Explore "conceptualart" with insightful episodes like "This is Not a Magritte Episode", "The Ballad of Yoko Ono", "Ep 196: Mo Omar - World's Worst Artist", "Maximiliano" and "Interview with Conceptual Artist PETERMFRIESS - #CreativityWillSaveUs Phase 2" from podcasts like ""Art Attack w/ Lizy Dastin and Justin BUA", "Art Attack w/ Lizy Dastin and Justin BUA", "Worst Foot Forward", "Talking To Ghosts" and "CREATIVE POIS-ON PODCAST"" and more!
The work of René Magritte's is so iconic that one of his apple paintings inspired Paul McCartney to name the Beatles' company Apple Corps., which, in turn, inspired Steve Jobs to name his burgeoning computer company, Apple. Join our hosts as they explore the conceptual brilliance and paradoxical mystery of Magritte.
Biography often plays an integral role in how any given artist is historicized; however, in the case of Yoko Ono, that biography hasn't done her much service. Credited with breaking up the Beatles, Ono's relationship with John Lennon has unfortunately eclipsed her prolific, provocative and profound career as a conceptual artist. Join our hosts as they discuss and debate Ono's work and legacy.
This week we open the doors to the Worst Foot Gallery to uncover the world's worst artist. The collection is full of bodily fluids, fascists, murderers, self-proclaimed unjustified geniuses and one man who took performance art far to far indeed. We're joined by Mo Omar: a man who is stand-up comedy's gain to art school's loss. Enjoy this show whilst scratching your chin and considering the question: is this episode art?
Follow us on Twitter: @worstfoot @bazmcstay @benvandervelde @mokultra
Visit www.worstfootforwardpodcast.com for all previous episodes and you can donate to us on Patreon if you’d like to support the show in 2021, as we work on our first ever book! https://www.patreon.com/WorstFootForward
Worst Foot Forward is part of Podnose: www.podnose.com
This week on Talking to Ghosts podcast we have performance and conceptual artist Maximiliano to talk about their collaborative work "rise x fall (work in progress ii)", which we saw as part of the TBA:20 festival. We talk about the veil as a fluid object to represent self, Nat Turner Project, and how casual art work can be subversive.
Maxx's latest work, "Androids in the Tower," zine and performance trailer can be found on Maximiliano's website or Instagram.
Recently on the site Wes reviewed Deli Girl's fantastic new album, "BOSS," and at the end of this podcast Michael recommends you check out the HBO show "How To With John Wilson."
Talking to Ghosts is produced and recorded by Michael Kurt and Wesley Mueller. For reviews and an archive of all our episodes, please check out our Official Website.
Choreographer Miguel Gutierrez talks about the beauty of confident mistakes and what you can learn about people by how they handle fruit.
ABOUT THE GUEST:
Miguel Gutierrez is a choreographer, composer, performer, singer, writer, educator and advocate who has lived in New York for over twenty years. He has been presented in more than 60 cities around the world, in venues such as at Centre Pompidou, Festival Universitario, ImPulsTanz, Walker Art Center, MCA Chicago, and the 2014 Whitney Biennial. He is a Guggenheim and has received four Bessies. More information at miguelgutierrez.org.
ABOUT THE HOST:
Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA and other museums, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com.
ABOUT THE TITLE:
SHE'S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast.
CREDITS:
This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund. Producer: Devon Guinn
Creative Consultants: Stella Binion, Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue
Assistant Producers: Itai Almor, Charlie Theobald
Editor: Andrew Litton
Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver Theme Song: Jeff Hiller
Media: Justine Lee with help from Angela Liao and Alex Qiao
Cartoonist Roz Chast talks about arsenic-infused wallpaper and the occasional dutifulness of "I love you, too."
ABOUT THE GUEST:
Roz Chast has had her cartoons and covers featured in The New Yorker magazine since 1978. She is the author of several cartoon collections and children’s books. Her graphic memoir, Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was short-listed for a National Book Award in 2014. You Can Only Yell at Me for One Thing at a Time: Rules for Couples, an illustrated collection of love and relationship advice from writer Patricia Marx, with illustrations by Roz, will be released in January 2020. More info at rozchast.com.
ABOUT THE HOST:
Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA and other museums, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com.
ABOUT THE TITLE:
SHE'S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast.
