My Blog

Between Dimensions Recap

magdalena — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:11:58 GMT

Doing our show The Voodoo Sisters Present: Between Dimensions at the Bowery Poetry Club was so much fun yesterday! I can't wait to see the video. We packed an insane amount of entertainment into an hour and a half, and it all went off without a hitch thanks to the consummate professionals who performed, and thanks to Mistress B who emceed and kept things moving. She even took one for the team and played a ditty from West Side Story on the trombone. We're hoping that, for the next one, we can have a time slot that is more amenable to the gothic nature of our entertainment, as only the most hardened and hardy dark souls can watch a comedy dominatrix blow up a balloon with her boob and then twist it into a gigantic penis--at five o'clock on a Sunday evening. We reconnected with old friends and even made some new ones, with new plans to spread the gothitude to the younger generation. There was talk of a goth prom! I thought I was going to have to step on Melissa's foot to keep her from sailing off into the stratosphere from pure joy when the folks from New Goth City came over to talk to us. As a perky goth, Melissa can easily pass for one of those well-adjusted people. Not everyone can effortlessly keep up the concentrated aura of Eeyore gloom the way I can. You have to look really hard to see that Lissa is completely skewed. If you have any doubt that she's a goth, you've never attended one of her Pilates classes. We made some on-the-spot art as we improvised a collaborative veil dance to Heidi and Rolando's song. Jackie debuted some work which touched people's minds and hearts, which bled across the boundaries of spoken word and music. Autumn did her contortionist act on the bar. Thaddeus represented the fetish goths. Darshan poured herself onto the stage like a lick of chestnut flame. Boni Joi read the doll mafia poem, which is so concentrated in its imagery that it always reminds me of a mosaic, the shards of words lying jagged and bright next to each other to produce a shimmering whole. And the Voodoo Sisters got to perform our death-defying Kawaii no Cane number. A cane routine in a small space is always a little dangerous. It's the threat of either performer or audience dismemberment by cane that adds the gothic spice to the enterprise. In every pic and vid I look about four feet tall standing next to Melissa, and the diva in me could never stand for looking like someone else's mini me...unless that someone was smokin' hot. We bill ourselves as the Mutt and Jeff of bellydance. I think Lissa's going to have to start dancing in four-inch heels, to exaggerate the lopsided effect of our height difference. Non-Euclidean geometrical effects are so very Lovecraftian.

Rhythm Is the Cure

magdalena — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 00:56:22 GMT

I took Alessandra Belloni's workshop today and I feel like a million dollars because those drummers drummed all the misery right out of my chest and throat.

My First Love

magdalena — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 15:30:51 GMT

Don Buchanan was my first love. Remember your first love, for a moment. Now remember mine: A tall boy with green eyes and a black leather jacket painted with the movie logo for Dawn of the Dead and signed by Tom Savini. I found out yesterday that Don took his own life in the early morning on April 3. My heart goes out to his wife and his daughter, and to the many people who love him. As for me, my grief is beating me to pieces from the inside out. Impossible to summarize the effect he had on my life. Made me who I am. Gothfather. Taught me everything I know about music. Even if I didn't talk to him for years at a time, knowing he was in the world balanced me in some way. He was and will always be one of my soul's counterparts, and he has taken away the last vestige of dread I had concerning death, because I know that, as usual, he has done something first and will assist me when the time comes for me to make the transition. I hope my tears will ease his soul's passage. For comfort I turn to some lines from one of Judy Grahn’s poems, a chant of remembrance. a funeral a plainsong i will be your mouth now, to do your singing breath belongs to those who do the breathing. warm life, as it passes through your fingers flares up in the very hands you will be leaving you have left, what is left for the bond between people is a circle we are together within it. i am your best, i am your kind kind of my kind, i am your wish wish of my wish, i am your breast breast of my breast, i am your mind mind of my mind, i am your flesh i am your kind, i am your wish kind of my kind, i am your best now you have left you can be wherever the fire is when it blows itself out. now you are a voice in any wind i am a single wind now you are any source of a fire i am a single fire wherever you to go, i will arrive whatever i have been, you will come back to wherever you leave off, i will inherit whatever i resurrect, you shall have it you have right, what is right for the bond between people is returning we are endlessly within it and endlessly apart within it it is not finished it will not be fnished i will be your heart now, to do your loving love belongs to those who do the feeling life, as it stands so still along your fingers beats in my hands, the hands i will, believing that you have become he, who is not, any longer somewhere in particular we are together in your stillness you have wished us a bonded life when you were dead i said you had gone to the mountain the trees do not yet speak of you a mountain when it is no longer a mountain, goes to the sea when the sea dies it goes to the rain when the rain dies it goes to the grain when the grain dies it goes to the flesh when the flesh dies it goes to the mountain now you have left, you can wander will you tell whoever could listen tell all the voices who speak to younger people tell all the voices who speak to us when we need it that the love between people is a circle and is not finished i will take your part now, to do your daring lots belong to those who do the sharing. i will be your fight now, to do your winning as the bond between people is beginning in the middle at the end my first beloved, present friend if i could die like the next rain i’d call you by your mountain name and rain on you you have put your very breath upon mine i shall wrap my entire fist around you i can touch anyone’s lip to remember we are together in my motion you have wished us a bonded life.

