Father, Son, Holy Ghost

What I always liked about The Girls apart from them being hapless represantatives of the sunny loveable mint ice cream dimension impossible to reach from where we are was that painfully real sense of being wounded when in love. How the world around appears to be so hopelessly wastedly beautiful. Simple but I still can't say it right, only Christopher Owens can say it right. And that's what he does.
Father, Son, Holy Ghost is the best title Girls could choose for their second album. Timeless, obvious, great title for a great record. And yep, these black tight leather pants, black crop top, Girls denim jacket and the Deathly Hallows symbol on his neck in a new video are so cool.



When I call Girls frontman Christopher Owens, he's bedridden for the third straight day. What's wrong with him? "Well, there are a lot of things wrong with me," he says with a chuckle. But he's not kidding. The singer-songwriter is in the thick of a self-imposed pre-tour drug withdrawal.
"I struggle with an addiction to serious, very heavy opiates," he says later on in the conversation. "Getting rid of this shit is literally the worst hell you can imagine. I don't know why I always go back to it, but I do." The admission isn't as surprising, perhaps, as it should be-- the 32 year old has made a point to keep his music and his life as honest as possible, even if that means telling strangers about his darkest addictions. This openness is inviting, though, and it's all over Girls' strikingly unguarded songs, which tell of love and loss with the wide-eyed naïvteté of someone half Owens' age.
By now, the singer's eccentric back story-- he was raised in the well-meaning but ultimately dangerous and perverse Children of God religious cult before breaking away and subsequently being taken in by Texas artist Stanley Marsh 3-- is something of indie rock lore, and Owens doesn't back away from it. Several songs on Girls' new sophomore album, Father, Son, Holy Ghost, deal with Owens' fraught and complicated relationship with his mother, who allowed another son to die of pneumonia because of Children of God's anti-medicine stance and prostituted herself in Owens' presence while he was growing up. (She has since left the cult as well.) When he sings, "I'm looking for meaning in life, and you my ma," on the new record, you can hear the confusion of his experience as well as universal empathy.



Pitchfork: There are some very talented gospel back-up singers on Father, Son, Holy Ghost, and when you contrast them with your relatively small voice, it can sound...

Christopher Owens: ...funny! I know what you're talking about, and it's part of my neurosis. I was very much aware from the first recording we did that my voice sucks. It's fun to perform and be a singer, but writing songs is what really makes me happy. While we were recording this album I sent a Tweet to Justin Bieber: "Hey Justin, I'm the lead singer of Girls and you should come be the singer in our band. It'd be great for your career." Imagine that-- he'd be like the new Julian Casablancas! I'd give him all my songs and he'd sell millions of records. He would do a better job on vocals and I would be happy watching the shows from the side and writing songs for him. But he never replied. I knew he wouldn't, but I was dead serious. And what I was acknowledging with the Tweet was that everything on this album had jumped up in quality except the singing. But those are the breaks, man.

Nan to Scott

A letter Nan Goldin wrote to Scott Campbell.
I wish I had my ghostwriter. Hope our encounter is round the corner. Every ghostwriter needs a regular writer anyway.





Published in 032c.

Higher Learning

New project of Tavi Gevinson Rookiemag  is a magazine for teenage girls with plenty of nice reading, which kept even me in front of my laptop till 2 am yesterday. Some things never leave you after all, such as insecurity, loneliness, sadness, weird thoughts, they're just   wearing out and appear to be not so sharp as at 18. One of the coolest features is Higher Learning, a collection of high school stories by famous guys including Dan Savage, Zooey Deschanel, Patton Oswalt, Jack Black etc.




Zooey Deschanel

If only high school were as simple as a teen movie. I would have loved to have been as single-minded as your typical teen heroine (must get in with the popular crowd, must get floppy-haired dude to take me to prom, etc.), but as a teenager I had a lot on my mind. For instance, infinity. How was I supposed to think about prom when I spent so much time thinking about the concept of infinity? Prom was OK, but infinity was interesting and terrifying. This made it a lot harder to think about the dudes with floppy hair.

