_Black_Acrylic presents … Geordie, Mackem Magick – A Sophie Lisa Beresford Day *

* (restored)

Spiritual Life Coach, Evolutionary Artist, Law of Attraction & Emotional Healing Specialist, Medicine Woman, Grey Witch. at Planet Earth, Solar System.

Ever since that fateful moment back in 2010 when she first came bounding into my view in Dundee’s Cooper Gallery with a Sonic The Hedgehog cuddly toy, I’ve been a fan of the work of Sophie Lisa Beresford aka Sophie Lisa Rainbow aka Sophiel Aurora. In the years since I think her work has only grown more allusive and complex, and I hope this Day might serve as a suitable introduction to her practice:

To the Cooper Gallery last night at the art school where I met someone whose work is, I think, worthy of your attention. I took a photo of a girl who was stood clutching a Sonic the Hedgehog toy. She then led me over to a corner at the back of the gallery, a hastily improvised picnic area where a few people sat making patterns with coloured plastic beads on the floor. She offered me milk and cookies as rave music rattled noisily from nearby speakers. The tableau was somehow Edenic in a thrown together, slipshod manner which was baffling and charming and the sort of situation that you sometimes find yourself in at art school. But I took a leaflet and read her text, which I found to be urgent, poetic and beautiful. Here’s a short extract:

“I have always been fascinated by geometry and can feel it really deeply in my body. One of the finest examples that I have experienced all my life is the three stripes of Adidas. One day I was at a rave, while I was dancing around, these Adidas stripes were shining at me in the UV light and I asked them ‘What are the fundamentals of your power?’ and I got this answer, saying there is a zero point or a nothing and there is a plus and a minus. Everything comes out of that tension, which then collapses back in on itself forming a vortex which creates all things. Then I looked into the expansion of the number ‘3’ and drew loads. Recently I was watching something about Daoism, when the bloke explained what 3 meant this feeling washed over me and I realised that I’d learnt the exact same thing by asking the Adidas pants. I could see the universe everywhere and when he was pointing at the number 3 I could see the Adidas stripes…”

“I had always felt like an artist and have recognised myself as one. When I went to University I felt it was assumed that I knew nothing about art and that I wasn’t an artist and that I was going to be made into one. I sometimes felt like they overlooked who I already was and I found that problematic. I felt it wasn’t recognised that I kind of knew what I wanted and just needed a bit of nurturing…”

Her work strikes a chord with me because it seems real, true to its intent and is so painfully and magnificently sincere. Whereas I’m so saturated in media and irony that I don’t even know what reality is anymore. When I see art such as that by Sophie Lisa Beresford I treasure it and so should you.

http://0black0acrylic.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/sophie-lisa-beresford.html

 

Her 2008 film Pizza Shop Dance is still up there with my all-time favourite artworks by anyone, ever:

 

My Culture is Beautiful, 2009, Single channel video, 7 min 49 sec

Dance is synonymous with escapism, conforming to rules and dictation to create idiosyncratic routines. Beginning in the bedroom, the memory of adolescence is littered with rehearsing routines of music divas and heroes to become how they are. Simultaneously dance runs parallel with illegitimacy and challenging what is acceptable as social expression. Iconic films such as Dirty Dancing epitomise this anxiety. A wealthy yet sheltered protagonist, aptly nicknamed Baby, is a chaste female who discovers her womanhood through her dance partner, Johnny Castle. An alpha male, Johnny initiates Baby through the dance routines. Reliant upon Johnny, Baby unlocks her sexual prowess.

Sophie Lisa Beresford presented her solo exhibition at Workplace Gallery, Gateshead. A young artist emerging from the North East of England, Beresford is in direct contrast with the submissive character of Baby. Through dance, Beresford packs a punch with her high-energy performances to Spanish Mákina music.