CREDITS:
This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund. Producer: Devon Guinn
Creative Consultants: Stella Binion, Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue
Assistant Producers: Itai Almor, Charlie Theobald
Editor: Andrew Litton
Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver Theme Song: Jeff Hiller
Media: Justine Lee with help from Angela Liao and Alex Qiao
Cultural critic Robert Reid-Pharr examines the existential choice between elapsed time and remaining time on the elliptical.
ABOUT THE GUEST:
Robert Reid-Pharr is a Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality and of African and African American Studies at Harvard. He is the author of four books: Archives of Flesh: African America, Spain, and Post-Humanist Critique, Conjugal Union: The Body, the House, and the Black American; Black, Gay, Man: Essays; and Once You Go Black: Choice, Desire, and the Black American Intellectual.
ABOUT THE HOST:
Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA and other museums, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com.
ABOUT THE TITLE:
SHE'S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast.
CREDITS:
This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund. Producer: Devon Guinn
Creative Consultants: Stella Binion, Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue
Assistant Producers: Itai Almor, Charlie Theobald
Editor: Fraser McCulloch
Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver Theme Song: Jeff Hiller
Media: Justine Lee with help from Angela Liao and Alex Qiao
Choreographer Karen Sherman talks about the politics of applause and the olfactory landscape of the stage.
ABOUT THE GUEST:
Karen Sherman makes performances that have been presented by P.S. 122, Walker Art Center, Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, PICA/TBA Festival, Highways Performance Space, Philadelphia Dance Projects, and many other spaces across the U.S. Her work has been recognized with a Bessie Award, two McKnight Foundation Fellowships in Choreography, several MacDowell Colony fellowships, and residencies through Vermont Performance Lab and the Bogliasco Foundation program in Liguria, Italy. She was a 2016-2017 Hodder Fellow in The Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. More information at karenshermanperformance.org.
ABOUT THE HOST:
Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA and other museums, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com.
ABOUT THE TITLE:
SHE'S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast.
CREDITS:
This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund.
Producer: Devon Guinn
Creative Consultants: Stella Binion, Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue
Assistant Producers: Itai Almor, Charlie Theobald
Editor: Andrew Litton
Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver
Theme Song: Jeff Hiller
Media: Justine Lee with help from Angela Liao and Alex Qiao
Writer and performer Mike Albo talks about enthusiasm as a gay survival strategy and the erotics of fermented food.
ABOUT THE GUEST:
Mike Albo is a writer, performer, humorist and author. His novels include Hornito (HarperCollins) and The Underminer: The Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life (BloomsburyUSA), co-written with Virginia Heffernan. His solo shows, Spermhood and The Junket, have been presented nationally. You can find him on Instagram and Twitter.
ABOUT THE HOST:
Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA and other museums, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com.
ABOUT THE TITLE:
SHE'S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast.
CREDITS:
This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund.
Producer: Devon Guinn
Creative Consultants: Stella Binion, Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue
Assistant Producers: Itai Almor, Charlie Theobald
Editor: Fraser McCulloch
Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver
Theme Song: Jeff Hiller
Media: Justine Lee with help from Angela Liao and Alex Qiao
Writer Jia Tolentino contemplates whether animals can feel embarrassed for other animals and explores her desire to die in space.
ABOUT THE GUEST:
Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of the essay collection Trick Mirror. Formerly, she was the deputy editor at Jezebel and a contributing editor at the Hairpin. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine and Pitchfork, among other places. She lives in Brooklyn.
ABOUT THE HOST:
Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA and other museums, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com.
ABOUT THE TITLE:
SHE'S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast.
CREDITS:
This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund.
Producer: Devon Guinn
Creative Consultants: Stella Binion, Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue
Assistant Producers: Itai Almor, Charlie Theobald
Editor: Andrew Litton
Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver
Theme Song: Jeff Hiller
Media: Justine Lee with help from Angela Liao and Alex Qiao
Thanks: Jennifer Callahan, Roger Kingsepp, Tod Lippy, Nick Rymer, Maddy Sinnock, Sue Simon, Shirin Mazdeyasna
Comedian Naomi Ekperigin discusses her feelings about the spacebar key and the wisdom of not trusting your gut.
ABOUT THE GUEST:
Naomi Ekperigin is an actor, stand-up comedian and writer who has appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers, Two Dope Queens, and her own Comedy Central Half Hour special. Naomi has written for Comedy Central's Broad City, Hulu's Difficult People, and NBC's Great News. In 2017, she was listed as one of "10 Comedians You Need to Know" by Rolling Stone. Check out her podcast, with co-host/financé Andy Beckerman, at couplestherapypod.com.