I often liken my high school experience to the opening scene in Stardust Memories, where Woody Allen is sitting on an unmoving train with a lot of really miserable-looking people, when out the window he sees an identical train, only on this train, as I remember it, everyone is happy and attractive, and there is a young Sharon Stone wearing a feather boa, and there are men in sailor suits popping bottles of pink champagne. He can no longer accept his sad train existence now that he has seen the happy train, and he tries in vain to escape. The difference between Woody Allen and me was, I kind of liked my sad train. I saw that there was another version of high school that was being peddled by the media but I could never connect with it.

Of course, I went to an artsy sort of school, so things were a little bit different. It wasn’t unusual to find a young gentleman wrapped in a piece of duvetyne theater curtain secured with safety pins into a makeshift toga. And no big deal guys, but we had Guys Wear a Dress to School Day. But even surrounded by all these unicorns, I felt like the unicorniest. I just did not fit in.

One day my history teacher asked our class, “Do you guys think about infinity?” Most of my classmates gave him the you’re totally lame blank stare, but my mind started racing. “How does he know?!” I wondered. He said, “I used to think about infinity, and then I stopped.” He chuckled to himself. For me, this moment mapped a strange intersection of emotions: whereas I now knew I wasn’t alone, the people I wanted to connect with, my peers, seemed even farther away. I guess it was then that I realized I wasn’t required to LOVE high school, like the movies demanded; I didn’t have to want to go to prom and homecoming or be the center of the social world—I just had to make high school a place where I could get better at the things I wanted to do. And that’s exactly what I did.

Jack Black

I was running with a pretty rough crowd in 1984. It was a gang of kids from the tough part of the neighborhood. We’d listen to heavy metal and watch The Exorcist. We’d wear jeans and flannel shirts. We’d BMX and skateboard around town.

Things got pretty hairy. I wanted desperately to belong to something cool, and fitting in with these guys was everything to me. I stole some money from my mom. I got caught and confessed all my badassery to my parents. I felt like I needed a fresh start, and my folks agreed. They decided to send me to a school for troubled youths. It was called Poseidon.

It was a very small school in West L.A. that featured a student psychologist named Roger. In addition to being a kick-ass therapist he was also a big bodybuilder who could defend himself and break up fights in the yard if necessary.

I was not required to have sessions with Roger. But I saw the other kids going into his office, and I was curious. I wanted to tell him my story and see if I needed counseling. So I signed up for a session and went into his office the next day. I spilled my guts about stealing from my mother and cried my eyes out. It was an intense catharsis. All the guilt and stress I’d been holding on to for years just melted away.

I continued seeing Roger, but never had that kind of mind-blowing release again.

The rest of my ninth grade was mainly focused on animation drawings and improv classes with my incredible theater teacher Deb. Deb was inspiring. She encouraged me to get involved in all aspects of theater. She insisted that writing and directing were far more interesting endeavors than simply acting.

I was also obsessed with two students named Collin and Gary. Collin loved Mick Jagger and Gary loved Michael Jackson. They would do impersonations all day and argue about who was better. One time it came to blows and I tried to jump in to defend Collin, who was getting his ass kicked. I punched Gary in the side of the head, and he just stopped and looked at me with confusion in his eyes. I had never done anything like that before. Or since.

I started reading Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. I drank it up like a delicious nectar. It is the story of the young Buddha’s journey. Reading that book marked the beginning of a spiritual journey that lasted for years.

But that is another story.

Good luck in high school. Being a person is hard.


Lesley Arfin

Dear Kid in High School,

Not that you really give a shit what I have to say, cuz kids in high school love not giving a shit, but I also know that you actually give a huge steaming pile of shit, so shut up your face and listen.

You’re allowed to care about stuff. That’s the first thing. Even if you think it’s stupid or weird, like polka music or “being obsessed with mimes.” One day you will look back not at all the things that made you cool enough to fit in, but the things that didn’t. And you will love them.