Originated in Valencia, Mákina music is defined by its frantic pace and aggressive bass line. Since the 1990s, Mákina became popular in the North East and incorporated into sub branches of urban ‘Charva’ culture. For her performances, Beresford often chooses unusual settings, from kebab shops to domestic environments. In doing this she gathers a sense of heightened enthusiasm, as though intending to propel herself from these ordinary locations through the euphoria of Mákina.

In the gallery, three television sets show the artist dancing, dressed in Adidas sportswear. Each set is a separate piece, Dance in Dundee, you got the love and Bounce. Despite the rapid pace of the music, Beresford is never dictated by Mákina. She takes possession of both her body and the music and rises to the frantic challenge. Beresford twists, flicks and curls her body to the speed of the music. With a taut back, stretching out her arm, she struts and smiles like an Olympic performer. In each stretch and flick, she unleashes a playful ferocity.

In a darkened room of the gallery, Beresford is wearing only Adidas trousers while her hair falls over her breasts. In an age in which media spectacles continually turn the female body into an object of desire, Adidas Mermaid, could be mistaken as a typical Youtube footage of a female illustrating her sexuality to an imaginary audience. Against the backdrop of her bedroom, we see Beresford preparing herself for performance. She realigns her arms and her legs, checking herself and readjusting her poise. This sense of hesitation is absent from her vivacious performances. From behind the scenes, we watch her delicate indecision.

Making Adidas Mermaid, 2009, Single channel video, 7 min 39 sec

However Beresford never steers too close to the portrayal of female fragility. Anonymous Handprint explicitly shows a photograph of the artists’ bum looking sore and raw from a severe slap of the hand. A stranger approached Beresford and requested to have sex and she refused- instead offering herself to be slapped hard as possible on the condition she could photograph it afterwards.

In Dirty Dancing, it is the virile male who leads the way. Johnny dictates and Baby follows. Anonymous Handprint, however, subverts this idea of masculine potency. Beresford commands the direction and the handprint is reminder of her sexual refusal. The power of Beresford’s work is comparable to the strength of the Haka dance. A tribal dance form from Maori it is used to intimidate opponents in war. Performed as a group, they stomp and slap their bodies in aggression, snarling their mouths and widening the whites of their eyes. Beresford dances with the same vigor, she hurls and asserts her authority as much as any of the Haka warriors.

Unlike the character of Baby, Beresford does not dance for anyone. Beresford is hypnotic in her velocity, unselfconscious at every turn; she inspires with her insatiable confidence. Beresford’s work embodies an attitude closer to the energy of the Maori Haka dance than the willowy dependency of Dirty Dancing.

Illustrating a refreshing contemporary spirit, she does not dance for a man or an audience; she dances for herself. Beresford reminds us that the conventions of dance routines and formulaic gender structures are stifling. Her complete lack of inhibition is addictive: to watch someone enjoy her own conviction without performance or care of expectation.

Denise Kwan
http://artistesonly.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/denise-kwan-on-sophie-lisa-beresford.html

 

Cosmic Ribbon, 2007

“Eden In Progress: The Art of Sophie Lisa Beresford”

“The Sioux wore shirts decorated with symbols that they believed would defeat the whites’ bullets. To prepare for victory and to receive in a trance more messages from the Great Spirit, men and women danced in circles… associated rock music with the ecstatic religious Circle Dance of the Shakers, the Whirling Dervishes of Morocco, and the Ghost Dance of the Native Americans.”
Dan Graham, Rock My Religion 1984

