SRO @ MCCC!

From start to finish, Friday was a perfect day at Mercer County Community College!

Academic Theatre Program Instructor Alex DeFazio & I began the day with a great interview by Rachel Katz who hosts the dynamic 'Views & Voices' at WWFM, a classical music public radio station that operates out of Mercer County Community College.

Afterward, we had an at length & many faceted conversation with Mercer Communications professor Alvyn Haywood for WWFM's 'Jazz on 2', Trenton's Jazz Station. We touched on topics ranging from the importance of Jazz in the context of contemporary culture, specific inspiration for me during the writing of JOE SENT ME, the background of my connection and collaboration with Alex DeFazio which led to JOE SENT MDE, future plans, and more.

Professor Haywood & those at WWFM are shaping an immensely innovative and important program, one that reaches out to Trenton & beyond in a broad-minded and all-inclusive way, a model for radio stations everwhere that seek to educate, influence & inspire their audience as well as entertain. Read more about 'Jazz on 2' here.

The students who attended the Q&A were some of the most interesting, inquisitive & insightful that I've come across anywhere. Questions ran the gamut, from the technical, relating to the signing recording contracts, to the personal, concerns about the future possibility of facing the 'casting couch', something every female artist will most likely have to face at one time or another. We discussed the importance of smartly navigating the sometimes treacherous music business waters, the current state of flux & chaos in the industry, the various ways of keeping one's inspiration alive & vital, and the importance of discipline as an artist.

It was a packed room and an amazing conversation! Thanks to all the MCCC students & faculty members who made their presence felt by attending & participating in what was an experience for all to remember! As we approach the JOE SENT MDE performance dates (May 16th & 17th) I'll be creating a virtual document of the experience here, as well as featuring artwork by immensely talented Mercer Art, Design, Dance & Theatre students. Come May 17 & 18th, I'll be adding video & photos of JOE SENT MDE.



See you there!

Vanessa Daou Visits Mercer County Community College 3/27

"The Academic Theatre and Dance Programs at Mercer County Community College are hosting a campus visit by #1 Billboard Dance Artist Vanessa Daou on Friday, March 27 at 12:30 p.m. The community is invited to join Ms. Daou for a Q&A session in the Studio Theatre (CM 122), located next to Kelsey Theatre on the college's West Windsor campus, 1200 Old Trenton Road. The event is presented free of charge.

According to MCCC Theatre Program Coordinator Jody Person, Ms. Daou's visit to campus represents an extraordinary opportunity for Mercer students and members of the community who are musicians, graphic designers, dancers, programmers, visual artists, performers and writers. Says Person, "Vanessa has performed everywhere from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles to the Olympia Theatre in France. She's also an interdisciplinary artist who works with music, poetry, visual art, graphic design, and interactive digital art. Most importantly, she's a thinking artist, and this is precisely the quality we are working to nurture in students of the Theatre and Dance Programs at MCCC."

Link to full article on Broadway World

@bendrix on blip.fm

@bendrix on blip.fm: "Vanessa Daou: erotica artist/poet. "Plutonium Glow" (1997) dreamy female vocals caught in an electro space age vortex." codesignal.com

The Daou of Poetry: A conversation with musician and poet Vanessa Daou By Collin Kelley

A portion of my interview by incredible poet, novelist & journalist Collin Kelley from issue #2 of the Ouroboros Review, a stunning new poetry & art journal:

Collin: Let’s start back at the beginning of your life as a poet – who inspired you?

Vanessa: When I was attending Columbia University, I studied poetry with Kenneth Koch. His class was amazing and he was such a communicator for his vision and idea of poetry. He shattered the notion that poetry is something unapproachable and obtuse. I became interested in spoken word because of him and I often read at PostScrypt, the poetry spot at Columbia.

......

Collin: Joe Sent Me is amazing. The music reminds me of Miles Davis’ score for Elevator to the Gallows, and the spoken word element is really strong here; much more so than on the other records.

Vanessa: Originally, I conceived of Joe Sent Me as a soundtrack of sorts to my own life, perhaps a projection of it, as a kind of sonic document of my experience through time. I have a background and interest in research and one of those interests is in code, with respect to words and the kind written for a computer. Joe Sent Me is an old speakeasy password from the Prohibition-era. You said those words at a door and suddenly you were in this hidden, mysterious place. That idea intrigued me. On the digipack for the album there is a quote from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Poetry as Insurgent Art that reads, “Words on a page of poetry are a code for human emotions.” That idea is the heart of the album.

Issue #2 also contains poetry by Michelle McGrane, Iain Britton, Rebecca Gethin, Julie Buffaloe-Yoder, and Robin Reagler, and more.

Make sure to view Hunter Ewen's illustrations & listen to his score to Amy Pence's poetry, follow the link in the NEWS section of Ouroboros here

Editors Jo Hemmant of flourescence & Christine Swint of balanced on the edge have created an internet savvy & highly forward-looking Poetry & Art experience.

JOE SENT M(D)E

"The Mercer Dance Ensemble features a group of MCCC's [Mercer Community College's] most talented students and alumni, plus some special guests. This years concert will be a landmark collaboration between the Mercer Dance Ensemble and critically acclaimed singer-songwriter Vanessa Daou.