ABOUT THE HOST:
Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA and other museums, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com.
ABOUT THE TITLE:
SHE'S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast.
CREDITS:
This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund.
Producer: Devon Guinn
Creative Consultants: Stella Binion, Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue
Assistant Producers: Itai Almor, Charlie Theobald
Editor: Andrew Litton
Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver
Theme Song: Jeff Hiller
Media: Justine Lee with help from Angela Liao and Alex Qiao
Thanks: Jennifer Callahan, Roger Kingsepp, Tod Lippy, Nick Rymer, Maddy Sinnock, Sue Simon, Shirin Mazdeyasna
Writer and performer Annie Lanzillotto discusses the pleasure of wolfing food down and how the "feels like" temperature is measured.
ABOUT THE GUEST:
Born and raised in the Westchester Square neighborhood of the Bronx of Barese heritage, Annie Lanzillotto is renowned memoirist, poet, and performance artist. She's the author of L IS FOR LION: AN ITALIAN BRONX BUTCH FREEDOM MEMOIR (SUNY Press), the books of poetry SCHISTSONG (Bordighera Press) and Hard Candy/Pitch Roll Yaw (Guernica Editions). She has received fellowships and performance commissions from New York Foundation For The Arts, Dancing In The Streets, Dixon Place, Franklin Furnace, The Rockefeller Foundation for shows including CONFESSIONS OF A BRONX TOMBOY: My Throwing Arm, This Useless Expertise, How to Wake Up a Marine in a Foxhole, and a’Schapett. More info at annielanzillotto.com. Catch Annie performing her one-person show Feed Time at City Lore in Manhattan on November 15 at 7:30pm.
ABOUT THE HOST:
Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA and other museums, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com.
ABOUT THE TITLE:
SHE'S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast.
CREDITS:
This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund.
Producer: Devon Guinn
Creative Consultants: Stella Binion, Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue
Assistant Producers: Itai Almor, Charlie Theobald
Editor: Andrew Litton
Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver
Theme Song: Jeff Hiller
Media: Justine Lee with help from Angela Liao and Alex Qiao
Thanks: Jennifer Callahan, Roger Kingsepp, Tod Lippy, Nick Rymer, Maddy Sinnock, Sue Simon, Shirin Mazdeyasna
TRANSCRIPT:
ANNIE LANZILLOTTO: In the Bronx we weren't poor. You're in the Bronx. My father was, working class, had his own business. There wasn't such big class distinctions. It was like Fiddler on the Roof class distinctions, like the butcher ate better.
NEIL GOLDBERG: Right.
ANNIE: We all had Raleigh Choppers. That was the best bicycle and really, most of us on the block could get that, a Schwinn or a Raleigh, you know? That was it really. That was in terms of being a kid, that was the class distinction. I achieved it, so I grew up feeling pretty rich until I was 13.
NEIL: Hello, I'm Neil Goldberg and this is my new podcast, She's A Talker. On today's episode I'll be talking to one-of-a-kind of poet, playwright, memoirist and performer Annie Lanzillotto. But first, I want to tell you a little bit about the podcast itself. I'm a visual artist, but for the last million or so years I've been writing passing thoughts down on index cards. I've got thousands of them. I originally wrote the cards just for me or maybe as starting points for future art projects, but now I'm using them as prompts for conversations with some of my favorite artists, writers, performers, and beyond. Why is it called She's A Talker? Way back in 1993, I made my first-ever video project which featured dozens of gay men in their apartments all over New York city combing their cats and saying the words, "She's a talker." 25 years later, I'm excited to resurrect the phrase for this podcast.
NEIL: Each episode, I'll start with some recent cards. Here they are, photo project, the litter boxes of celebrities, those people who have strong feelings about you're saying, "Bless you.", Before they sneeze. Babies making their dolphin noises at a wedding. Those glass buildings that appear curved, but then you realize it's just an approximation of a curve made from rectangle. I am so excited to have as my guest, writer and performer Annie Lanzillotto. Annie and I went to college together many, many years ago and have been dear friends ever since. She produced, what to this day, is still one of my favorite performance pieces ever. A site-specific opera featuring the vendors at the Arthur Avenue market near where she grew up in the Bronx. I remember a butcher singing a gorgeous love aria while frying up chicken hearts.