A few years after Graham wrote these words about the religious impulses working within rock performance, rave culture saw a tearing up of the contract between musician and audience. No longer a passive spectator, the dancer duly broke free and became the star. Originally shown as part of her 2008 Sunderland University degree show, the video Pizza Shop Dance shows Sophie Lisa Beresford raving up a frenzy before the fast food counter, her body dancing manically to the lurid soundtrack of Spanish Makina techno music. It’s an utterly unselfconscious, defiantly joyous act made all the more affecting by its humble setting. According to her Gateshead-based Workplace Gallery, this dance became a regular occurrence and I think it points to an approach consistent throughout her practice. Rather than making discreet objects for the delectation of a rarefied few, Beresford is instead truly living her art. Her work could best be described as a heady concoction of north-eastern English ‘Charva’ culture, new-age religion and DIY self-help. In a series of intimate video self-portraits musing on her artistic identity, we’re faced with a conflation of church confessional and Big Brother diary room entry as she frets over the direction her life is taking. Frank and disarming, these clips are shown on her YouTube channel or are circulated to individuals, acting as markers for her ongoing progress. Then once a project is settled upon, Beresford often seems to display an unabashedly utopian impulse. During her recent residency in the Cooper Gallery at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee, a set of coloured blankets were placed on the floor where visitors could sit and make arrangements of coloured beads while helping themselves to milk and cookies. Later the artist handed out Kinder Surprise eggs to the public who were invited to eat the chocolate shells and play with the toys contained inside. Throughout this time Beresford itemised the many and varied elements of her practice in a quixotic list that included the Hindu deity Ganesha and geometric cushion covers, Sonic the Hedgehog and Swarovski crystals. Along with her citing such influences as Kandinsky abstractions and Kahlo self-portraits, the whole jumble begins to make a frazzled sort of sense, serving to form a compelling and coherent map of her universe. The artist compares the process to navigating a castle in the Super Mario Brothers computer game: “Sincerity, in the case of my playing with it, is to experience myself, if I want to… the more sincere I become, the more I become like I was when I was a child.” As she says in the poetic, emoticon-peppered notes of her studio residency: “‘Playing Blocks’ reality is a toy 🙂 anything you want it to be.”

Ben Robinson
http://www.yucknyum.com/zine/autumn-2010/13/

 

Art from the Stars – with Sophiel Aurora, 2014

Sophiel Aurora beams in from Star Alcyone, where she lives and works parallel to her Human life as a Geordie/Mackem Raver. Using Physical Earth Science to bridge the gap between what seems fantastical with what is real, she and her kin offer new ways to use art to uplift and reboot the consciousness of the human species into a state of ease and unconditional love.

Star Bracelet, 2011
Swarovski beads, Swarovski Pearls

Sophiel Aurora (aka Sophie Lisa Beresford) dances. She dances for herself. And for us. She is a disarming dancer. She jumps, stomps, whirls, pirouettes, arches and bounces in front of a still camera to fast, thumping Makina techno.

Three dances – ‘Bounce’, ‘Dance in Dundee’ and ‘You Got The Love’, all 2010 – present Aurora dancing in three different rooms. ‘Bounce’ shows Aurora in what looks like her bedroom, dancing in front of a wardrobe, wearing tracksuit bottoms and a bright pink Nike Crop top, white Reebok Classics, hair scraped back in a high ponytail, baring her midriff and pierced belly button. Her arms sway and circle around her upper body and head hypnotically; part stylised Vogue, part aerobics, and part tribal dance. Forty-five seconds later, she walks to the camera, winks, grins and turns it off. The resulting video is a familiar scene in the YouTube age: a young woman dancing in her bedroom for an audience on the other side of the camera. The other two videos in this series are similar in their making: ‘Dance in Dundee’ depicts Aurora in a kitchen, dancing, with a pink tracksuit top and cat ears on, and ‘You Got The Love’ shows Aurora revel in her movement, grinning and euphoric.

These works are highly enjoyable and made me grin too. But in terms of art, performance, video and the Internet, where do they sit? How ’authentic‘ is the performance in them, or how ’staged‘? What does ’authenticity‘ even mean today?

 

Pizza Shop Dance (film still), 2008

Authenticity is a word I struggle with when used in relation to performance in particular. It often comes up in relation to early Body Art, by the likes of Marina Abramović and Gina Pane, and is used to connote the ’reality‘ of the pain and suffering of the (supposedly transcendental) experience these bodies are undergoing, something that makes them truly alive. Yet this was highly staged stuff. Bearing this in mind, is Aurora addressing today’s notion of authenticity via performance? The ’real‘ selves that are presented every day in the virtual, digital world are also always performed. The ’room tours’, ’hauls’ and make-up Vlogs produced by teenage girls give us windows into ’normal’ lives – yet what was formerly private now is staged, watched by an audience of millions, using the Internet as an extended form of ’self’. In Beresford’s works, what is ’real‘ and ’performed’ is indecipherable.