Plastic Free

magdalena — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:28:02 GMT

My project for the next few weeks, as though I don't have enough to do, is to continue to discover whether I can make my life more plastic free. I'm starting with the kitchen. I already shop at Lush, where they are dedicated to reducing packaging, so the bathroom is relatively plastic free. In the kitchen, I have partially solved the plastic grocery bag problem by 1) using them as trash bags, 2) cutting them up to make plastic yarn and then crocheting totes out of them, as in the above photo, 3) taking all my own bags to the grocery store so that we cut down on the plastic grocery bags coming into the house. I've been reading too many reports of cancer-making reactions happening when you store and heat food in plastic containers, so I got rid of all my plastic containers. Luckily, this is New York City, where a lot of people move on short notice and tend to leave their Pyrex containers in the Salvation Army. It's easy to stock up on glassware. Today I'm going looking for more metal and wooden cooking utensils, and for a stainless steel water bottle. Today is also the day I'll find out just how crazy the vendors around here think I am, when I ask them to give me my Greek yogurt in my 2-cup glass container, instead of the plastic ones they have at the store. One of the reasons I've opted not to have children is so that I can concentrate on making my own carbon footprint very small.

Daylight Savings Time

magdalena — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:10:02 GMT

It knocked me for a loop. Usually I consider Daylight Savings Time a holiday; I'm so frickin excited that the light is back. (What kind of goth am I? A goth who appreciates the gothiness of the sun, which is a luminary that can kill people with its overpowering and wicked radiance. Don't you think "Sunstroke" would be a good goth name?) Melissa Voodoo and I are so busy putting together our variety show, Between Dimensions, developing two new choreographies (one about gargoyles, the other about vampire cats), and trying to participate in the dizzying life of NYC (cask ale events, burlesque shows, ukulele jams, the list goes on) that when we were at rehearsal yesterday we added a whole new Bill the Cat dimension to the vampire cat choreography. Ack. We are frazzled, even if it's almost spring.

What Have I Got on My Brain? Between Dimensions

magdalena — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 15:14:36 GMT

The Voodoo Sisters are putting the "mental" back in "experimental theater." We're producing a gothic variety show, called Between Dimensions. Our first event will take place on April 13 at the Bowery Poetry Club, and I'm so excited! More details as they happen. What Is Between Dimensions, you ask? It's a place where carnival sideshow freaks, gothic belly dancers, performance poets, and Middle Eastern drummers might share the stage. Any work that is risky, dark, transgressive, funny, and strange will be welcomed. We defy neat categorizations. Is it a poetry night? Dance? Music? Will I laugh? Cry? Have bad dreams? We straddle the line between light and dark, words and music, dance and theater. We will showcase works that bleed across boundaries, that don’t fit into boxes, that live in the border country between dimensions. Between Dimensions is a monthly foray into the outer and inner darkness, the liminal state in which anything can happen—and it usually does.

