The HairFlip Clinic

Saturday, May 10, 2008

So basically, Circus is the New Disease.

Haircrobat, mic check this real quick-

FASHIONS in dress often have their origin in the wish to hide disfigurement caused by disease. The voluminous trunk hose worn by English gallants at the beginning of the seventeenth century were introduced by James I as a means of concealing an unsightly malformation. Slaves of fashion to whom Nature had refused an adequate curve of the hip had to supply the deficiency by art. Readers will remember the story told by Carlyle of the discomfiture of the unlucky courtier who sat down on a nail, and on rising to receive His Majesty instantaneously emitted several pecks of bran, and stood a pitiable figure with his breeches hanging in folds about his shrunken person. The introduction of the crinoline is often attributed to the Empress Eugénie before the birth of the Prince Imperial; as a matter of fact, a similar apparatus had, under the name of farthingales, vertugadins, and what not, been used by ladies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The patches which added so piquant an effect to the faces of the beauties of the eighteenth century were first used by officers to disguise the scars of wounds received in battle. If the late Sir Robert Peel had been a royal personage his manner of wearing his hat at an angle that seemed intended to express defiance of public opinion would have become fashionable among young "bloods," as they are beginning once more to be called; yet we believe it was really intended to conceal a scar. In a second series of his Indiscrétions de l' Histoire, recently published, Dr. Cabanès cites several other instances in point. In the fifteenth century Philippe le Bon, having fallen ill, had his head shaved. Like the fox in the fable that had lost his tail, he tried to persuade the nobles of Burgundy that the human head looked much handsomer when its shape was not hidden by a mass of hair. They did not see the thing in the same light, but, unlike the fox, Philippe had the power to compel people to be of his opinion, and, shaven heads perforce became fashionable. The daughters of Louis XI had feet of a size which made it necessary for them to hide them; hence the society dames of the day thought it due to themselves to wear trailing gowns. The wife of Philip III disguised an abnormally long neck with a high wimple, and was imitated by all ladies who wished to be considered fashionable. Henry Plantagenet, anxious to hide the deformity caused by an outgrowth on the foot, had boots made with extravagantly curved toes, which straightway became the only wear for courtiers. Louis XIV wore a wig to hide unsightly wens on his head; the fashion of wearing wigs has also been attributed to the havoc played by syphilis among the "love locks" of the seventeenth century. Many other instances could be given, but these will suffice to show that there is a closer connexion between fashion and deformity than might at first sight be suspected. This may serve to explain how a thing ugly in itself may come to be accepted as the stamp of social. ( BMJ 1905;ii: 88)

Friday, May 9, 2008

Red Lipstick-USB

The spacing, there, some
rain. What it does to none
of me as a result of forgetting
where the piano keys go or a window
cutting all weathers into boxes
on a calendar. Look, today's
May and there's a pile
of quiet electricity bills
I am sending through a shredder
in case you didn't notice
we never left the house.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Shove a tree into a paper shredder.

1. Find a tree, any size.
2. Buy a paper shredder.
3. Try and stick the roots of the tree
first into the mouth of the shredder.
4. Keep doing this until the whole tree has been shredded.
5. Open the shredder and take out whatever bits of the tree is left.
6. Make an image of a tree out of these scraps.
7. Project it against the exterior building of Kinkos.

Monday, April 7, 2008

So what's the Use of this Hour

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Curtains are drawn, literally, to conceal a black and white repartee of what could otherwise
be material for charades when putting them on mute, a portable theatre built for two. Though
there is only so much makeup and body to fight with silence, keep us interested unless placing
a laugh on repeat, the sound of it pulling downward to the floor. So I lie down to see if its
true, if the seam between laugh and image has anything to do with getting to the bottom
of repetition. There is nothing down there but a darkness gaining popularity the more the back
of a head presses against it or what velcro could possibly sound like if it gave up any attachment
to understand or refusing to count all that sheep walking across a stage.

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Refrain it here: when distance is subsumed into its own icon, as if in mid-air an object
gaining volume, making the wooden desk another echo of an online forest I can barely
conceive of. Its not that I don't like nature, but that its not convincing enough to
try and touch. Does it become another chat-room to log on to, making birds more
conceptual and flat than a forest has ever been, if their chirping presses against itself
so that I can't hear it.

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The ampersand is an erogenous thing, a body with one arm ceaselessly touching itself
under the table. Or a telephone cord loosening between two mouths, snapping a morpheme
in half, how a relation-ship can also go divided and never sustain. At first, a knot was tied.
At second, it sailed away. What if I told you we were sailors this whole time, perusing the
water like googling out of habit, latching onto the many options of how to live when its
all built out of air. I can feel you googling me, she said, don't stop.

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