NEIL: Annie has a new double book of poetry out from Guernica Editions, called Hard Candy / Pitch Roll Yaw, which touches on parental mortality, her own struggles with cancer and poverty. And if that sounds heavy, there is so much beauty and joy and pleasure and straight-up polarity in the work. I spoke to Annie very late on a very hot August night in my art studio in Chinatown.
NEIL: I'm recording. I'm recording.
NEIL: I'm here with Annie Lanzillotto. Okay, Annie. Here are a couple of questions that I ask everyone. What is the elevator pitch for what you do?
ANNIE: Oh my God, that's so hard. I write and speak and put my body on stage, and in live and an audience, whoever's in the room, I resuscitate that room.
NEIL: Is that what you would say to someone in an elevator who asks, "Hey, what do you do?"
ANNIE: No.
NEIL: What would you say to them? I resuscitate the room.
ANNIE: Some people I say, "Well, I do theater. Oh, I'm in theater." Then they say, "Oh, I saw the Lion King.", or something. Oh, that's beautiful. At some point when I was cleaning out the closets, I found the picture I drew as a kid. I think the question was, what do you do or what do you want to do or what do want to be or whatever? I drew five situations where this stick figure was commanding a story. One was at the table, one was on a corner, one was on the stage, and I thought, "That's what I do."
NEIL: I love it. I love it.
ANNIE: The truth about my elevator pitch is I'm listening to the other person in the elevator. That really is the truth. I always feel like I'm very good at bonding but not so good at networking. So, that elevator pitch, in my mind, is someone who is in a position maybe to help me advance my work, which is a problem to frame it that way. But in reality they end up telling me about their sick kid and we're hugging and that's really the elevator pitch.
NEIL: Right.
ANNIE: I'm just listening to-
NEIL: Do you do an elevator catch?
ANNIE: Yeah. Just listen.
NEIL: What did your mom, Annie, let's say a friend of hers asked her, "What does Annie do?" What would she say?
ANNIE: Well, she at times, probably would've said, I taught. I did workshops, taught writing and theater. I think with her neighbors, she would really share with them her love and pride.
NEIL: How about your grandmother? Why would she say?
ANNIE: Oh God. Well, Grandma Rose, she would, Grandma Rose always wanted to know you were eating good. At the time when she was alive, I was hustling a lot of teaching jobs, like Poet in the Schools. Mostly I was a Poet in the School, so I would call her between schools. I was running from one school and another school and she'd just always want to know cosa mangia oggi? What did you eat today? Really that was the conversation.
NEIL: Would she, in talking about you with friends, would she tell them what you had eaten that day? How's Annie doing?
ANNIE: She's a good eater. She eats good. Mangia bene. No, I don't know. I don't think she talked to her friends that way.
NEIL: Yeah.
ANNIE: But to boil it down, she would want to know if you're making money. And that's the conversation with friends. Oh, she's a good girl. She makes money. She helps her mother.
NEIL: Yeah.
ANNIE: It wasn't about career choice or something.
NEIL: Annie, what's something you find yourself thinking about today?
ANNIE: One thought I'm having is that prices are arbitrary. The other day I went for breakfast in a diner. I ordered one way, but the waitress understood in a different way. So anyway, it was two eggs, whatever. So she said, "That'll be $17." I said, "That sounds like a lot." She said," Oh well you got this, you got that" I said, "Yeah, but I ordered the combo. It's shouldn't be that much." So she rang it up a different way. She was like, "All right, how about $12?" It's almost seems like prices don't matter and it seems arbitrary. I think this is a new experience for me because in the past I started noticing what my mom, every time we went food shopping, several items were rung up more than they were supposed to be. My mother was sharp at this because I think in ShopRite if you caught a mistake, you got a lot for free, whatever the, there was some bonus like you got that item for free or whatever it was. So she caught them a lot. But it was pretty much every time.
NEIL: Yeah.
ANNIE: I'm cognizant now not to buy too many items at once because then I can't keep track of what the prices were on the shelf. The old way, if you go to the market for two, three things, string beans, peaches and a piece of meat you don't lose track because you're buying, you have a push cart with a million items, how can you keep track? So I guess the thought is that prices have no relevance anymore to what the thing is.
NEIL: Okay Annie, let's go to the cards. Shall we?