Choreographed by dance faculty Janell Byrne, with guest choreography by Jody P. Person and others, Joe Sent M.D.E. features music from Daou’s new album, Joe Sent Me, which she named after a code-phrase that was used to gain entry into Prohibition-era speakeasies. Daou says the album is about "the transmission of ideas through time, the secret ranges of the voice, fleeting nights of love and desire, the archiving of dreams, memory, and the imagination." Joe Sent M.D.E. transforms Daou's ideas into a suite of dances constructed around the central metaphor of the album – to discover "secret codes," in a language of the body, that will open doors into illicit paces of rebellion and abandon"

[ Kelsey Theatre ]

Joe Sent Me-poetry & Intangible Culture

"...the sense of here/not here, this want of places to
be, enter & make
sagacious."
Barry McKinnon, from Two from In the Millennium


I've always loved the sounds of words, but words mean nothing until and unless meaning is provided or attached. The beauty of Poetry is that meaning can be sensed, gleaned, inferred, intuited, without the necessity of being fully understood. Poets love to tease out meaning from fleeting things - the evanescence of a street lamp on a dusky day, the sense of absence from the low hum of someone's murmurs heard through walls.

A unique element of poetry is its ability to compress and condense feeling, as well as its portability & flexibility: it can be transferred, translated & transmitted, it fulfills our need for immutability as well as intangibility. Perhaps the reason Poetry continues to thrive throughout the ages is that it fits into Primary as well as Secondary Oral Traditions. And while, at its core, a poem consists of words in one form or another, a great poem speaks to everyone and is appreciated equally by the theoriser and blogger. In the final analysis, a poem is apprehended not by applied knowledge but by the totality of its essence.

While I'm drawn to the intimacy of a poem on the page, I've always loved to hear a poem as it is intoned by its author. One of the aspects of technology that I love is its ability to re-contextualize a song or a poem, and while the debate rages about Poetry's place within the truly unruly realm of the Web, on needs only to look back at the invention of the typewriter to see its effect on the generation of Dada Poets who contemporaneously harnessed and applied its potentialities to an infinite and ever-expanding degree.

I've conceived of JOE SENT ME-poetry as part of a living document, where each poem takes on a life of its own outside of the writer and the written hand. As a featured guest of Barcelona Poesia 2008, I created JOE SENT ME @ BarcelonaPoesia2008 to reflect the way my mind reconstructs my experience of Barcelona, the vibrant clash of its cultures and co-mingling of languages live and breath in my memory in a a vivid and tangible way.

I wanted to flesh out the tonal & vocal nuances of some of the spoken poems on JOE SENT ME, which led to my collaboration with sound & visual artist Raul Vincent Enriquez who shed his sonic insight into THE HOOK and LOVE LIVES IN THE DARK; Bruno Galindo, who shaped flawless & beautiful Spanish translations of THE HOOK & LOVE LIVES IN THE DARK; and Daniel Sisla, fellow guest poet at the Barcelona Poesia 2008, who has so perceptively and impeccably created Catalan translations of LOVE LIVES IN THE DARK, DREAM, and INTO THE NIGHT (both not included on the album). The poems on JOE SENT ME were recorded by Greta Byrum who shared her ear & expertise with their recording at Recorded Books, New York City.

The aim for these pages is to break down each poem into its component parts:

word/sound

structure/form

rhythm/repetition

writer/reader

speaker/listener

creator/viewer

imagination/interpretation

The internet provides the perfect vehicle for the nuances of poetry, for the transportation of its substance & essence, for the transmission of its message through time. For me, raw computer coding languages hold within them pure poetic potential: the hope is to shape new ways of perceiving technology and its relation to language, music, things remembered, things heard, reflection, recollection and the spoken word.

---

For further excursions into intangible realms, visit:

Drunken Boat

exoticpylon

UbuWeb

Weird Deer

Year Zero One

Facebook Fanpage

Jonny Mugwump & The Exotic Pylon on Resonance FM 104.4, UK

exoticpylon.com is a radio show based in the UK - Jonny Mugwump brings the listener into his strange and darkly beautiful resonance every week, saturdays 9:30 PM -

you can hear songs from my new album Joe Sent Me here and here

the radio archive list is here

more on exoticpylon on these pages soon -

phone interview with Jonny is forthcoming...

Q&A with Elixer Productions Co-Founder Alex DeFazio

Q&Daou

This May, the Dance Program at Mercer County Community College will collaborate with the Mercer Dance Ensemble to present the world-premier of Joe Sent M.D.E., a program of original dances set to music from the new album by acclaimed singer-songwriter Vanessa Daou.

To help promote the event and show her support, Daou will be appearing at Mercer County Community College on Friday, March 27 at 12:30pm for a Q&A with Theatre Program instructor and Elixir Productions co-founder Alex DeFazio. What follows are Vanessa's e-mailed responses to drafts of Alex's questions for the Q&A as well as two additional questions and answers - exclusive to Elixir - where Vanessa shares her thoughts about gender and sexuality and how they inform her music.

Joe Sent M.D.E. performs Saturday, May 16 at 8:00 and Sunday, May 17 at 2:00pm at Kelsey Theatre on the MCCC campus (1200 Old Trenton Road / West Windsor, NJ). Tickets are available by phone at 609-570-333 or online at the Kelsey Theatre website. Vanessa will be appearing on campus Friday, March 27 at 12:30pm in CM122 (Communications Building Room 122); the Q&A is free and open to the public!

