i was going for.maybe i need yet another book project. thanks. fuck. better: live yoga classes from my mac in different club parking lots and theater broom closets across the world.
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....also, i think you should jsut start an advice column. you are so good at answering all those little questions that sound trivial but really are more important than you would think. "which headphones to trust", "what type of yoga is for you?", "the best kinds of chai", "there is a bitchin´ cafe near you!"
well at least you know if your nodule surgery goes nuts, you have an occupation to fall back on. not that im putting bad zen on the surgery. *good vibes good vibes, zen zen* thats better.

so my question: have you ever been to munich, and if so, do you know any great cafes?
i just arrived in munich, im staying for a year, and to know where the best cafes are would be a valuable piece of information indeed.

Posted by George. on Tuesday, March 04, 2008 at 12:45 PM

you know, i always fantasized about having an advice column in teen people. or jane. or a place where totally deluded young 12 year old suburban girls might actually benefit. then i realized these people would never hire me to write in their magazines. so i gave up my dream. but this is fine, isn't it. you should come to a solo show. i often pull out my "ask amanda" routine (i leave a box at the merch table) and it's usually ridiculously fun. people do ask the stupidest questions though. i would need someone around to edit all of the "where do u get the ideas 4 your songs" out.

re: munich: don't know any hott places but i lived an hour from there in regensburg. go there for a weekend or i'll kill you. get a drink at the banane and go to the goldene ente beer garden (i worked there) when it's nice out.

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bobbing_for_applesx said...
I ordered the companion book (what? two years ago?) and I remeber my mom finding it and ripping out all of the pictures(which was the primary reason WHY I bought it in the first place...)

She thought it was straight-up porn. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. I think it's funny, though, she left the very last picture. the one that mimics yoko ono and john lennon.

was it a statement about what nude art really is? or did she just forget to tear it out?

4:39 PM

can i tell you how happy i am to hear that?

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malte said...
Good luck for surgery. I'd say your voice is still perfect for the things you do, so I demand at least a perfect queen of the night aria after the wounds healed ;)

Following this thought... What about a Mozart-/Haydn-/I-dont-know-all their-names- cover. Piano and drums should do a good job for some of those classical pieces, dont they?

5:13 PM

i have actually been thinking about that pretty hard. i am a classical hack, but i might be able to come up with something.
it would be great to play classical shiznit while even more interesting and parallel shiznit happens on or off stage.murder?

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to pick up the madonna thread
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proph said...You ranted beautifully on Madonna putting her vulva out there. I think the critical part of this process is not to allow our clothing, our faces, our packaging to define us. It's like a canvas we can paint a mood on, but what is inside should remain untouched by what we put on the exterior. Too much insecurity and self loathing come from body issues and beauty issues. We will be lucky to grow old and unattractive. Your sexuality is something so deeply internal, so connected to you inside and out, emotions, tactile sensations, mental bullshit. Sex and sexiness open up such a door to the inner person. To me it's as much an energy as an invasive "thing" I can get so hung up on. No matter which, the perceptions of others, they should not apply to us sexually. no part of this body or soul belongs to another, to know, or label, categorize or throw away. They may form their perceptions, but I'll not have them foisted on me. What should I be today? A slut? A frigid bitch, a tease? Maybe just be what I feel and make sure those labels peel off easily and don't take too much skin off with them.

1:12 PM

you took word out of mouth, friend from earth. so agreed.

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I hate Britney and Madonna. Yuck. They're just attention whores. Don't even talk about them. I don't think there's any mystery--they just know what'll make people talk about them, and that's explains the unexplainable. (Posted by The Little Natasha In Outer-space on Sunday, March 02, 2008 at 10:59 AM

i disagree. i think the phenomenon is a great mystery indeed. it keeps unraveling and unravelling into endless halls of mirrors about culture and humanity.....................
Haven't thought about the Madonna book in years. .... I was working at a record store (that still sold records) at the time it came out. One of my friends came in a purchased the book and opened it right away. We browsed through... other than the visceral response of "getting to see a famous person intimately" we were both unimpressed. (I *was* disturbed that some boy-holes had been airbrushed out. eep! And by her questionable taste in Ice. Ice-T would've been hawt.).... My friend, he just looked at me and said "Sister, this wouldn't even qualify as risque on a *Wednesday night Green Bay*! (Posted by Sepiachord on Sunday, March 02, 2008 at 11:00 AM)

this seems to be the general consensus as i was mentioning it, and as i left it on my table at the weekend house festivities. there are pictures, brian and i had a mini0brecht party for a german TV crew. will post.

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yorksdevil said...
I can't be alone in finding Bjork sexier than Madonna, surely.

11:50 AM

you are so not alone.
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i feel like such an amateur feminist. some women at smith and stanford and wellesly spend their lives dissecting this shit.

or you could just ignore it, make choices, and live...period. ha.

someone sent in the camille paglia shit i was looking for. her book, sexual personae, btw, is awesome. read it for the insight. just to know.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE1DC123AF937A25751C1A966958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1
(Posted by Musings on Saturday, March 01, 2008 at 9:11 PM)

"Madonna is the true feminist. She exposes the puritanism and suffocating ideology of American feminism, which is stuck in an adolescent whining mode.Madonna has taught young women to be fully female and sexual while still exercising total control over their lives. She shows girls how to be attractive, sensual, energetic, ambitious, aggressive and funny -- all at the same time.

Contemporary American feminism, which began by rejecting Freud because of his alleged sexism, has shut itself off from his ideas of ambiguity, contradiction, conflict, ambivalence. Its simplistic psychology is illustrated by the new cliche of the date-rape furor:" 'No' always means 'no'. " Will we ever graduate from the Girl Scouts? "No" has always been, and always will be, part of the dangerous, alluring courtship ritual of sex and seduction, observable even in the animal kingdom.

Madonna has a far profounder vision of sex than do the feminists. She sees both the animality and the artifice. Changing her costume style and hair color virtually every month, Madonna embodies the eternal values of beauty and pleasure. Feminism says, "No more masks."Madonna says we are nothing but masks.

Through her enormous impact on young women around the world, Madonna is the future of feminism."

ok. i agree with the date-rape overkill. lets not go backwards. let's not forget that sex is fun, a game, a power struggle of lust. but...

hang on there. if madonna is the true future of feminism, i think we might be fucked. i don't think madonna SET out to have us calling this shit. madonna wanted to be a star, the world was ready, it all worked.

camille. c'mon. this is where all my itchiness about madge comes in. ALL I SEE IS THE MASK. i don't see the woman underneath. THATS what makes me care with other artists, to want to care, to feel like the mask has real humor, real gravity. who's putting on the mask in the morning? when do i get to see HER????

so, camille:

Feminism says, "No more masks." Madonna says we are nothing but masks. Amanda says You Choose, Ladies: mask today, naked tomorrow, lip-gloss today, overalls tomorrow. fuck 'em if they can't handle you either way.

love

AFP