Eagle and Talon Let Go

It was our first time doing this sort of thing and inside the trailer parked outside a sculptors workshop/warehouse out in east la, nice amiable people were all about working hard to make us to look more like ourselves. Shellacked in hairspray, flesh-toned powders, expensive rouge and strategically enhanced with lash extensions, orange shadow, green liner, kim and i were realler than we'd ever been before.

We were just getting our final touch-ups when Kurt the photographer came in: "So, i think i know what we're going to do. We found this gigantic barrel out back...Alice, we're going to have you get inside it and Kim will be on the outside not really aware you're there, you know, it'll be like...two prairie dogs. It'll be good."

I was giving myself over to being deeply amused when kim let out a nervous laugh and asked, "are you serious?" He smiled and threw out a reassuring "we'll just try it out okay?"

Okay. (?)

I spent the next hour squatting inside a giant peeling barrel with a totally great outfit on and just my head poking out. Next to my rusty doghouse and totally beyond my line of vision, Kim tried hard to look langorous lying amidst wheatlike shrubs, itchy grass and damp soil. I tried looking at her with evil intent the way i thought an evil prairie dog might do. my feet went numb.

In the end they got rid of the barrel and took another round of pictures with us in fancier borrowed clothes that were intended to help explore the scene's "yinyang oppositional" concept. I got into it (as in slight friction) with the wardrobe stylist, but eventually gave up being bratty and just put on the damn chiffony top they wanted me to wear. We took photos for another 45 minutes. I'm sad to say they ended up choosing one from this batch so you won't get to see eagle and talon's suffering in the grass properly documented.

Anyway, i'm making it out to sound a lot more horrible than it was. Truth is, it was really fun and there are worse things than getting pampered and made up by a talented crew and trying out some girly rituals that you've tended to avoid most of your life. Admittedly, I was a little dumbfounded with the elaborateness of the whole production, but maybe that's what happens when things get professional.

I dunno.

Whatever the case, the whole experience was eye-opening in terms of the malleability of image and how there are just so many ways to represent yourself (in print, in text, in life). And sometimes, and i do only mean sometimes, it doesn't have to be such a terrible thing if you approach it with a sense of adventure or happy halloween everybody! or whatever, rather than seeing it as an assassination of who you are.

that said, you won't see me wearing a leopard-print thong in this lifetime (unless it's keeping my head warm or something).

yours,
alice

p.s. the article comes out this sunday in the latimes/west magazine. be gentle.