In the mean time, look for Joe Sent Me, Vanessa's new album, at Daou Records.

[ Link to original post on Elixer Productions Blog ]

---

Alex: Many of our students at Mercer County Community College aspire to professional careers in the arts - as musicians, actors, visual artists, graphic designers, dancers. You were a student at Vassar and then Barnard College and Columbia University, and it was around this time that you began reading your poems at coffee houses and experimenting with singing and songwriting. How did you make the transition from student to major-label artist? Was it a transition that "found" you, or one that you consciously worked for, and what were some major stepping stones in your path?

Vanessa: It was a transition that definitely found me. I came from an art, poetry, and performance background, so the concept of being a "major label artist" was very unfamiliar to me. In the early 90s I was friends with a group of experimental underground electronic DJs and musicians, and I was in the studio one day at NuGroove Records, a seminal and groundbreaking label, when a DJ producer asked if I could write a song to one of his tracks. I came from a musical background so it wasn't that much of a stretch for me. When I sang the song to him once I finished, he asked me to be the vocalist on the song. It was very successful in the UK as well as the US, and ended up being the best selling record on the label.

Columbia Records found out about the release and my poetry background, and signed me and my then-husband Peter, who I had been collaborating with on a number of experimental tracks as "The Daou." I would say that one of my major stepping stones was my dance background, as I had been incorporating improvisational modern dance into all of my performances, including my showcase for Columbia Records, and my first public performance at the first massive rave in LA at the Shrine Auditorium.

Alex: Many of our students majoring in theatre and dance take a course called "Artistic Collaboration" that asks them to combine their talents and independently create a series of performances. How important was artistic collaboration to you in your early years, from Barnard and Columbia through the creation of you first album, Head Music?

Vanessa: Collaboration is a necessary component of being a singer and performer, which always involves working with others - whether it's in the studio or on stage. When you're a student, the impression is sometimes that in the "real world" it is either a black or white situation: either you're an actor or a fundraiser, either you're a painter or curator. But I think that's an old model that doesn't work anymore, and that in the new cross-cultural world it's also an equally cross-disciplinary world where it would benefit students immensely if these interlaced professional boundaries were broken, and more than that, erased, so that artists could become more in charge and more fully aware of all aspects and potentialities of their art, creatively as well as technically and financially.

Alex: As instructors in the Theatre and Dance Programs at Mercer County Community College, one of our missions is to help students embark on the process of discovering their own unique and authentic voices as artists. Virginia Woolf was thirty-three years old when she published her first novel, The Voyage Out, and she wrote, even then, that she was only just beginning to discover her voice and identity as a novelist and writer. How do you understand this idea of "artistic voice," and when would you say you really began to discover and claim your own unique identity as an artist?

Vanessa: The idea of "artistic voice" has always intrigued me: it's descriptive of both the intangible essence as well as the audible aspect, where, as a singer, the "voice" is the literal vehicle that carries the message forward. I discovered my own voice early on, from my first recording. I felt immediately that my literal voice matched the poetic one I was developing, that my voice has a sonic quality which combined something ethereal as well as a direct kind of clarity. In my poetry I was exploring these dualities, confessional and intimate tones - through poets like Anne Sexton, Anne Waldman, and Wallace Stevens - and more universal and broad-reaching tones - through poets such as John Ashbery and Allen Ginsberg.

Although I discovered my own artistic voice early in my career, it has been a slow and gradual process of honing, shaping and fine-tuning my voice and poetic vision, which is constantly being redefined as the years pass and the world continues in a constant state of movement, this way or that.

Alex: Despite the boom of independent art-making over the past decade or two - in film, theatre, music, and other disciplines - I'm sure many students still dream of "making it big" by signing to major agents, being cast in Broadway productions or studio films, or scoring a contract with a major record label. Your first album, Head Music, was released by Columbia Records, and your next two albums, Zipless and Slow to Burn, were released by MCA. What was your experience as a major-label artist, and how would you encourage young artists today to think about "success" in relationship to major labels and institutions?

Vanessa: I think "making it big" is a dream that is highly overrated. Especially too early in an artist's career, before they've had the chance to develop fully, it frequently puts many pressures on one's art which are impossible to overcome.

I've had the unique and rare opportunity to experience being on a small independent label, major labels, as well as running my own label. While there are undoubtedly advantages to being on a "major label," there are as many drawbacks, and for me having artistic control has always been negotiated in my recording contracts. It's something that I've fought for, but for the most part it's something that is usually relinquished once you sign your contract.

After I negotiated out of my contract with Columbia records, I put out Zipless on my own record label. It was after many months of success with it that Bob Krasnow discovered the album and signed me to MCA, and re-released it. For all the successes with large institutions, I can point to as many failures, and this leaves artists at a disadvantage when they become so dependent on these institutions that they are unable to navigate on their own, whether out of fear or lack of
know-how. Many artists will give up the fight or lose their artistic spirit once faced with too many rejections from institutions. Some artists will become emboldened and push into further realms where they self-release their record or self-publish their book, finding more success there than ever. It is from these artists that I've learned the most.