ANNIE: Let's do it. Let's go to the cards.
NEIL: Okay. Our first card, the card says the pleasure of wearing things out.
ANNIE: I love that you brought that up. Well, I was always wearing out my sneakers and throwing them up on the telephone wires or the light wires, or whatever wires were over our heads in the Bronx and that was the joy to wear them out. My mother, who was a cripple as a kid because she fell out a window, would always say to me when she bought me new sneakers, PF flyers with the sneakers that I wore as a kid, "Wear them out. God bless you, be in good health. Wear them out." Every two months I'd wear out those sneakers, and my grandmother was horrified.
NEIL: But your mother would love it?
ANNIE: Yeah, because to her that was health. Wear out your sneakers. That meant I was doing the work of a tomboy, of the kid. I do feel worried about wearing out pajamas and things that I don't really have money to replace. So my neighbor saw me sewing a new elastic in my pajama bottoms with the flannel pajamas. She was making fun of me." Why don't you just go buy a new pair?" I was like, "Well this season I really don't have another 40, 50 bucks for LLB or whatever. I want to get through the season.", which is something I grew up hearing, but it stayed with me, like see if he could get into the season out of it.
NEIL: I wonder if we'll ever feel that way about our lives. Let's see if I can get another season out of this.
ANNIE: Well, I do hear people saying, "I wish I had a few more summers at the beach." Or, "I could, I hope I could have a few more summers." People do count like that.
NEIL: That's true.
ANNIE: Like seasons.
NEIL: Yeah.
ANNIE: "I hope I see Italy one more time." I hear people, "Will I get back to Paris."
NEIL: Right.
ANNIE: You know, I hear people saying things like that.
NEIL: yeah,
ANNIE: So they do try to stretch it out, I think. I don't know. Sometimes I feel like I've done enough. There is a part of me that feels like I've done enough to be satisfied if there's no more. If there's no more, it's okay.
NEIL: Okay, next card.
ANNIE: I love these cards. It's like playing a game like Monopoly.
NEIL: Yeah.
ANNIE: And you get Community Chest or whatever the-
NEIL: I know.
ANNIE: Chance. It's like Chance.
NEIL: Yeah. Here's this Chance. I think it's important to have access when you are eating something you love to imagine them as they are to people who hate them. For me the classic example of that is dark chocolate, which I love. It's very easy I think, for me to plug into how someone would find this disgusting and somehow my tuning into finding it disgusting, helps me to enjoy it even more.
ANNIE: Really?
NEIL: Yeah. Do you remember the first time you had coffee?
ANNIE: No, because I was probably two years old with expresso on my bottle, like most Italian kids.
NEIL: Right.
ANNIE: I don't eat things that I know people who, they hate what I eat. But people do, I feel like having a version to my proportions, the amount I eat. I think that freaks people out because I grew up, and I still wolf food down. Just Wolf it down and too much of it. Just shoving it in your mouth. Like your cheeks bulging, you're chewing and you're just yeah. Shoving as much as you can in your mouth, basically.
NEIL: In Yiddish, you say, and I think it's related to German, human beings es but animals fres. So, if you're talking about someone eating in a certain way, you say they use the term for how animals eat versus how people eat.
ANNIE: Fres?
NEIL: Yeah.
ANNIE: What does that mean? Like that?
NEIL: Yeah.
ANNIE: Like a piece of pizza I could just shove in my mouth, inhale, a good piece, out on the corner.
NEIL: Right.
ANNIE: I just pull up in Hoboken where my friend is, where she works, there's a great pizzeria right on the corner. She gets free pizza because she does their printing services. So I meet her, she says, "Oh I'll meet you outside" So we get a piece of pizza. Oh you want a piece of pizza. All right, give me a piece of pizza. Fine. I'm an Hoboken, eat a piece of pizza. She gets a few slices. We stand on the corner. Just boom, shove it in our mouth. Wolf it down like folded by. No soda, no water. Just inhale the piece of pizza.
NEIL: Is there pleasure in that?
ANNIE: Yes.
NEIL: Because see I always just associate the pleasure of eating with eating slowly but-
ANNIE: No. Not Italians
NEIL: Talk to me about it.
ANNIE: It's just, this pleasure of your mouth is full of this gooey perfect thing. You just can't believe that you lived another day just to have ... It's like then I want to stay alive because it's such satiation, with just shoving it in your mouth. You're not taking your time because you're not worried there's another bite. It could just be gone.
