#hapiphace

«33 or Jorge 2» (A Spotify Playlist)

When ducklings are hatched and raised by owls and chickens, we transcend and understand intuition’s clear voice.

Sound is magical, formidable, and transformative. A favorite sound of mine is acid house, faithful companion since 1988. Its electronic, rhythmic, repetitive, textured, rising, ebbing, flowing, expansive sound is an elixir for concentrating on inner space.

The mystical number 33 manifests as the total playing time.

Prince’s seminal ‘Make-Up’ is followed by dear Annie Sama’s ‘Animal’…her scintillating, watershed tour de force. (I was so excited when Annie told me while visiting, ‘I’m doing acid house’…a revelation!)

Fangoria’s futuristic cover of the Hidrogenesse classic ‘Disfraz de tigre’ highlights the mystical quality of the lyrics—being one with machine, rock, plant, animal... «It’s the song I’ve been waiting my whole life to hear,» I told Gail, and Hapi, freshly arrived in town, while riding to Kelly’s in a Lyft.

Also a new release, ‘Skylon’, by 808 State, reminds me of the tower observatory in Niagara Falls, a signifier of comfort and confirmation, which I last saw with Dominic and Tony. (Interestingly, the iron scow that’s been stuck in the rapids of the Horseshoe Falls since 1918 has moved forward 160 feet, during the storm last All Hallows’ Even.)

Alpha Omega’s ‘Ravers Delight’ I heard late at night on my Saba Sandy, while editing to the beat of $mall ¢hange’s brilliant Nickel and Dime Radio broadcast (Thursdays from midnight to 3 a.m. on 90.1 WFMU-FM). The Garden of Eden’s eponymous anthem from 1988 is medicine music; the Super Version of ‘Left to My Own Devices’ is Pet Shop Boys’ acid update of my favorite song of theirs.

I hope you enjoy the benefits of this soundtrack for envisioning.

In the photo, I’m wearing an extra-tall tapR-mâché top hat and papier-mâché chihuahua wand by Hapi Phace, Land’s End Sail Rigger Oxford, vintage cape from Friends in Bushwick, and Levi’s Iconic 501 jeans.

VESTAL (A Spotify Playlist)

In honor of the Winter Solstice, the Yule Mule (yours truly) is in Arlington, MA, visiting Hapi to partake in setting intentions.

The occasion certainly merits a playlist…so dance to favorite songs by Donna Summer, Odyssey, Silver Convention, KC & The Sunshine Band, Sister Sledge, MFSB, The Love Unlimited Orchestra, Grandmaster Flash, Malcolm McLaren & The World Famous Supreme Team, and Kraftwerk.

Our cover star is Hapi, in full shamanic makeup within his ceremony space, next to the Masonic cabinet.

Celebrating 100 Years of Bauhaus Visiting Gropius House on the Equinox

The integration of art into all aspects of life is an ideal situation.

April 12, 2019 was the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus school’s founding in Weimar, Germany. Established by Walter Gropius, the institution’s Proclamation described a utopian craft guild that combined architecture, sculpture, and painting into a single creative expression.

After immersion in a theory of materials, color, and formal relationships, Bauhaus students would enter specialized workshops, which included metalworking, cabinetmaking, weaving, pottery, typography, wall painting, music, and theater.

I am fortunate to be surrounded by friends who are living examples of this Gesamtkunstwerk (“all-embracing art form”) aesthetic. Envisioning life as a cross-pollinating, living work of art, our community of artist-makers fills life with beauty and function.

For instance, I went to visit Hapi in Arlington, MA, during the spring equinox, and he suggested taking a tour of the Gropius’ home in nearby Lincoln. 

A recent article, “The 80-Year-Old Gropius House in Lincoln Is a Modernist Marvel,” published in Boston magazine explains the locale’s history:

Lured by a post at Harvard, Gropius had relocated to Massachusetts in 1937 with his wife, Ise, and daughter, Ati, renting a house in Lincoln while they planned for a home of their own. At the request of a mutual friend, philanthropist Helen Osborne Storrow provided land for and financed the construction of the new abode—a boon for a family that had been forced to abandon assets when they fled Nazi Germany for London in 1934. While Gropius and his partner Marcel Breuer were the official architects, the design was discussed nightly around the dinner table. Ise was the chief landscaper, and 12-year-old Ati offered input, too, requesting her own private entrance. Dad obliged with an outdoor spiral staircase, a curvy counterpoint to the clean-lined exterior that, he later wrote, “proved to be very practical because children could enter there directly without carrying dirt through the house.”