Alex: In the late 80s and early 90s - right around the time you began your major-label recording career - there were no iPods, no technologies to create audio files of manageable size, and therefore no means to electronically share or sell music in non-physical formats over the internet. Back in 1996 when you left MCA, the mp3 was still relatively new, and you became one of the first artists to distribute an album over the internet, Plutonium Glow. How did the mp3 enter your world, and what effect did it have on your understanding of the relationship between art and technology?

Vanessa: One of the advantages an artist has that big institutions do not is their ability to be flexible and malleable and keep their finger constantly on the pulse of society, continuously on top of their craft. When you're in a corporate environment, your world becomes skewed and distorted, where itís about listening to the consensus rather than some private muse.

From the earliest days of the internet, I saw it as a tool as well as a vehicle for the sale and dissemination of music, as it was becoming for news and entertainment. I was able to retain digital rights on Zipless and Slow to Burn because, at the time, the major labels did not have the foresight to see that one day, this would be critically important. I've also seen the landscape shift to the point where many music industry professionals are predicting a total phase out of the CD format, where only digital downloads will be available. The problem with this is not only the
diminishing importance of the album as a form of expression, but a trivialization of the idea of what a recording artist is.

Alex: Something thatís really remarkable about your albums is how much thought goes into them. For Zipless, you chose nine poems by Erica Jong and arranged them for music. For Slow to Burn, you researched and incorporated elements from the lives of important female artists for each of the albumís eleven songs. I read that Plutonium Glow was inspired by Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince, and you constructed an entire album around a biographical study of John Coltrane. This strikes me as a kind of "continuous learning" - the very kind that we encourage our students to embrace. Is there a part of you that always approaches a new project as a researcher, a student of new ideas, and is this different from the part of you that works off emotion and instinct?

Vanessa: Yes, absolutely. Even as a student, I was an avid researcher, always digging in library stacks and microfiche in order to answers my inquiries as well as feed my fascination. I've always been very "right" and "left" brain, and never really separated the two or felt that I had to choose between them.

As well as reading, absorbing, and learning, I've always used my art, taking pen or pencil to paper, in order to discover or uncover or shed insight into a subject that interests me. This is where the intersection of my interests in research, art, and science come into play. In 2001 I joined a team of scientists and researchers, and traveled with them to Brazil and the Biosphere in Arizona. I was recommended by a biologist from Columbia University who knew about my interest in research from my Barnard days as well as my visualization skills. I spent several months helping interpret visual data for their research which was used in the final presentation at Columbia University. This was an extraordinary experience for me, one which deeply inspired and informed me artistically.

Alex: One of the reasons weíre so excited to have you at Mercer is that your work encompasses so many mediums. You're a singer-songwriter, but you're also a painter, a poet, and an html coder and digital artist. What inspired you to bring these disciplines together for the multimedia and internet components of your new album, Joe Sent Me, and what do you think our students could gain by learning about and incorporating new mediums into their art?

Vanessa: Since releasing Plutonium Glow on my own label, I've been fascinated by the computer and the sense of limitless space and possibilities that it provides. For me, it's an ever expanding, continuously additive canvas that provides multiple layers of sight, sound, and time simultaneously. Online, one has the powerful sense of being fully connected - to society, to the world, connected to the past as well as to the future.

It is also a medium that has its own language and mysteries, which, as is the nature of technology, are constantly and continuously evolving. I gleaned early on that it would be necessary for me to learn and decipher its codes if I wanted to be free artistically. So, in 2004, I took some classes and embarked on a learning path which I have never turned off of. I saw so many creative possibilities in html, javascript, and java codes in terms of how they connected with my own ideas of poetry, words, music, art, and language. I love the idea of an artform that is appreciable on all these levels, and accessible to everyone, everywhere.

Alex: Looking back, what are two or three of the most important choices you made that allowed you to become the artist you are today?

Vanessa: The first important choice was to always retain creative control.
The third most important choice was to always trust my own vision.
The second most important choice was to always maintain my love of poetry.

Alex: What advise would you offer students as they plot their futures in the arts?

Vanessa: My advice would be:

• Hone your work ethic and revel in your discipline
• Always feel the pulse of society
• Never lose your sense of wonder and awe of Nature
• Read books, blogs, and e-zines from all fields, everything from science journals to scrapbooking
• Learn the roots of words, their histories, get the condensed Oxford English Dictionary
• Read dictionaries in other languages, write poems in languages that you don't know
• Draw anything in order to understand it better
• Mark up your books, take notes, record your first impressions in the margins
• Keep a notebook of thoughts, observations, sketches, meanderings
• Read poetry and philosophy that instigates and intimidates you: John Ashbery, Allen Ginsberg, Kant, and Kierkegaard
• Learn from other artists who don't share your vision, voice, or aesthetic
• Learn to love modern art
• Use Babel Fish and YouTube as research and creative tools, dig deeply into language and history
• Always try to reach those who cannot see or hear
• Aim to move those whose hearts have been hardened
• Stop yourself when you are jaded or too confident
• Be as prepared for failure as you are for greatness
• Sometimes lower your aims, goals, and expectations
• Chose solitude over solidarity
• Leave some things unfinished
• Love the art you are in

Alex: On your album Make You Love, your lyrics and choice of poems by Erica Jong evoke a rapturously feminine world. Venus is at the forefront of the music, as is the figure of "Juliet," who circulates like a sort of Shakespearian "dark lady" through the universe of the songs - an object of the (female) speaker's love and erotic fascination. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote about a "lesbian continuum" that can represent lesbianism as well as a range of woman-identified experience, including "the sharing of a rich inner life between women." What influences were you exploring in Make You Love, and how did they lead you into a lyrical and sonic universe that Rich might describe as part of the "lesbian continuum"?