The second thing is write everything down. Even if you don’t like writing, just write about every obsession, story, hatred, happiness—whatever. And save it. All of it. I say this because when you’re an adult, you will get drunk with your friends one night and read your diary out loud to them.

It will be the funniest night of your life.

When teachers say, “This is the best time of your life,” they are wrong. They are only saying that because they’re teachers and they have to look at your weird faces every day. There is no “best time of your life,” but rather perfect moments, like when someone’s gum falls out of their mouth while they’re telling a story, or when a jerk is walking toward you and accidentally gets hit in the head with a soccer ball. Make sure to store these moments in a safe place in your brain. They will be useful to you in the future, I promise.

But also, quit bitching about being in high school. At least your mom still makes you dinner at night, and that rules.

I’m not gonna say don’t do drugs because that’s ridiculous, just don’t take anything that is known as an “epidemic” (crystal meth, Oxycontin). When they tell you in health that they’re addictive, they’re not “just trying to scare you into being a normie,” and it’s not all “government propaganda.”

Stick with pot, acid and booze and you will have way better memories. When you do acid or shrooms and you think you might be having a bad trip, get a piece of candy and hold your friend’s hand and it will go away. Try not talking for a while, too. If it’s still bad, well, whatever, it will be over in 14 hours.

If you want to stay out all night, say you’re sleeping at a friend’s house.
If you come home super early and your mom says, “Why are you home so early?” you say, “I got homesick and I missed you.” She will then make you eggs and you can watch TV.

If you don’t want to change for gym a good trick is putting sweatpants on over your jeans. If you don’t want to go swimming say you have your period. If you want to go home early or get out of a class, give the nurse a general “my stomach hurts.” If she asks you, “How does it hurt?” you say, “It’s just pain.” There’s no cure for that.

You might feel at times that you are ugly and disgusting and unlovable. Some of you might feel as though you are beautiful and hot and cool and awesome. Know this: When you’re in your 20s you go through, like, a time machine of opposite days. What I mean is, everyone who thinks they are hot shit in high school eventually turns into cold diarrhea by their 30s. And all you ugly nerds will eventually start to sparkle like geodes. If you don’t believe me you can ask Facebook.

Hmm, what else what else? Some things I regret: not learning an instrument (I gave up playing the sax, wish I hadn’t), not learning a foreign language (got kicked out of Spanish), not taking more acid (was afraid of bad trips but regret now due to lack of funny stories).

I don’t know what else. You guys are gonna do whatever you’re gonna do, fuck that up, do it again, and so it goes.

You all probably know just what you’re doing anyway and don’t need any advice at all, isn’t that right, you little smartass?

I’ll be watching you. I am the eyes and ears of this institution.

Acne Memory Leather Vest

Acne Memory Leather Vest, rounded back and tapered silhouette, in two colours - blushed and carmin. I used to think that minimalism is a sort of fraud, making something extremely simple extremely overpriced just for the sake of empty hype. Well now I know that true emptiness is as far from shallowness as completely opposite. Minimalism is our closest reach to perfection.

Still. They're killing me. 1 500 Euros.

Pure Mood

"Pills" by Pure Mood, someone mysterious from Chicago, found at Electronic Beats.

Pills by PURE MOOD

The Thin White Duke by Dries Van Noten

Station to Station (1976) introduced a new Bowie persona, the "Thin White Duke" of its title track. Visually, the character was an extension of Thomas Jerome Newton, the extraterrestrial being he portrayed in the film The Man Who Fell to Earth the same year.[56] Developing the funk and soul of Young Americans, Station to Station also prefigured the Krautrock and synthesiser music of his next releases. The extent to which drug addiction was now affecting Bowie was made public when Russell Harty interviewed the singer for his London Weekend Television talk show in anticipation of the album's supporting tour. Shortly before the satellite-linked interview was scheduled to commence, the death of the Spanish dictator General Franco was announced. Bowie was asked to relinquish the satellite booking, to allow the Spanish Government to put out a live newsfeed. This he refused to do, and his interview went ahead. In the ensuing conversation with Harty, as described by biographer David Buckley, "the singer made hardly any sense at all throughout what was quite an extensive interview. [...] Bowie looked completely disconnected and was hardly able to utter a coherent sentence." His sanity—by his own later admission—had become twisted from cocaine; he overdosed several times during the year, and was withering physically to an alarming degree.