In ‘My American Travels in Craft’, 2011, Aurora’s body is not present, but her voice is. On a black screen, a slow slide-show of subtitles flows, telling the story of Aurora’s road trip in the U.S.A with her former husband, beginning: “In America I learned that the open road was more suitable and free flowing than being designated to a place”, and going on to explain, “I entered a native sense of mind like I do :)”.

The story is peppered with spiritual references and emoticon smileys as she tells how she has discovered beads, which to her are ’a tiny holder of the spirit‘ and as jewellery live their lives with you. What this and the videos discussed earlier have in common is a form of address that seeks to transform experience into something euphoric and spiritual.” You are left wondering, ’is this for real?’

Emotional Release Practical (film still), 2013

Aurora’s most beguiling work to date is ‘Adidas Mermaid’ (2010), recently screened across the UK as part of the Selected Touring Programme, curated by the nominees for the Jarman Award 2012. Wearing only Adidas tracksuit bottoms, Aurora stands in her bedroom, hair demurely covering her bare breasts, making mermaid-style poses. About two thirds of the way through, techno music begins and Beresford dances, legs still crossed as if a mermaid, but arms moving wildly above her, her breasts bobbing up and down.

Aurora’s work brings to mind early Tracey Emin, in particular her now iconic film ‘Why I Never Became a Dancer’ (1997), in which Emin narrates her story of teenage sexuality and failure to win a dance competition, culminating in her joyful dance to camera in her studio. Emin is often read in terms of truth and authenticity. But I would argue that there is a more Warholian vibe to her project of ’self‘, in that living as Emin and making art as Emin are deeply intertwined, if not one and the same thing.

Aurora could easily be tagged with the kind of ’bad-girl‘ baggage that Emin forever carries with her, but her performance as self-expression and as art work is more far more complex, for it addresses the semiotics of class, gender and culture today in world where real and virtual constantly collide.

Kathy Noble, 2013
http://www.axisweb.org/archive/profile/open-frequency/sophiel-aurora-2013/

 

Lower Foyer Gallery, Dundee, 2010

Splat that light!, 2018

 

As of April 2015, Sophiel Aurora has embarked on a career as a Spiritual Life Coach through her website: http://www.emotionalradiance.com/

Sophiel is an Evolutionary Artist and Spiritual Life Coach, Dedicated to Raising and Uplifting the Emotional Standards and Experiences of Human Beings on Planet Earth.

Connect with Her Through One on One Meetings Dedicated to Your Spiritual Health, Wellbeing and Progress, Group Sessions and Programs or Through Her Music, Art and Online Videos Designed to Bring You Home to Your Magnificence and Power.

“Sophiel is such a bright and compassionate spirit. I went to her while in panic and confusion over a certain situation and not only did she help me gain control of my emotions, she also helped me esreach the clarity I needed! She also provides exercises you can do on your own so you feel more empowered and in control of your emotions. I always feel much better after working with her. If you are feeling stuck or fearful about any situation, Sophiel is definitely someone that can help you move forward in a loving, yet powerful way!”

– Jennifer, USA

Your coaching helped me to open up more. Be more social again in my local and online community. I was really shut off from the world for a bit but now I’m hosting a web workshops with my friends…before it really was intimidating but your coaching allowed to open myself up again. And I created a gofund me for a community garden. Actually a lot things I am able to do since our last session…get connected to my local astrologers in my area…almost finish my ebook which I started 2 months ago thanks to your energy. Thank You Sophiel!