Totally Gothic Soap

magdalena — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:04:40 GMT

One of my obsessions is aromatherapy, so I will occasionally be posting some fragrance notes. Today's is about a new Lush product that smells of lilies. Lush's Lily Savon soap makes me feel like I'm showering in a funeral parlor, thanks to the American predilection for having lilies in funeral arrangement. http://usa.lush.com/cgi-bin/lushdb/02697?expand=Soap I was worried that it smelled too old-ladyish, as floral perfumes can tend to do, but when I asked Voodoo Consort Number One if it smelled like old ladies, he said, "Maybe...really cool old ladies." So there you go. Not since Demeter's cologne "Funeral Home," which a friend gave me a few years ago, have I smelled a product so guaranteed to make the necrophiliac in your life jump for joy. Here's a review of Funeral Home: http://silencedmajority.blogs.com/silenced_majority_portal/2007/08/my-new-perfume-.html I did find the overwhelming scent in Funeral Home to be carnation, fyi. But if you like carnation scent I would recommend Lush's Potion fragrance instead, since that also smells of spices and not like Lysol, which is the other scent in Funeral Home.

Chocolate Blood and Espresso Granita

magdalena — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:02:57 GMT

Welcome to the cooking portion of my blog. For those of you who saw the Voodoo Sisters perform at Romka's Belly Horror 2007 and want to know how I concocted the delicious chocolate blood we spat at the end of "I Shimmied with a Zombie," this is for you: Chocolate Blood 1/3 cup water 2/3 cup light corn syrup 5 or 6 drops of red food coloring green or yellow food coloring (optional) 1 or 2 tablespoons cornstarch 1 tablespoon sweetened cocoa powder Chocolate blood may be kept in the refrigerator for up to two weeks. If it separates, warm to room temperature and whisk to desired consistency. This espresso granita recipe was prompted by a question my friend asked yesterday: What do you do with leftover coffee? Depending on how much coffee there is leftover, sometimes I use coffee instead of water in a brownie batter or chocolate cake mix. Or I use this recipe: Espresso Granita Pour two cups cold espresso in a 9" x 12" pan. Mix in 3 heaping tablespoons of sugar and a tablespoon of Frangelico liquor. Stick the pan in the freezer and wait a half hour before stirring up the mixture with a fork. Repeat the stirring every half hour or so for the next two hours, aerating the granita so that ice crystals form. Serve topped with fresh whipped cream and the berries of your choice.

Bowling

magdalena — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 15:19:01 GMT

I am boycotting Bowlmor Lanes because of their sexist advertising campaign, which was more effective than caffeine to get me raring to go one morning when I saw this disgusting ad on the train. So when my friend decided to have her birthday party at Melody Lanes in Brooklyn, I didn't have politics to hide behind. I agreed to bowl, shuddering all the way. I grew up in a central New Jersey suburb, and I spent far too many weekend afternoons attempting to bowl under the strict and not always well-meaning tutelage of my voluble Italian family. In the same bellow with which my mother announced bulletins about the size of my behind to saleswomen and the entire populace of Marshall's (MA'AM? I THINK SHE NEEDS A *LARGE*!), she would try to set me and my bowling ball straight by counseling vague, karate-kid-sounding advice about following the arrows on the floor, keeping my wrist straight, etc. My sisters advocated looking at the pins. My father helpfully demonstrated his polished throw, one leg behind the other in a kind of athletic curtsey. None of it prevented my game from sucking out loud. Yesterday I bowled the best game of my life, dead drunk after two strong bloody Marys made for me by Voodoo Consort Number One. Melody Lanes in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn is awesome. Its dayglo walls add to the din by swearing at each other in different colors, the chartreuse wall glaring across the room at a pink and orange wall. For fifty cents you can buy a tiny bag of glitter suitable for face, hair, or body, which comes in a plastic bubble that tumbles out of a machine with a satisfying thunk after you twist the handle. Temporary tattoos and fake silver medallions of scorpions and dollar signs are also available. My bowling acumen rapidly decreased as I began to sober up, and my teammates began whispering to each other: "Get her a beer! Maybe beer will help? Or is it only vodka? Do they have vodka?" In conclusion, dear readers: If you are in New York, and you must bowl, do not go to Bowlmor Lanes. Go to Melody Lanes instead.