Vanessa: Venus figures prominently in my lyrics and art. On Make You Love I focus on the Female subject, Juliette, as a way of re-examining the idea of the Muse on new terms, and exploring the Venus archetype that my friend Juliette embodies. In my lyrics and vocal tones and ranges as well, I wanted to convey the manifold ideas of Venus, the interstices between her myth and reality: the "dark," furtive aspects on "A Little Bit of Pain," for example; hints of the femme fatale and seductress, on "Lovechild;" the callous temptress in "Mess Around;" the fleeting and ungraspable aspects of Desire that often lead to thwarted Love, in "Make You Love." The name "Juliette" is also the title and subject of one of Marquis de Sade's books, and at the time I saw Make You Love as a kind of offering to her "spirit," or redemption.

The idea of a "lesbian continuum" is a powerful one as it suggests the irrelevance of history, as a "continuum" occurs outside of a historical construct, one that every woman is in some way aware and a part of. Juliette, the subject/object of desire in Make You Love, represents to me the classic mythological archetype, as well as the quintessential post-modern woman who has cut a unique path in history by being all things, in deference to the past as well as in defiance: heroine and heartbreaker, wagemaker and homemaker, mythmaker and mythbreaker.

It's interesting to me to think of how the visual idea of Venus, who has traditionally been the human embodiment of (menís) desire, has changed over time, how she is now the subject of womenís desire as well. It's also interesting to see how our idea of Beauty is reflected in the changes in her physical form. Throughout the history of Western Art, Venus archetypes have been frequently portrayed with pronounced masculine traits, such as the "Venus de Milo" and the "Mona Lisa." I think this historic nod to the masculine has allowed both men and women throughout the ages to connect with the figure of Venus. Collin Kelly, an amazing poet from Atlanta whose work addresses these archetypes, has a new novel coming out titled Conquering Venus. The cover of the book shows a statue of Venus silhouetted against the sky where her figure is decidedly ambiguous and androgynous. Itís important that these boundaries continue to be pushed and re-drawn creatively, which translates to politically, in society.

Interestingly, many iconic works of art representing women, including images of Venus, challenge our notions of beauty as opposed to fulfilling them. A Google search of famous iconic portraits of women leads to representations of women who reveal a certain strangeness: works like the "Mona Lisa," "Ophelia" by Sir John Everett Millais, the often scandalous paintings of Toulouse-Lautrec, the self-portraits of Frida Khalo, the raw portraits of woman subjects by Lucian Freud. It's fascinating to me that often the enduring images of women are the ones which present not the idealized women, but women who are in some sense flawed, martyred, doomed, or otherwise marginalized by society. It is as though, through Art, they experience a kind of redemption, not in a religious sense, but in a sacred sense that only an artist can express.

Two books that influenced me greatly during the writing of Make You Love were Uncontrollable Beauty and Beauty and the Contemporary Sublime. Some argue that Beauty and Truth are inextricably connected. For me, the search for Beauty/Truth is partially tied to Desire which finds resolution in Love. But, as Desire can never be fulfilled completely, by capturing and projecting the object of desire in a work of art, the artist in essence keeps Desire alive. It's a kind of "Feminine Creative Continuum," to expand on Rich's phrase, and this "continuum" includes every artist - regardless of gender - who is examining ideas that revolve around the subject of Venus.

Alex: I'm also curious to hear your thoughts on the resonance of your music for gay men. In 1994, the frankness with which you sang about men through Jong's poems - eroticizing them, reveling in the shameless sexual "abandon" of the album's original title - was absolutely staggering, particularly since so much music was (and still is) focused on the sexualization of women by men. I imagine many gay men identified with Zipless and saw in it a reflection of their own sexual lives and fantasies. How does it feel knowing your music speaks specifically to gay men as well as women? Had you anticipated that your music would attract a gay following, and was this ever an issue - for better or worse - in your dealings with major labels as they worked to market your music through mainstream channels?

Vanessa: My desire to work with Erica's poems had a lot to do with my being part of the "continuum" that Rich writes about - but, for me, it's less restricted to the idea of a "lesbian" continuum than it is to the female literary and artistic one: the "Feminine Creative Continuum." So many of my muses - from Anais Nin to Erica Jong, Josephine Baker to Nico, Maria Callas, the poet Anne Carson, artists Cindy Sherman and Nadine Robinson - have explored the literal as well as creative boundaries of their gender by pushing them and sometimes challenging and overstepping them.

It's interesting to me that the word "muse" refers to the female embodiment of inspiration; there is no equivalent word for the male embodiment. At the opposite end of the mythological female spectrum, there are the "Furies" who exact retribution and revenge on those who broke certain natural laws. The "Muses" and the "Furies" have no male equals. The "figure" of the female has been explored, expressed, distilled, and all facets discussed and dissected throughout history.