Station to Station's January 1976 release was followed in February by a three-and-a-half-month concert tour of Europe and North America. Featuring a starkly lit set, the Isolar – 1976 Tour highlighted songs from the album, including the dramatic and lengthy title track, the ballads "Wild Is the Wind" and "Word on a Wing", and the funkier "TVC 15" and "Stay". The core band that coalesced around this album and tour—rhythm guitarist Alomar, bassist George Murray, and drummer Dennis Davis—would continue as a stable unit for the remainder of the 1970s. The tour was highly successful but mired in political controversy. Bowie was quoted in Stockholm as saying that "Britain could benefit from a Fascist leader", and detained by customs on the Russian/Polish border for possessing Nazi paraphernalia. Matters came to a head in London in May in what became known as the "Victoria Station incident". Arriving in an open-top Mercedes convertible, the singer waved to the crowd in a gesture that some alleged was a Nazi salute, which was captured on camera and published in NME. Bowie said the photographer simply caught him in mid-wave.[60] He later blamed his pro-Fascism comments and his behaviour during the period on his addictions and the character of the Thin White Duke. "I was out of my mind, totally crazed. The main thing I was functioning on was mythology ... that whole thing about Hitler and Rightism ... I'd discovered King Arthur ...".According to playwright Alan Franks, writing later in The Times, "he was indeed 'deranged'. He had some very bad experiences with hard drugs".



Menswear Fall-Winter 2011-2012 Dries van Noten collection is very strong starting with The Thin White Duke inspiration through raw fabrics, fur, restrained colours including that nice camel, double-breasted jackets and dark overcoats ending with reddish blond hair slicked back and empty pale blue models' eyes. Sculpture of Antoine Bourdelle above the runway made an impressive picture with a dark hint or maybe that is just Bowie's nazi accusations of the 1970s tingle.

Acne Mapplethorpe jacket

All black leather jackets are more or less cool. Acne leather jackets are undoubtedly always cool. But this one is way cooler than all the rest due to the name it carries - new Acne leather jacket was named after Robert Mapplethorpe.




The mini version of Metal, Mapplethorpe also has a wide notched collar accented with leather press buttons. A belt with buckle closure laces through the base, and two visible zippers set at a diagonal grace the front. A third pocket with a flap closure secures with a leather covered snap. Single button welt pocket on the interior, fully lined.

"People often discuss Patti Smith, however, for me what is interesting is Robert Mapplethorpe's aesthetic. I was imagining a woman in Mapplethorpe's biker jacket - the extended proportions and hint of danger. It's not supposed to be a classic biker but a reinterpretation - the soft plonge leather and confronting colours."

Jonny Johansson

Scott Campbell in 032c

I finally got summer issue of 032c in my hands - dream issue for someone so passionate about tattoos as I am. Silvia Plath "The fifteen-dollar eagle" story, nice text "The Tatoo and the world" by Victoria Camblin, Nan Goldin letter to Scott Campbell (never knew she had tattoos by him, but that appeared to be i'm sorry, each letter in different colour) and fantastic long interview with him. Coolest words about tattoos I've ever read.

Scott Campbell (b. 1977) is a tattoo artist. He is also a video artist, recently catapulted from a suburban American cultural underground into a glossy, art- and fashion-world mainstream. In this way he embodies the creative model of the decade - a practice of cross-over in which a craft such as tattooing can be interbred with luxury industry operations like Louis Vuitton bag design. It is a system in which social hierarchies are navigable with an unprecedented fluidity. An artist can move not only up and down vertically on the ladder of commerce, but also laterally between disciplines and media.