Gothla Sunday

magdalena — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 15:39:06 GMT

The Voodoo Sisters attended three workshops on Sunday: Anaar's conjuration and summoning workshop, Romka's sword workshop, and Laura's snake arms, hands, bellies, and the reptilian gaze. These workshops were compelling and challenging, all of them in different ways. What I particularly enjoyed about Anaar's workshop were the ritual gestures employed to open a piece of ritual/theater/dance, namely the gestures of offering your heart to the audience. Think it's easy? Think again. Performing such a gesture takes the dancer/celebrant to an extremely vulnerable place. It literally opens up the heart chakra to have one's hands gliding by that chakra and then swooping out to glide the energy toward the audience. I have been practicing Wicca--mostly solitary--for twenty years, and it never fails to amaze me how scary and effective directing certain energies can be. Anyone who saw Anaar at the Gothla gala could not fail to be affected by her literally offering her heart to you. Every time I have seen Romka perform their glorious sword choreography, my hands itch to play with a sword, too. Therefore it was hella gratifying to be in a classroom full of lovely ladies wielding steel. Belladonna and Mavi play off each other, demonstrating their vastly different thinking and teaching styles that synch up to produce a well-rounded instructor experience. Having two instructors means that you get one person who concentrates on the parts adding up to the whole, and another person who makes it her business to tell you how the whole is made up of working parts. Since they are modest, they didn't sing their own praises but instead said stuff like, "Duh, we're jet lagged and our gears aren't meshing right now." Want proof of their brilliance? No one cut herself or stabbed her partner in that workshop, which was crowded. If that ain't good teaching, i don't know what is. It was thrilling to see Laura's reptilian gaze up close, and I was blown away by her generosity in demonstrating the exact process by which she learned to do the sideways belly roll she does on the Gothic Revelations DVD. The Voodoo Sisters have begun to practice the technique at weekly rehearsal; we are mad to develop that belly roll. Laura had us doing an exercise in which we strolled around the room, looking out of one of the three planes of the eyes (top, middle, bottom, each of which denotes a specific state of mind). I was not surprised to find that I simply could not look at relative strangers from an emotional place. A nervous smile crept over my face every time I tried to do it. But then, I have a lot of planets in Scorpio (Sun in Capricorn, Scorpio rising, just like Elvis), which means I play things close to the vest. In between workshops we refreshed ourselves with cookies. There was a British grocer near the studio, and there I was reacquainted with one of my fave British cookies, chocolate-covered hobnobs!

Gothla Saturday

magdalena — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:25:43 GMT

Have you seen this beverage, Budweiser and clam juice? Voodoo Consort Number One purchased this vile concoction in a liquor store near our hotel. He has an unfortunate love of stunt food, which I will never understand. Is it a guy thing? Are there so few rituals to test one's masculinity that one must resort to consuming disgusting items to prove the machismo? He drank this for breakfast on Monday morning, as we were getting ready to take a plane, and as I was already nursing a slight hangover from Sunday night at Club Bravo. Then he mildly declared, "Hmm, tastes like a fizzy, fishy bloody mary," and poured the rest into the sink, right under my nose, as I was brushing my teeth. I ask you to imagine the combination of odors, the olfactory onslaught, of such an event. If I hadn't needed him for moral support on the plane... The events that led to such a roiling of the stomach were as follows: The Voodoo Sisters decided to swing the canes around in the parking lot of the hotel on Saturday morning, just to warm up. As we were doing so, we noticed a car whose license plate read, "I'd rather be bellydancing!" As we'd seen no other dancers in our hotel yet, we were excited that there were others like us rooming there. We'd tried breakfast in the common room once, and when an entire family bowed their heads and clasped their hands in prayer to say grace over their dry cereal, we knew somehow that we just didn't belong. Although every state of grace needs an apocalypse to test its strength, does it not? Then who should come over to the car but Yasmin and Nisha, giddy with excitement because they were on their way to take Ariellah's workshop! Over introductions, we found we'd missed them in the hot tub the night before. And the Voodoo Sisters were very sad. We got to the Imperial Ballroom and went through the process of checking in and writing our introduction, which, because I was so jetlagged, I kept to the bare minimum of our standard taglines: The Voodoo Sisters are NYC's internationally unknown gother-than-thou bellydance troupe. We put the "ick" in gothic bellydance. Later, as we sat in the audience listening to introductions of beautiful dancers who "love the night and the moon and incense and blood thundering," we realized something important about ourselves. We love the dark and the moon as much as the next goth. But the Voodoo Sisters are what you trip over in the dark. We are the evil dustbunnies under the bed. We are the Tenacious D of gothic bellydance.