Also interesting to me is the literary idea of the [Male] Gaze ("La regard") - especially as a performing artist where the body is on public display. The notion of the Male Gaze is challenged further when the woman/object is:

• desired sexually by the female who is gazing


• not desired sexually by the male who is gazing

Any art that subverts, inverts, challenges, and in essence diminishes the power of the Male Gaze - which is so fundamentally rooted in Euro-centric art - and the male historical view of Art as a whole, is at its core very powerful and provocative. By making Zipless, I was exploring and expressing my personal freedom as an artist as well as a woman, and for me the creative urge is as vital as my gender identity. I decided to call the album Zipless, a shortened form of Erica Jong's phrase "The Zipless F-ck" which relates to the sexual act, because the idea of being Zipless relates to all aspects and modes of existence.

It's deeply gratifying for me that my music and art has resonated so deeply with gay men and women who connect with the messages I'm conveying. I think those of us whose minds are flexible seek out music and art that speaks to this openness. I initially released Zipless on my own label, and my motivation for making the album was - as it is always with me - purely artistic. When Bob Krasnow signed me to his label on MCA, the fact that Zipless was on its way to becoming "popularized" did not diminish the artistry of the album. The 'Parental Advisory' sticker was an unfortunate byproduct of its release on a major label.

One of my favorite artists is Adrian Piper whose philosophy of art is intricately connected to her imagery. One of the phrases she has incorporated into her work is "Decide who you are." These four words have guided me in many directions over the years: the idea that it's the individual who decides one's identity, not society. It's a very powerful realization, for men as well as women. There are so many obvious ways that society inculcates a sense of gender identity, but it's the subtle ways that are the most damaging. I think that artists who express these and other hidden realities in their art will always be stickered, censured, flagged, and generally considered subversive. I say, that's fine, because, ironically, it is that gesture of "stickering" that creates the forward movement of this "continuum."


Link to original post on Elixer Productions Blog

JOE SENT ME | Windy City Times review

"Electronica, smooth jazz, drum-and-bass. Poet, chanteuse, painter. Vanessa Daou is one artist who thrives on not being pigeonholed. The New Yorker returns with the self-produced Joe Sent Me, her first album since 2001's Make You Love. The absinthe-inspired trance of Daou's vocals is married to the rhythmic typewriter on "Hurricanes," where she steps forth as the sultriest person at a beat café. "Black & White" has a constant nightclub piano tinkering in the background that suits her breathless singing in a higher pitch. On the title track, Daou seizes listeners with her chiming "strange days" over the interlacing of jazz and electronica. Continuing to morph her artistic approach with minimalism and spoken word, Joe Sent Me is a comeback for Daou that ought to be celebrated. Daou's sixth solo album is currently available on www.daourecords.com before its wide release" David Byrne @ Windy City Times

'Joe Sent M.D.E.'

In May '09, The Mercer Dance Ensemble (M.D.E.) will present Joe Sent M.D.E., a series of dance cycles set to the music of JOE SENT ME, which will premier at Kelsey Theatre on the Mercer County Community College campus in Trenton, New Jersey. Dance Program faculty Janell Byrne will choreograph and direct, with guest choreography by Elixir Productions co-founder Jody P. Person and others. [ Kelsey Theatre ]

Read more about JOE SENT ME

Elizabeth Alexander's Inaugural Poem: Reflections on the Purpose of Poetry

Reflecting on Elizabeth Alexander's Inaugural Poem provided by The New York Times via CQ Transcriptions:

Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, "I need to see what's on the other side; I know there's something better down the road."

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self."

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.

---

What strikes me the most about this poem are its many references to music and song - its use of repetition to accomplish a rhythm which is inherently musical:

All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din.

The various words that evoke sound:

speak, speaking, noise, din, tongues, drum, cello, boom box, harmonica, voice

The importance of words to conjure and command:

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

As the poem moves along, repetition of the word 'We' that unites us in our experience of the world:

We encounter each other in words ... We cross dirt roads and highways ... We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk....

Alexander asks us to do more than use our words, but to lift our words as occurs with praise and song:

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here...

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign...

As the poem winds down, Alexander brings us to the place where Poetry makes its purpose known. Poetry resides on the edges of experience, in those perilous places where there is a crystal clarity:

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.

Praise song, poem, a kind of atonement, declaration, proclamation, invitation. Poetry is movement, history, hope, enlightenment, a glimpse, perhaps, of eternity...

"BSOTS 077 - certified no doze..."

"...there are a number of cuts here that scored high on the rewind factor for me, namely joints by longshot, declaime, moka only, chandliers, and the primeridian. also keep tabs on outasight - that kid is going places. expect big things from him in the oh-nine. never pass up a chance to play vanessa daou - i've been in love with her voice since 1993. we're gettin' down with some jazz this time around, too. and don't front on the latin boogaloo classic from alfredo linares - HOT, HOT, HOT." bsots

'Lovechild' {itunes | rhapsody} from Make You Love

Anji Bee's Chillcast #142: Make Out Music

Hear 'Heart of Wax' from upcoming JOE SENT ME on luscious voiced Anji Bee's 'Make Out Music' Chillcast #142






If you don't already know, check out her ever transcendent work with Lovespirals

Link to Anji Bee chillcasts tagged Vanessa Daou

Link to Anji Bee

The Personal is Musical

Reading Typing in Stereo's header tagline "Life is music is personal is political", I am reminded of the the phrase "the personal is political", the mantra that became synonymous with Second Wave Feminist Movement of the 1970's. In this new era, where our protests are logged in the form of Blips & Tweats, it can be said that "the personal is virtual." And while our personal lives intersect with the virtual, one Google search of the Battle of Fallujah, and we can see that so much of the world is still perilously out of reach of our words, becoming distant and diminished.