NEIL: See, this makes me feel good because I remember when my dad, after he had a stroke, he couldn't feed himself. He couldn't communicate and we had this person who would help him. She was cold and she used to feed him so quickly, spoonful after spoonful, to get it over with. I knew that my dad actually like to eat slow. I know I talked about with my sister. I was like, you know, do you think I should ask? I can't remember her name, little trauma blocked out, but to feed him slower. My sister said. "No, I think there can be pleasure in eating fast." Speaking of food, but this question doesn't need to just apply to food, what is a taste that you've acquired?
ANNIE: Well, coffee, vino, peppermint soap. Dr. Brown's peppermint soap. Myrrh.
NEIL: Oh wow. Okay.
ANNIE: The street oil from the guys. I've grown accustomed to Myrrh, and the smells of the city, I've learned to groove on in a way. I sometimes feel in the grassy suburbs, I could sneeze hundreds of times and I just need to get to the city and it'll stop. So something about like, yeah, I'm good with the asphalt, tar. My mother used to tell me to go breathe where they're burning tar. She said it clears out your lungs.
NEIL: Wow.
ANNIE: She said tar ladies and never get colds.
NEIL: Okay, next card. I feel really judgmental of people with a strong will to live.
ANNIE: That gives me so much good feeling because I'm so tied to having to struggle to live. But the best, Jimmy Cagney in this movie I saw, I don't know what movie. It was on TCN, and he's about to run into this gunfire and he says to his partner, who was hesitating, he says, "What, do you want to live forever?" I thought, "Thank you, thank you. That's just what I needed to hear." I'm so tired of fighting to live, from the cancer and the breathing issues and just, Oh my God, that's a relief. It really is.
NEIL: Next card. Life is hard, but how the pitch rises when you fill a water bottle can still be pretty beautiful.
ANNIE: The pitch.?
NEIL: Yeah. Is that the word for it?
ANNIE: Like, how you feel?
NEIL: You know when you fill a water bottle and it goes, errr? There's always that still.
ANNIE: I like filling my water bottle. I've been filling it in the Britta, so I have to stand there with the fridge open to fill it and then I water the plants and it's the same kind of feeling. I like doing that. I like seeing the plants grow and it's the most pleasurable thing in my life to see in these plants growing and feeding them water.
NEIL: I went away and we sublet our place. I have one big plant that really only needs to be watered every two weeks. But I had one plant that needs to be watered, I water it every other day.
ANNIE: Every other day?
NEIL: Truthfully, this plant, I remember one day I came in, it had wilted, after. I hadn't watered it for three days and I found myself saying out loud, "Drama queen". So anyhow, we were down in DC for a month and I was going to take the plant with me, but we had this really wonderful sub-letter and I just said to her, "Do you think you would be okay watering the plant twice a week? Totally no problem. "If you're not, I'll just take it down with me". She was like, "Absolutely no problem." When I came back, she left me a note that said, I'm so sorry but I killed your plant.
ANNIE: Oh my God.
NEIL: It was clear it hadn't been watered the whole time I was gone.
ANNIE: Really?
NEIL: Yeah, I don't think so. I moved on, but my point is, I don't get how a plant could be there in your living room and he could not see it and it could be dying over there without you're taking that in.
ANNIE: When I'm someone's house and the plants don't look healthy, I register that in a big way.
NEIL: What is that registration?
ANNIE: Well, people could think they're so smart or hip or they make such great decisions and doing this. But if you can't take care of a fucking plant, it doesn't mean anything to me. Sometimes I can't go back to people's houses for reasons like that because I can't witness the abuse.
NEIL: Plant abuse.
ANNIE: Well, any sentient being. Yeah, some of the stuff I just can't stomach, to be honest. The plants dying or no one's ... You're that busy? Then what do you have plants for? Give it away. I just can't-
NEIL: I hear you. Do you think of plants a sentient?
ANNIE: Yeah, a plant is alive and I think communicates in ways we'll never understand. A plant has movement, responds to light, water, earth, the sky, the sun, everything.
NEIL: I just have a card that's called, swallowing pills.
ANNIE: Swallowed a big one today.
NEIL: Yeah.
ANNIE: Before I go to the dentist, I have to take Amoxicillin. In America they give you a 500 milligram pills. You got to take four.
