"To be pleased means to say yes."

I made that much-noted Adorno phrase a touchstone in 2005. Later, I realized (thanks sis) it hardly meant what I'd imagined. In my mind, not being a great pinko (or art historian), it was a neat piece of music about affirmation and enjoyment/fun. In the author's, I think it might have been a warning against the lazy openness big consumption breeds. I can't very well go about pointing fingers at the lazy and bourgeois (because HOLA). So, for the zillionith time, I'll flip-ly appropriate the text for myself, shape it to my pleasure. Adorno was a "no guy;" he worked through a v. significant "no era." Occasionally, I succumb to "the no's"--blogs, for instance, are so often sticky "no territories." But it's not in my nature and I'm vowing to cease and...embrace. Nobody needs my negativity heaped on top of their own (or the rest of the Internet's) prodigious sum. When it comes to discoursing other folks' creative endeavors (and I'm not talking about Justin Bobby) best to avoid the stuff I don't admire. There's a lot that pleases me, a lot I say "YES" to. Here goes:

Alexander McQueen is absolutely important. Each season in Paris, people make so much noise about Karl Lagerfeld (and I'll refrain from getting into why I don't join in the noise-making...damn). But A.M. really has the goods as far as I'm concerned. These textiles! It appears no one (but for lovebug, Dries) uses difficult, think-y prints enough. I usually hate (gulp) Space and the unceasing, willynilly co-opting of Ghesquiere's brilliant early-aughts Space-Age shapes, but here it all works and it looks new (and also Elizabethan) and it's not fussy or forbidding so much as fine and full of stories. And everyone's really been listening to my advice about corsets and/or bare breasts...

Hi Hater

Aren't we all feeling a little tired and terse? It's the end of Summer '09 (Labor Day a wink away).
A doozy. A DEATH doozy. Ted Kennedy and Dominick Dunne not so shocking as Michael and Mays and all of those damn plane crashes. But my.

News of Ted hit me rather hard, and my beautiful roommates Pillow and Petrova had to put up with a little maudlin, 1/2Irish, unfounded political espousing last night (love y'all). What else was I to do. I was verklempt and defensive and thinking about my Grandpa and forgiveness and non-forgiveness and war crimes and the lack of national health care and fast trains and regulated banks and why Elliot Spitzer and Jim McGreevey aren't governors anymore.

I've gone into the red twice this month. And it's really sinking in, that (economist please) this 'reception' isn't over. It'll drag on for hours. We need some effective coping mechanisms (the old [expensive] ones just won't do).

The other night at Britney, toward the very end of the show, through which we danced and sang and drank screwdrivers (cute), the ornery chick sitting next to me tried to step. I could hardly hear her. She said something about her boyfriend (who had been eye-&?%*!*$ us for over an hour) and how I should "calm down" (the NUMERO UNO COSA you do not say to me). And I got upset, irrationally upset, because I had been drinking vodka and juice and because I just don't know why some people have the urge to shame total strangers. Pillow and Pet and our girl A. Marx, in the way of comfort, told me about something really important that night : the phrase and song, "Hi Hater (You See Me)."

Brooklyn rapper Maino is responsible. I really dig the track, and its flashy remix (sort of...not really), and the resulting tall-tee phenomenon, declarative shirts printed with the title or some variation of it. I've been getting into affirmations (thanks sis and Miss and Castlemates), remembering how potent a few oft-repeated words can be. "Thank you" is my go to; so is "Many blessings," language leftover from summer mushroom trips. And now, something a bit less humble (who needs humble): "Hi hater. You see me." It is a call for unashamedness. It is a declaration of one's presence, one's weight in the world, one's fearlessness in the face of underminers and babydrinkers and the present and the future. It's a provocation. And to say it and think it and hear it costs no money and no lives and not very much time.

At a certain point in the third verse, Maino states, "When they hate on you then you know you doin' somethin'." And isn't this ego-boosting sentiment, this choice to convert "slings and arrows" into a funny foundation for personal strength, the very meat of popular artmaking? One must, at least for a little while, believe in one's efforts in spite of the storied hundreds of detractors and closed doors. One must be a bit delusional, certain one is famous without yet being famous, full to the brim with bravado--HI HATER. YOU SEE ME. I see you too. And I'm unfazed. In fact, I'm peachy.

Whitney Say--"Hell to the Yes!"