Gothla: The Conjuring Meet and Greet and Merchandising

magdalena — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 12:38:57 GMT

The Voodoo Sisters met awesome people at the Meet and Greet. This was never in doubt, but Magdalena Voodoo is an introvert and does not generally speak at cocktail parties and so was sick with fear at the prospect of accomplishing a social event while jetlagged. What a pleasure, then, to get involved in a conversation about folklore and fairy tales and literature. Did you know Bruno Bettelheim's work is so poorly regarded among feminist folklorists? I didn't, but I'm not surprised. Very Freudian, which means very misogynist. I still enjoy clueing people into the psychological underpinnings of fairy tales, especially those naive people, such as historians, who aver that they like "true stories." That's a contradiction in terms, since all narratives are invented, even history. But I digress. Melissa Voodoo's effervescent personality serves her wherever she goes, and so she slid seamlessly into the action at the meet and greet while I chewed my bottom lip and pondered the gorgeous stamped tin ceiling. I was a little afraid I was going to get biffed in the mouth with one of the juggling balls someone was juggling. Had we known what Gothla fame Trevor was going to ascend to the very next day, Melissa Voodoo and I would have bitten him first...we sat and talked with him and the Nyx girls for about an hour on Friday night! Mostly we were coming up with recipes for new confections and inquiring about the lovely things Nyx would be vending at Gothla. Speaking of which: Remember that part in Raiders of the Lost Ark when everyone sees the Holy Grail and their faces promptly melt off? Yeah, like that. I had to leave the room for whole minutes at a time and catch my breath. The merchandise at Gothla was dazzling. I still have such a lust for Geisha Moth pants that my stomach hurts if I think about it for too long. I ended up buying nothing at all because I simply couldn't choose among all the lovely belts, hair ornaments, custom-made fangs, and clothing. My husband Rod, who wishes to be known as Voodoo Consort Number One, already has a pair of custom-made fangs, which is ironic because he thinks zombies are much scarier than vampires. I'm the one with the vampire fixation but no fangs of my own. No physical fangs, that is. I can put a psychic whopper on someone just fine. Not that I would. (I don't think so, anyway...)

Gothla: The Conjuring, Prequel

magdalena — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 13:18:26 GMT

The Voodoo Sisters arrived in Southern California on Thursday, ogling the palm trees and delighting in the temperature, which was a good fifty degrees warmer than it was in New York. Because my husband and I grew up in New Jersey, after we checked into our hotel we found a shopping mall and sat in a Starbucks, soaking up the local color. We had never been in Southern California before, and our ideas of the place had been formed by watching '80s movies like Valley Girl and reading Francesca Lia Block's _Weetzie Bat_ series. We wanted to get tattooed but thought we'd be itchy on the plane ride back to New York. We wondered why there were so many pestilential children at our hotel, shrieking and pooling at our heels like something Alfred Hitchcock invented for a cinematic nightmare, until we realized that Disneyland was within walking distance. We had a costume malfunction at dress rehearsal and had to buy some emergency miniskirts at Hot Topic. In New York, we have to take the Staten Island Ferry to get to Hot Topic, so it was somewhat exotic to be able to drive to this crucial store. Tempest pointed out to me later that the Voodoo Sisters can shop at Saint Mark's Place in NYC and, technically, have no need of Hot Topic. Although this is quite true, it seems somehow less of a heartache to encounter the mass marketability of goth culture in a store like HT. I just can't bear going to Saint Mark's Place anymore, where stores like Religious Sex have closed, where tourists tromp through Trash and Vaudeville, and where a CBGB merchandise store has bloomed, for crying out loud. Melissa Voodoo, a closet goth for many years, exulted in the idea of performing at Gothla because for her it was like a gothic debutante ball. Magdalena Voodoo worried that the goth community at large would stone the Voodoo Sisters onstage as the strains of Gwen Stefani's "Sweet Escape" came over the sound system for our cane routine. After all, the battle has raged since Jane Austen wrote _Northanger Abbey_: Is mock gothic a legitimate form of gothic? I needn't have worried: People started snickering as soon as the song came on and they got a look at our cyberlocks and Gothic Lolita-wear. Everyone got the joke immediately. I keep forgetting that I'm not the only goth on the block anymore, the way I was in high school. But I'll save descriptions of the actual event for another post.