I’m working to slowly rid this site of outdated links, former friends and things I generally have lost interest in. This means I need better things to put in their place – I’m always looking, but, as always, drop me an email and/or a comment if you’d like me to check something out. I need the sort of stimulation that only comes with begging and well-pointed advice.
It seems that inspiration is so few and far between anymore. Stepping outside my front door affords me very little save the cigarette slowly burning between my fingers, and the irreparable damage I’m doing. Many of my old tricks just seem, well, old, and even the snippets from my phone are as tired as soggy eggs. You look around and find your friends bore you beyond your capacity to accept such things, the art on the walls becomes desaturated and mute, movies blend together, even the music you listen to becomes one long note in one ear, through the brain and out the other, taking any patience and passion you had with it. Even albums that have never failed you before numb your senses, like the frustration that builds when your method of masturbation just doesn’t work anymore. Winter has begun, the season to button down and get to work, but instead you button down, layer, button again, layer, take a benzo until finally you’re in a cotton cocoon, relaxed thanks to the chemicals and not because you’ve accomplished anything real. Night and day mean nothing behind black curtains. Aches and pains are your ghosts of Christmas present and, as far as you can tell, the future as well. Sparks try to light, and for a moment you’re sure the fire will roar to life so you’re forced to remove the aforementioned layers with deft fingers to lie bare against the carpet.
Life becomes frozen pizza, and computer crashes. It becomes dust and almost’s. Your heroes are getting married, or overweight and droning on and on about God, or their underage girlfriend, and their simply FANTASTIC relationship with both, or throwing out scraps that try and pass as art, bullshit.
No city waits for you, no one waits. As a good friend once said, “no one dreams anyway.” You’re overweight with the things that don’t matter, starving for the things that do.
Any healthy man can go without food for two days – but not without poetry. – Baudelaire
The aeroplanes sound so far away.
for two seconds / one syllable
/ takes so much
effort. my / therapist suggested i try
but she’s /getting
paid
and i’m not. - jmt
Where do the Orphans go when the shops close until further notice?
What started my old perfume line, Lascivious XIII. They've been packed away for years and after much digging have been found.
From the mail bag:
Q: “How do you make your own Angel by Thierry Mugler?”
A: Its very, very difficult to make the scent match perfectly–its so fucking complex. Since everything I do is basically so D.I.Y. it hurts, I used to try and duplicate my own version of Angel oil before I could afford my own. Oil stays on your skin much, much longer than perfume. The alcohol in perfume evaporates quickly so your scent doesn’t last throughout the day. (FYI: As a little tip, buy perfumes labeled eau de parfum rather than eau de toilette as the former is made with a higher concentration of scented oil and will last much longer. “Angel” is an eau de parfum, as are most designer labels.)
For a bit of narcissism/background:
I used to make and bottle my own line of scented oils way back in college under the name Lascivious XIII, which focused on dessert themed scents. I’d sell them for $8 a piece from my Angelfire website (yes, ANGELFIRE) which was less than enough to break even. I “did it for the art” which means I had to give it up after about a year because I was broke between buying the scented oils, blending oils, label supplies, paints and paper for the special edition bottles, the bottling supplies and not to mention the time it took to blend a single scent.
(The lesson here kids is “doing it for the art” sounds awesome, but the reality is you’re probably going to regret it. If you want to keep making art, find ways to fund it. Don’t be afraid to charge your audience a reasonable amount for your product, in my opinion.)
Anyway, Angel is a musky, delicious and complex perfume–groundbreaking in terms of gourmand scents. Since it’s launch in 1992 women the world over have rejoiced at the notion that you don’t have to smell like a fucking bouquet of flowers. Personally I’ve been wearing it for over 6 years.
To replicate takes the following scented oils: (Bottom notes) – dark chocolate, caramel, patchouli, vanilla. (Middle notes) – passion fruit, peach and/or apricot. (Top notes) – bergamot and mandarin. (I used to buy these from a seller on eBay named abippert and the prices were unbeatable.) I used to blend with grape seed oil since it was lighter and absorbed easier than avocado or almond oil. These can usually be found at Bath and Body Works. As far as the ratios go, its trial and error. Sucks I know, but I never wrote down a concrete formula. My organization then, like it is now, was less than stellar. Obviously you want to build from the base up and go easy on the top notes.
For me, making huge batches of oil from the floor of my walk in closet (no lie, my ex-boyfriend at the time used to call me a dwarf) I hurt more batches than I helped. Its difficult to finally find the right ratio and then blow up the measurements. It sounds like it should be simple, but some of the heavier notes, such as patchouli, can’t be raised from 2 to 4 because then they just start overpowering the entire batch. Once that happens you’re basically fucked as no amount of dilution will save something like that or not that I’ve found anyway.
If you manage to scare up something similar to Angel, siphon it into any of a variety of roll on bottles (I bought them for fairly cheap from a seller on eBay named seattlle_4) and you’re good to go.
found these in an old backpack. remnants of days long past.