-Anon, USA

Images from exhibition November 2015 with Solo Arts:

Celeste White / ‘Heal Your Soul’ – A Blend of Science & Shamanism

 

Geordie, Mackem Magick, 17 March 2016 – 05 June 2016:

Felicity Skull, 2015

Glorious Backbone, 2014

Heavenly Shell, 2014

Golden Horn, 2014

Tiny Precious Bone, 2014

Magick Wand, 2014

Holy Planet series materials include 24kt gold leaf, sterling silver leaf, semi precious stones, Swarovski crystals, bones, feathers, shell, glass seed beads, bees wax, pine pitch, copper, best friends’ and own hair.

 

The Spirit of Bernicia, photo by Janina Sabaliauskaite

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF AN ARTIST

I’m looking forward to sharing this week’s post with you, simply because it’s amazing! I’m going to get right into it. This week I spoke to Sophie Lisa Beresford. Sophie is 30-years-old and is an artist and by her own definition a healer.

How did you get into your job?

My job is within me – it is who I am and always have been. I committed myself to art and healing and subsequently opportunities for me to exhibit my work and offer healing to others opened up.

What do you like about your job?

Fulfilling my life’s purpose. I am the type of human being who can’t sleep or feel at peace if I am out of alignment with my purpose. It is like a fail safe mechanism that ensures I am driven to fullfill my purpose, if I am off track I feel very ill and disorientated. What I like about it is being myself wholeheartedly and having the opportunity to share what is truly within me, with other people.

What are some of the challenges of your job?

Being an artist takes a lot of Faith in yourself and your work. Wading through and cleaning up the inner mess and moving a forward is what I have found to be a challenge.

What do you think are some of the challenges in the creative sector?

The challenges for me are the practicalities and form filling and building a business as a hyper-creative and dyslexic person. Acquiring funding etc. can be difficult for some artists as some of us are not wired to readily understand how to access the networks we need to access, in order to move our work into the community most effectively. Understanding the dry, mechanical parts of being an artist in business can be a hurdle.

If you did a degree, how has it helped you?

It helped me train my ferocity in self belief. You are challenged frequently when studying fine art. Rubbing up against ideas and being challenged frequently was not easy but it sharpened my blade (metaphorically).

Why did you pick to work the sector that you work in?

I chose to work on planet earth as a human artist. I chose this sector as humans are in a state of important evolution. We need art to support the evolution of humanity’s perception of who and what we are, so that we can grow beyond the cultures we were born into.

Describe a typical day in your job.

I wake up, listen to spirit and hear what I am to act upon. Then I exercise my body and focus upon what I am creating now.

I may be required to liaise with people from different organisations to organise elements of an upcoming art show. I may make art, be part of installing my art or even perform.

As an example: the day I took images for my new show upcoming this month (March 16 2016). I woke up and put in my 1.25 meter long hair extensions and put on my goddess make up and donned my top secret magical outfit.

I woke up my photographer who was sleeping on my sofa (she slept over the night before) and she made us some breakfast. She got her kit together as I finished up my look for the shoot.

We left in a taxi, headed for Sunderland city centre in the early hours of the morning.

We chose to do the city centre shoot before the town opened in the morning as my costume was revealing…

My photographer set up her kit in the centre of town near market square and gave me the signal.

I cast off my cover/large coat to reveal my handmade top secret super magical costume!

I posed in the centre of town while she captured the images we needed to complete a set we have been working on for the NGCA Sunderland.

Once we got the pics we headed off to another location and continued to add to our collection of shots.

These images will be exhibited this year in Washington Art Centre & NGCA Sunderland.

This is an example of a day in my life!

Any advice for people wanting to get into your sector and/or the creative industry?

It’s often left quite unknown how to get into being a professional artist, or it’s really hard for the artist to understand how to take practical steps towards this – as they may find it hard to key into practical systems as I do.

My advice is just bring yourself forth, bring what is within you (this is your gold) out into the world and share it with others.

This kicks off a momentum that brings opportunity to share yourself and your work more and more.

This is how I ‘became’ a professional artist.