One of the casualties of the new virtual frontier has been the destruction of the Monolith that was once known as the "Recording Industry"; there stands in its place a crumpled and collapsed edifice. The demise of the Music Business has been a gradual process, like a slow buildup of lava in the dome of a volcano, where after the eruption, the landscape is one that is no longer recognized.

The way we listen to music has also changed, as has the language we use to describe it - songs are downloads, mp3s, wav files, mash-ups - and while there has been a general negation of the physical format of the 'record', there has been no eradication of the listeners' actual need for the physical reality of music, evidenced in the nationwide upsurge in vinyl sales. This fact is not just a reflection of music purchasing preferences, but a silent subversion of the Music Industry.

The quiet vinyl revolution taking place in indie stores nationwide reflects a need to re-affirm Reality and re-connect with History. Although the protests and political fires that inflamed our mothers' generation no longer burn in the same way they used to, the new radicalism can be found in oblique corners, wherever vinyl records are being sold.

But some revolutions are so silent that only advanced sound techniques over time are able to capture. In this new millennium where music, philosophy and art co-mingle in the flummoxes of commercialism, consumerism, marketing and paraphernalia, where "the personal is virtual", it can also be said that it can also be said that "the personal is musical." While our play lists become public along with our Tweats and Blips, the universal mirror that reflects our private lives is still, as it has been since the invention of the gramophone, the vinyl records that we unsheath, rub clean, hold up to the light, play with reverence, and take with us, everywhere.

Review: Vanessa Daou, “Joe Sent Me”

"Joe Sent Me" is the first Vanessa Daou album since 2001's "Make You Love"; it is also her first record not to be produced by Peter Daou. It sounds both familiar and very, very different to her previous work. The voice is different; less sweet, less processed, more raw and with a slightly rough edge. The sound is very different too, and that’s a good thing.

...

“Joe Sent Me” is dramatically different. There is jazz, and there is electronica, and there is Vanessa’s voice, but that’s about all that connects those records. “Hurricanes” reminds me of Air’s “Virgin Suicides”. “True” is Vanessa’s voice and acoustic guitar — SHOCKING!!1! “Black And White” sounds like some strange collaboration between Goldfrapp and a jazz band. “Life Force”, incredibly intrinsic sonically (this is very much a headphones record) and “Manifesto” wouldn’t fit on any previous Daou record — and I suspect that’s why it opens the album, a true manifesto of a new sound. “Love Lives In The Dark” sounds like Massive Attack (and oh my, the thought of Vanessa working with Massive Attack makes me ecstatic). This is very much a new record by an artist who hasn’t said her final word.

The sexiness and sensuality, always present in Vanessa’s records, take a new dimension here; she isn't the androgynous girl who sung “Sunday Afternoons" anymore — she is, very much, a very grown up woman. The girl is still present in the songs like "Heart Of Wax"; but it is a very different person who wrote "Joe Sent Me". "And don’t be thinking/you're the only one/who knows” she warns, and shivers go down my spine. "Here’s the pen you gave me/to write my poetry/I said I’d give it back to you the day you stop inspiring me/Here’s the glass, it’s empty" begins “Black And White” and, again, the thrill is almost physical. Those lyrics were worth waiting seven years for." Typing in Stereo

read also: "Love, Vanessa" at Typing in Stereo

Adventures in Daou

"Vanessa’s hotly-anticipated new album, Joe Sent Me, is about to hit the virtual shelves over at Daou Records, and the Mercer Dance Ensemble (M.D.E.) will be celebrating by presenting an evening of dances set to selected cuts and remixes.

The concert, Joe Sent M.D.E., will premier at Kelsey Theatre on the Mercer County Community College campus this May. Dance Program faculty Janell Byrne will choreograph and direct, with guest choreography by Elixir co-founder Jody P. Person and others." Elixer Productions

Bettie Page, leaving Radiance

Vanessa Daou, Bettie Page, 1996, acrylic & pencil on paper, 7 X 9 "

"After light enters the ocean, it interacts with the phytoplankton, dissolved organic matter, particles, and water molecules. Some of it is eventually scattered back up through the surface. This light is called the water-leaving radiance, and it can be detected from space." link

When I began writing my album 'Slow to Burn', based on the life of 11 female artists, I made a long list of the women artists who had in one way or another made a powerful impression on me. On my list was Bettie Page. Though not an Artist in the traditional sense of the word, with her body and through the projection of a complex inner essence and purpose, a combination of girlish innocence and churlish experience, she tapped into & expressed a mode of being which had until then been hidden. Some argue that she played into the gaze of a man's prurient desires and in so doing degraded her gender, but it could be argued just as convincingly that Bettie Page liberated even that gaze and made it OK for a man, or a woman, to desire a woman with her proclivities. I wrote 'Evening' with these thoughts in mind.

Bettie Page changed not only our perception of women, but our conception of them. Neither right nor wrong, like her infamous bikinis which she designed and sewed, they are her own, they are based on profound and deep penetration into the nature of women who preceded her and who would come after. Sometimes with an elegant pose, sometimes with a brutal one, sometimes with a tossed off smile, sometimes with one that is fully thought, Bettie Page is a an inspiration not only for tattoo artists, but for all artists who want to learn from example how to navigate a world that makes its rules which the heart, mind & muse cannot obey.