For even more information that you didn’t ask for:
I used to make little oil limited edition packages in which I’d decorate the bottles by hand and pair it with a matching piece of jewelry. For example I had a small line based on the My Ruin side project called The LVRS, which was scented like dark chocolate covered cherries. I’d pair that with a black wire ring decorated with black beads, garnets and pink quartz. There was also a line I called Agent Orange which smelled like ginger, dark chocolate and tangerine. Those rings were black, gold and cats eye. Etc. Etc. The rings I made were inspired by My Ruin lead singer Tairrie B[M] and her rock candy rings. The necklaces were handmade rosaries and chokers using old war and religious medallions I’d find at thrift stores and catholic shops.
Q: The world is vast and wide. Why do we put on our robes at the sound of a bell?
A: Buddhism is too mild mannered for me. In short: because you get paid to do so.
Q: Ever consider G[&]D t-shirts? Stickers? Spoken word downloads? Podcasts?
A: Yes and yes. I’m considering making a shitload of stickers and sending them out for free with the stipulation they’re put in a public place. Maybe send in a picture and I’ll make a special section dedicated to pictures. (Does this sound good to anyone? Yes? No? Let me know.)
As far as t-shirts, funny enough the [m.o.d.] link on the right is for my modern.orphan.designs. page which I haven’t had a bit of time to launch, though many of the prototypes have been made. At the moment I’ve given many of them away as gifts to test their wearability and market. I’ve been making and deconstructing my own clothing since high school.
As for spoken word I haven’t the gadgets yet to record myself and stick it on the intranets. If there’s a demand for it then I’m all in. The more content the better. It’s all up to the audience.
(If you have a question you’d like to ask, or a comment you’d like to make feel free to email me at julie [at] devilgossip [dot] com! Conversely, I have a background in journalism and interviewing so if you’re an artist (musician, painter, photographer, boutique owner, poet ect. ect.) and would like me to consider you for an interview to appear on this site, shoot me an email (subject: INTERVIEW REQUEST) with your name/website/examples of your work/info. (I research all requests carefully, that way if I do decide to pick you up for an interview I know what I’m attaching my name to. Similar influences and/or a clear agenda help.) I’ve recently interviewed New York based singer/songwriter Jessica Allyn in an article to be posted soon.)
As of yesterday, I’ve received my first copy of The Poet’s Place: A Collection of Works, my first official publication of 2009:
A peek inside The Poet's Place. (xxoo)
Copies of the book are still available here, and right now you can get them on sale for $11. (Or you can find the link on my side bar under “where to buy.”)
Apparently I have more librarian friends than I realized, and many of them are ordering copies of the book for their local libraries to stock. Thank you, you know who you are!
I’ve been receiving a lot of emails lately from friends and teachers long past asking how I’ve been. I can only hope this site provides any answers I may have left out in our conversations. Hopefully as you peruse my word designs, you can read between the increasingly small lines, and fuzzy pictures can be made clear.
Currently, aside from the other artists in The Poet’s Place, I’m reading a mind-blowing book called Chasing Cool: Standing Out in Today’s Cluttered Marketplace by Noah Kerner (former DJ and now CEO of Noise marketing agency) and Gene Pressman (former CEO and creative director of Barneys New York):
What I'm reading during downtime at work. Never mind the vodka, that came later.
Nearly from page one this book has given me the reassurance I need every so often that indeed following your gut is the best way to go, and that there’s inspiration everywhere, the best parts just begging to be plucked and re-molded into something better. A few quotes from the book:
- “There’s always another way to break through.”
- “There are a lot of people who are too far ahead of the curve and are unsuccessful because of it. Success happens when a person like me, who looks at those types of people, can create a business that works.”
- “Being a creative leader is a really out-there place to be. By definition, it’s a step beyond where people have been and there’s no path. But if you can come second and make something better, that’s no less valid. You’re gonna take first place by doing the same thing with 20/20 vision. There’s something to be said for watching and learning.”
- “Thinking you’ll achieve specialness by emulating someone else’s terms (or simply inverting them) isn’t much different than applying a coat of paint to a cracked wall.”
- “…all that time yielded one common thread: none of these people (those successful in their respective marketing) chased anything. They trusted their guts, put their names on the line, and followed their personal passions…They pursued a vision and, then, somewhere down the road, cool found them.”
- “Things are moving fast. The white noise is deafening.”
I may steal that last one and use it as a sub-header sometime, it’s goregous. I’m hardly halfway thru the book, but it’s already giving me ideas about how to work the site, how to sell my product and my art, and have it reflect my true intentions, since, I realized, my audience ultimately is myself. If I’m not happy with my product or my look, how on earth can I expect anyone else to be?
Also, in keeping with the positives, I’ve now gone global:
Who'd have ever thought people in New Zealand would be looking at my site?
It’s true, from Mexico to Latvia, New Zealand to Canada I’ve had visitors from around the globe thus far. That just blows my fucking mind, frankly, and I’m excited as hell to continue to put up new work.
Expect submission updates very shortly, and I’m also hard at work brainstorming ideas for a new site layout, one that better reflects my writing style and personality, and a new page outlining some of my biggest inspirations so look forward to that!
Until then, carry on, always.