I say ‘became’ because I have always been an artist, it has no beginning or end for me and no actual time when it became a ‘profession’.

It is important to understand the value of your work to the experience of other people and then bring it forth from within you for the world to ‘eat’.

Then opportunities can appear that allow you to offer more food to the human table.

Interview by Sophie Dishman
https://socialworkjourney2013.wordpress.com/2016/03/06/a-day-in-the-life-of-an-artist/

 

Goddess in the Hood, 2016

Photos by Michael Gardiner

 

If you’ve ever seen Sophie’s work before, particularly her performances, you’ll know that they exude an infectious energy. Speaking to her about her work is no less energetic, which comes as no great surprise when you realise that for Sophie, there is no separation between her art and herself. “My work is my spirit, my essence is my work, often when people ask what art do I do, I tell them I do art by any means necessary, to provide healthy code resonant structures for other humans to tap into, which is so necessary today.”

This creation and sharing speaks towards Sophie’s outlook on life. ‘The artist as shaman’ – artists as a conduit for people to access and realise a new way of seeing the world – is a concept perhaps most associated with Joseph Beuys and the Fluxus movement of the seventies, and is at the core of Sophie’s practice. “My overall mission as an artist, you could say, is to open a portal with no bounds for humanity, so they may easily access higher levels of their own consciousness, which means greater depths of their own true nature of their being.”

One of the mediums through which Sophie is able to channel her energy and her art is one deeply rooted within North East culture; Makina, the form of Spanish techno. Whilst it may seem an odd choice for an artist to utilise, listening to Sophie explain her practice it soon makes perfect sense: “Being born here I had two choices, there was the awful capitalist culture, that feels disgusting to me on a visceral level, or there’s this other culture, which was very rough but it was dedicated to its art: Makina. It had a rhythm of a tribe; we all share a rhythm and a resonance together.”

This channelling of her North East roots into a positive energy and sharing it with the world connects directly to her latest exhibition at Arts Centre Washington, Geordie, Mackem Magick, a series of monumental photographs of a shamanistic Sophie taken within the region. “I’ve put together this Newcastle and Sunderland strip into one outfit; it provides an image in the atmosphere of a one-ness within our tribes. That oneness lives within me and now independently through an image. It raises the concept of my people up into their greatness, their beauty and their divinity. Captured within an image it now serves as a cultural reference, to say ‘wow, there’s a divine amazing quality to Mackems and Geordies’, this magic, this drumbeat within them, that comes from there and nowhere else.”

Hearing Sophie talk you can’t help but be uplifted by her words and spirit, leaving you feeling invigorated by her positivity, a perfect antidote to the stresses of the modern world. “We are available to be great within this space, and I want to solidify that truth into our consciousness and I do it through art, and this is the power of art…art can turn over this whole fucking thing. And it will.”

David McDonald
http://narcmagazine.com/interview-sophie-lisa-beresford/

 

Images from the Geordie, Mackem Magick opening night at Washington Arts Centre 17.03.16:

Sunderland-based Sophie Lisa Beresford sees astonishing beauty in the everyday, and finds magic and wonder in the most ordinary places. Her large-scale photographs picture her own, personal mythology of Sunderland, across both its gritty, urban sides and its beautiful green spaces. Beresford won the Culture Award’s ‘Newcomer of the Year’ and is one of the most distinctive and original visions to come out of the city in many years.

http://www.artscentrewashington.co.uk/production-details.aspx?id=789

 