Admiring the inviting house, full of soulful, practical, and whimsical objects, beautiful as they sit frozen in time—as well as the largest collection of Bauhaus furniture outside of Germany—Hapi and I walked around and admired details like pre-Columbian statues gifted by Frida Kahlo, art by Joan Miró and Josef Albers on the walls, an early Marimekko dress neatly placed on the bed, and a theatrical light fixture that illuminate the dining room circle exactly to its edge.

Pulling a Rabbit Out of the Hat (…and a Spotify Playlist)

Focus is everything. The world is a veritable array of contrast; the human environs based in duality.

The choice is ours. Like the proverbial rose-colored glasses, we focus on aspects we prefer to manifest. Words, thoughts, and feelings generate ‘reality’ in synchronous tandem.

“Pulling a rabbit out of the hat”—magic—is a matter of intention:

As a playlist, I have strung together tunes from the pop landscape, mining notions of magic. Memories of choruses, feelings arising out of melodies, and references to dear performance moments abound. (You can hear the playlist by clicking HERE. Play the songs in order for maximum effect.)

As a photo, I’ve combined Aloysius, a rabbit doll by Scooter LaForge, with a tapr-mâché top hat, by Hapi Phace for KoK. I’m wearing an apron by Kelly Bugden, Hapi’s pearls, and a vintage Brooks Brothers pink Oxford shirt.

Photo by Goor Studio

«Egg Emoticon» Spotify Playlist

For the first day of Standard Time—and the unveiling of new emojis—HERE is a musical elixir for adjustment into winter.

Hapi Phace and I use the egg emoji as a mutually-decided-upon symbol that can mean “received,” “just woke up,” or sundry accord. It is a key element in the creation of digital cartouches on iMessage.

This emphasis on the egg emoji came to be because I love eggs—which I eat constantly in good health—in keeping with their implication as a symbol of birth, emergence, and creative possibility.

For our Karload of Klowns performance troupe—which will be presenting its new show, Erection Day, this Tuesday, November 6th, at 8 p.m. in the Gene Frankel Theatre at 24 Bond Street—Klown ringleader Hapi created the Egg Emoticon staff, a tapR mâché sculpture that my character, Palimpsesto, uses to indicate approval during segments.

Emoticons are a representation of human facial expression using keyboard characters: this playlist represents stages of human emotion balanced by a focus on wellness. Each song represents a character.

In keeping with the spirit of the latest Karload of Klowns show—which features apropos samples from the seminal British pop group The KLF (a name that can alternatively mean “Kopyright Liberation Front” or “Kings of Low Frequency”)—the playlist starts with “Justified & Ancient (Stand by The JAMs)”, featuring Tammy Wynette on vocals.

This song starts with the chant “All bound for Mu Mu Land,” a place synonymous in KLF lore with their Trancentral recording studio, a forum for spiritual realization. As the song “Last Train to Trancentral” explains in its LP version: “I’m going into Trancentral where I can, you understand, liberate and free the psyche, balance my mind and my body….”

On the cover photo, I am wearing a homemade KLF hat José Joaquín and I found years ago at the Urban Jungle on Knickerbocker Avenue, a Johnson buffalo plaid zip-up flannel jacket, Levi’s Engineered jeans, and ‘be happy’ frames by Sabine Be, outfitted by Artsee.

Karload of Klowns Erection Day stars Hapi Phace, Gail Thacker, Colleen O’Neill, Nora Burns, R. Thomas Gordon, guest hitchhiker Edgar Oliver, and yours truly. 

Activating the Portal

For my recent Prismatic performance at the closing of the Kelly Bugden + Van Wifvat show Prism this past 15 August at Ivy Brown Gallery, events and objects aligned to facilitate the activation of a portal.

While being at the studio throughout the making of the pieces, I absorbed the energy of their fabrication—the soul infused into the resulting sculptures.

As the opening of the show neared, chopine bases as counterweights were being made for a sculpture comprising charred wood columns and a water gilt pole. I thought of the gold and black of Egyptian tombs—and the kernel of the performance emerged.

We planned to have the performance on the closing day of the show as a celebration.

Part of the allure of the Prism was the transformation of notions of functional objects into objects of art inhabiting a different area of functionality—both mental and oneiric.

As Rafael Sánchez and I were discussing one day, the one object that could be activated to go between the physical dimension and others is the Portal.

This conversation crystallized the performance for me; it would be a salute to spirit in three parts. Rule of Threes!