NEIL: Wow.
ANNIE: They go down easy. But I had some Amoxicillin from Sicily. They were one- gram pills. They were big and I tried to swallow three times. I couldn't get it down. I had to really focused then. Should I bite it, should I swallow it? what can I try? Am I going to choke on it? Finally I got it down this morning, but it wasn't coated so it stuck a little in the mouth. I went through this whole thing with this pill.
NEIL: You really have to consciously will yourself. The experience of swallowing pills is such an odd, it's not eating. You have to do this thing where you don't chew something. Swallowing-
ANNIE: You got to open the back of your mouth a little bit, the throat a little bit.
NEIL: Yeah. And it goes against something really basic or a bunch of things that are really basic.
ANNIE: It does. Right. You don't swallow M&Ms.
NEIL: Right.
ANNIE: You'd never swallow an M&M.
NEIL: Absolutely not.
ANNIE: Never would you swallow an M&M. it would be like, what are you doing?
NEIL: I had a colonoscopy recently.
ANNIE: Oh, brother.
NEIL: Thank you.
ANNIE: Nice and clean?
NEIL: One thing, I was telling a friend, I got a colonoscopy and he said, "Oh, you know, I had it. I just did one, a couple of months ago, and my doctor really commended me for how clean my colon was." I realized when I had a, because I've had to have a few because of this history in my family. Every time, they go out of their way to praise what a job, how clean your colon is. So when I was done with the colonoscopy, and I was talking to this friend and he said, "Well did he praise you for how clean your colon was?" I was like, "He didn't."
ANNIE: He didn't?
NEIL: He didn't, but then I got the report about the colonoscopy and it's like very formal, and it's the patient presented with an exceedingly clean colon or something.
ANNIE: Which is abnormal.
NEIL: Exactly.
ANNIE: Very abnormal.
NEIL: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Last card. The feels-like temperature.
ANNIE: Feels like.
NEIL: You know how you feel when the weather-
ANNIE: It feels like, yeah, that's weird.
NEIL: What is the feels-like temperature?
ANNIE: I don't know but-
NEIL: How do they-
ANNIE: But today when I felt like, before I put on a jacket, I had to go on the stoop to feel what it was going to feel like. Then I didn't do it. But I don't know how they measure the feels-like temperature. That's a sweet thought. So there's a thermometer, then there's a naked lady standing there saying, "Well the thermometer says this, but it really feels that." That should be a job for somebody.
NEIL: Oh my God, to come up with the feels-like temperature?
ANNIE: Yeah. Like is it a nipple hard day? Is it what day? What kind of day is it?
NEIL: Okay. Annie, this is a quantification question. What's something bad or even just okay that you would take over a good thing of something else.
ANNIE: All right, I'll give you a list. A bad eggplant Parmesan hero over a good raw sushi meal. A bad thunderstorm storm over a hundred-degree day. A hard day in the hospital with someone I'm close to, over being at the beach with 10 friends. Take any day, bad or good in the rehearsal room, over chit-chat brunch. A bad rant in the basement of the mental home with my father over a beautiful meal with intellectuals.
NEIL: On that note, Annie, I love you. Thank you for being on the show, She's A Talker.
ANNIE: She's a talker, baby. Thank you, Neil. You're my favorite host.
NEIL: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of She's A Talker. I really hope you liked it. To help other people find it, I'd love it if you might rate and review it on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to it. Some credits. This series is made possible with generous from Stillpoint Fund, and with help from Devon Guinn, Aaron Dalton, Stella Binion, Charlie Theobald, Itai Almor, Alex Qiao, Molly Donahue, Justine Lee, Angela Liao, Andrew Litton, Josh Graver, and my husband Jeff Hiller who sings the theme song you're about to hear. Thanks to them, to my guest, Annie Lanzillotto, and to you for listening.
Sarah Davachi meets with Marc Kate for the 36th episode of Why We Listen to listen to and discuss:
Dennis Wilson – ‘Mexico’
James Tenney – ‘Critical Band’
John Frusciante – ‘Untitled #11’ and ‘Untitled #12’
Sarah Davachi is an is a Canadian electronic musician.
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http://www.whywelisten.marckate.com/Assets/audio/36-Sarah_Davachi.mp3
Notes:
1. National Music Centre
2. You Must Remember This podcast
3. Sarah Davachi’s “Dominions”
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