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p.s. Hey. ** David, Hi. I had a feeling that post might peel a story or two off of your storehouse of heated memories. Gold star for me. Hope you aced your ridiculously expensive test. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Thanks, pal. My day was no more enlightened or enlightening than yours was if that helps. The booster thing was a snap. I wanted Pfizer since my first two were that, but France isn’t giving Pfizer to people over 30 for some unknown reason, so I got Moderna. Unless I’m crazy, there were no side effects and I’ve felt totally normal ever since the tiny needle ouch. I hope your boost is similarly nothing if you get it. We have to get it here. If we don’t our passes go defunct, and we can’t even go in a cafe anymore. You laughed at the Chipmunks thing too? That’s a relief. There was something so incredibly stupid about it — and, yeah, I think it’s the song choice — that I couldn’t listen just once. Poor Professor Love, but he should have known. Love flying you to Paris so you can go with Zac and Ange and me to see a revival performance of Gisele Vienne’s and my 2012 theater piece ‘This is How You Will Disappear’ tonight, G. ** David Ehrenstein, What does that mean, ha ha? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. So there it is up there, back from the dead. Thank you again so much from ages later. Strange: I don’t remember those images having ‘Photobucket’ printed across them the last time, but maybe I’m spacing out? Yes, Coil and I both swiped that title from that film. Like minds. Glad your class restarts soon. I totally hear you about the structuring. ** Bill, I know, I blinked when I found the Beuys thing too. I want to see that new DelToro. It looks fun, and fun constitutes plenty these days. ** Nick Toti, Hi there, Nick! Good to see you, bud. Yeah, there’s a Yoko Ono film that’s just shots of butts, as I recall. It didn’t pop up in my search so it must not be out there. New film! And starring you! Double whammy. I’ll watch it later on today, thank you. Everyone, the excellent filmmaker Nick Toti, whose films have been featured here on the blog a few times, has a new film he’s sharing with us, and … he’ll explain. Nick: ‘I’ve got a newish movie (it was actually made in 2020) that I just made public after its lackluster attempt at a festival run. I’m not doing a big push for it because I’m a bit bashful about my own rather limited acting abilities. It was made while LA was first in lockdown, and some friends and I wanted to make something despite those strict shooting conditions. I like the movie when I can ignore the fact that I’m onscreen for half of it, and I especially like the ending which features a great piece of music my friends recorded for the project. Anyway, here it is for anyone interested.’ Thanks a lot about ‘I Wished’, man. I really, really appreciate it! ** Steve Erickson, I feel lucky, for sure. Hm, I know of Rxk Nephew, but have I heard him? Not sure, maybe not. It sounds pretty interesting. I’ll find that mixtape today. Thanks for the alert/share. Zac’s and my new film doesn’t qualify for French funding because it’s in English and will be shot in the States, although we can apply for post-production funds, which we will do. I can only say that in the case ‘PGL’, which was funded partly in France, we had nothing but an awesome experience with our producer, but he/they might just be unusually cool, I don’t know. Well, yeah, without the backstory that Colbert painting is nothing. ** l@rst, Hi. Your link didn’t work, but I think I found the stuff. Ha. I love Sebald’s stuff, yeah. A lot. It does have this curious ephemeral quality, so I can imagine it not sticking under certain brain-related circumstances. At least you’ve got ‘GR’. I wonder if I’ll ever read that again. I almost never reread books ‘cos, I don’t know, life seems too short? And it’s a time commitment. But, boy, so great. Have the expected tons of fun right there. ** Brian, Hey, Brian. Oh, right, I remember it’s on one of the Sade covers. The one I have is the original hardcover, which is just text, I think. Fancy looking text maybe.I’m trying the supposed fog free mask today, so, if it’s miraculous re: glasses, I’ll give you the 911. Or, wait, 411? I forget. Thanks about the film thing. It’s still very tentative, but it’ll be big if it comes through. ‘Phantom’ is kind all about some tricky chandelier prop or something, isn’t it? That’s almost the only thing I remember people talking about. I’m hitting the theater tonight myself, to see an older theater  piece by Giselle and me that’s being revived, and I do so look forward to it. I’ll definitely keep my eyes peeled for that possible million bucks. Same thing for your day, except, what the heck, make it a billion. ** Okay. Today I have successfully raised a wonderful and generous, formerly dead post by our very own _Black_Acrylic about the singular and also wonderful (and seemingly generous) artist Sophie Lisa Beresford. Please take some to investigate what she’s up to. See you tomorrow.