After my introductory call to an invisible friend and a salute to an imaginary catalpa tree, I walked past the Ladder towards the Portal holding papier-mâché branches—which Hapi Phace had made for the Karload of Klowns troupe I belong to—and an antique wagon wheel with eight spokes Van procured as a prop. I invoked the Buddhist levels of consciousness, represented by the spokes of the wheel: eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mental, awareness, and all-encompassing foundation consciousness.

Then it was on to the Stage Set installation of the show, where I stood in front of its silhouettes of morphed building-shoes and recited poems about my love of New York buildings since childhood. Revealing the poet as an avatar, an age of wellness is ushered in.

From there I went to the altar-like installation of sculpted lambs with crystals and petit fours on the water gilt mirror. I sang an ícaro to the ancestors in Spanish and saluted all those present. I used a piece of pipe Van had found on Bond Street, near the Gene Frankel Theatre, as a cowbell.

For the performance, I wore a papier-mâché hat Joel Handorff made especially for the performance, ‘be happy’ frames by Sabine Be (outfitted by Artsee), military camo cape from Uncle Sam and vintage painter pants by Smith’s—both of which Scooter LaForge turned me on to—and Adidas Stan Smith sneakers hand-painted by Halla Moda/The Old Black.

Preparing for the PataCircus!

This Friday, August 10 and Saturday, August 11, the Gene Frankel Theatre on 24 Bond Street will be presenting an absurdist circus review titled PataCircus, which is short for ‘pataphysical circus’…and I am honored to be a part of it.

French writer Alfred Jarry described pataphysics as “the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments".

Gail Thacker, organizer and mastermind behind the PataCircus, further comments: “We are tied down by language. Pataphysics is an imaginary science that examines accidental occurrences” in generating meaning.

The PataCircus, hence, will be an absurdist circle of performances which become objects for the audience to invoke their virtuality—their ideal—communicating beyond language.

I’ll be part of the Karload of Klowns troupe alongside Hapi Phace and Gail Thacker, and will also recite a pictographic poem and serve as clown janitor.

The PataCircus lineup features Paul E. Alexander and Kevin Aviance, Helixx C. Armageddon, Andre'A Bouzewah, Sarah Greenwood, Autumn Harms, Hattie Hathaway (who will be singing a special song), K.o.K. (Karload of Klowns), James Kaston, Abby Lloyd, Stanley Love Performance Group, Ze Motion, V.L.F. (Vegetable Liberation Front), and Dr. Julia Wonder!

There will be charades, homages, song, dance, poetry, storytelling, and oodles of pataphysical stimulation!

In preparation for the show, I am running errands wearing a K.o.K. Palimpsesto bra hat by Hapi Phace with painting by Scooter LaForge, a shirt from L Train Vintage, Wrangler jeans from Goodwill, vintage Adidas Kegler Super sneakers, Palace Bag for Life, and Be Happy glasses by Sabine Be outfitted by Artsee, 200 West Street.

Full Moon Show — The Thunder and Buck Moon Edition

I am honored to be playing Serge the French waiter in tonight’s Full Moon Show at Howl! Happening, alongside legendary performance personality Hapi Phace. There will be two shows: one at 4 p.m. featuring a sound poem by Hapi, and a 7 p.m. homage to the United Nations. 

As the press release from Howl! prays: 

CELEBRATE TWO TIMES (!) with this eclipse-season edition of the Full Moon Show, in bifurcated presentations by McCardboard Genius Award-Winning Performance Person Hapi Phace. The good news is the lunar eclipse will be the longest of the 21st century. From start to finish, the moon will take nearly four hours to cross the Earth's dark umbral shadow. The bad news? People in the U.S. won't get to experience the eclipse—unless they come to Howl!  

4 PM—On the Sidewalk Outside Howl

I Have Heard the Garden Gnomes Sing

Partly poetic, partly prophetic, partly pathetic, your host Hapi Phace presents a stream-of-consciousness sound poem, as taught to him by the mythical elf and gnome vaudeville team Thunder & Buck.

7 PM—Inside the Gallery

A yet Untitled NSFW Tribute to the United Nations

Coinciding with this full moon is a full lunar eclipse—or Blood Moon—which will be visible in other parts of the globe. To mark the occasion, planetary citizen and lunar advocate Hapi Phace will ruminate on both the architectural and archetypical wonder that is the United Nations.

The Full Moon Show is made possible in part with public funds from Creative Engagement/Creative Learning, supported by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. LMCC.net