Bettie Page leaves us not only a legacy of her images, but also with an undying philosophy of sexuality that continues to leave its radiance around on the world. In this profound gesture there is beauty which is more than the picture perfect image that she presented, it was her ability to take an idea about humanity, an idea of her own design and making, about the nature of sexuality, photography & pornography, and in the end, to reshape history.

To be an artist is to make a mark: a brush stroke that says something about the hybridity of experience like Iona Rozeal Brown, poetry that renegotiates our relationship to the past like Czeslaw Milosz, prose that reshapes the way we Love like Erica Jong, even a fragment can fill our imaginations the way Sappho does. Finished or incomplete, visible or ineffable, virtual or tangible, we leave our impressions on the world.

..........................................................................................


Evening (from Vanessa Daou - 'Slow to Burn', MCA/Krasnow Entertainment, 1996)
inspired by the life of Bettie Page

Evening slips into my room
Echoes in the corridor
Street lamps turn a shade of blue
Lovers whisper in the dark

Evening when I miss you most of all
My heaven in this world
A silent raindrop falls
To the earth...

Evening knows my every move
Your fingers running through my hair
Crimson lips a crimson kiss
In the strange electric air...

Evening when I miss you most of all
My heaven in this world
A silent raindrop falls
To the earth...

Evening (I miss you most of all)
Evening (A silent raindrop falls)
Evening...evening...

You make me ache
By the way you bow your head
In the neon glow
Flashing open through the window
On the unmade bed
On the unmade bed...

Evening brings the hunter home
And the sailor from the sea
One by one each breath we take
Slips into eternity

Evening when I miss you most of all
My heaven in this world
A silent raindrop falls
To the earth...

Evening when I miss you most of all
My heaven in this world
A silent raindrop falls
To the earth...

© 1996

"Vanessa Sent Me"

"Ca fait presque dix ans maintenant que j'écoute Vanessa, j'ai même la fierté de voir mes mots à son sujet en bonne place sur sa page de news. Cet album est une petite merveille et je ne regrette vraiment pas de l'avoir attendu huit ans. Mieux même, il tombe à pic pour m'accompagner dans l'écriture d'Améthyste tellement il correspond à ce que je ressens en écrivant cette nouvelle histoire." ohmydahlia.com

Desire Lines

"In winter, desire lines appear spontaneously as tramped down paths in the snow. I love that these paths are never perfectly straight. Instead, like a river, they meander this way and that, as if to prove that desire itself isn't linear and (literally, in this case) straightforward." Wordspy


"A desire path, or desire line, is a path developed by erosion caused by animal or human footfall. The path usually represents the shortest or most easily navigated route between an origin and destination. The width and amount of erosion of the line represents the amount of demand. The term was coined by Gaston Bachelard in his book 'The Poetics of Space'." wikipedia



It's called 'social networking', but I like to think of it as 'social communicating', or 'social inter-connecting', a giant, growing, interlocking, orgiastic, infinite conversation.

To be a recording artist means being involved & entwined in this ever expanding exchange, in the lives of those who are drawn to our songs and voices, who play it on their stereos, listen in their headphones, who hear it, interpret it, ingest it, digest it. That is why I make music, sing songs, write poems; why I use words to get my 'message' across, as a means of communication.

A few years ago, I typed the word "desire" into google and saved this snippet from a long thread:

Google group (May 11, 2002)

K: The mind interprets relentlessly. Desire will never be quenched, desire being the very thing that keeps us alive.
M: Yes, and this is exactly the point. To be without desire is to die, and then there is no self.
K: And this desire is the movement of becoming, the grasping at "what should be" (the object of desire) which is entirely conceptual, arising from the present condition of "what is as it is."
M: Desire is always dissatisfied with the present, hence it will never find any satisfaction in any imaginary future.

This 'search for desire' runs through every thread of every online communication - it drives it, propels it, whether it's on Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, MySpace, or Blip. Wherever there's a conversation, there is something exchanged, something given and taken, and in the creases and the folds of this fabric, there is something shared, and in this sharing, there is meaning.

I thank everyone for their postings, comments, messages, kudos, pokes, 'hottie votes' ;) twitters, blips, and virtual gifts.

With Love,

Vanessa

Tom’s Essay by Suzanne Vega

"I was imagining it as a kind of French film soundtrack, something vaudevillian on piano, like a background to a Truffaut film. But I didn’t play piano and didn’t know anybody who did. So I kept it a cappella, and began to sing it this way in my live show. This detail, singing the song alone with no accompaniment, affected everything to come." Link

Pop Making Sense by David Byrne with Tony Peregrin

"Sultry New York siren Vanessa Daou has too many numbers that suit the atmosphere for a romantic night. Whether it is something with a smooth jazz vibe from Two to Tango; the works of Erica Jong set to a groove on her solo debut, Zipless; or the poetic temptation from her most recent outing Make You Love, this woman puts sexiness into everything she sings. Daou uses her cooing voice to buoy on the rhythm on numbers like Dear Anne Sexton and Cross That Bridge. A much-awaited new album is expected later this year per Daou's MySpace page." Link