Francis Bean Cobain

Pictures of young Francis Bean Cobain shot by Hedi Slimane have been one of the most popular blog features lately, but I still can't resist posting it here.
Because she is amazing.
She looks just exactly as I've always wanted to look like. So thoughtful and fearless as if she had no other choice to exist but like that. To some extent she really doesn't have one.

Katie Shillingford wedding

Dazed & Confused Fashion Editor Katie Shillingford married Alex Dromgoole in the 1930s Art Deco decadence of Eltham Palace, Greenwich. She was wearing pale grey slashed chiffon dress, complete with trail that hung from her shoulders made by Gareth Pugh.
That's what I would call a wonderful dress. With pink waved hair the look was just pure magic.

Wedding was held on Friday, July 29, a stunning picture of fragile beauty just before London riots had begun.

Pictures Another Magazine

Berghain. An institution of the Berlin techno scene

A night out in Berghain, one of the greatest techno clubs in Berlin and the hardest to get in, leaves plenty of things to think and feel over. Techno sounds, spacious factory building size of an ancient temple (electrical plant in fact), church coloured light through thin windows and half-naked gay guys wearing leather pants and leather belts crossed on their muscular chests, intense sex vibes in the air and the amazing perception difference involving mdma.

I found a nice text which sort of explains it all a bit. It was written by Louis-Manuel Garcia (from an essay "Vagueness and Liquidarity: Solidarity, Belonging, and Ethics on the Dancefloor in Paris and Berlin”, the guy actually is a PhD candidate in Chicago and I envy him about the research object a lot) posted in Slow Travel Berlin.





Berghain: a nightclub that has become an institution of the Berlin techno scene, also taking on mythical proportions in the global techno and house scenes.
The club is in fact a reincarnation of an earlier Berlin nightclub, Ostgut (1998-2003), which was located in the empty Ostgüterbahnhof railway shipping warehouse near the Ostbahnhof S-Bahn/railway station in the Friedrichshain district (in former East Berlin).
Ostgut closed in 2003, the building was subsequently demolished, and the vacant space became part of the property for the multi-use sports and entertainment arena, O₂ World, the naming rights of which were bought by mobile telecommunications company Telefónica O₂ Germany in 2006.
With some financial support from municipal government and outside investors, Ostgut reopened as Berghain in 2004 in a DDR-era electrical plant on the other side of Ostbahnhof’s railway tracks.[1] The new name, “Berghain,” is a portmanteau taken from the final syllables of the names of the two districts that flank the location: Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain (former West and East Berlin, respectively).
The building in which Berghain is located was built between 1953 and 1954 in the socialist neoclassical style, with alternating pilasters and lattice windows running the height of the building, underlined by a band of rusticated masonry around the base.[2] Although there are essentially three levels to the building, each level has a height of approximately 9 meters (30 feet).[3]
The ground floor includes a relatively small ticket booth area, followed by a large entry hall with a coat-check and an art installation by Polish artist, Piotr Nathan, entitled Rituale des Verschwindens [Rituals of Disappearance] (2004) and composed of 175 1m² aluminum tiles.[4] The remainder of the floor is dedicated to a bar area and a large darkroom space, reserved for (mostly) male-male sexual play.
Suspended steel stairs lead up to Berghain, the former turbine room, with 18m-high ceilings (60 ft.), a dancefloor that can easily hold 500 people, and seven massive FunktionOne speaker stacks.[5] The second floor also holds two bars, another darkroom, a mezzanine with an ice cream bar, and large unisex bathrooms.
Another set of steel stairs on one side of the main dancefloor leads to Panorama Bar, a second dancefloor located in the former control room of the electrical plant. This space includes a wrap-around bar covered in black rubber, and large-format prints of Wolfgang Tillmans photographs, including two from his abstract “Freischwimmer” series, and one of a woman sitting on a chair, naked below the waist, with her spread legs exposing her shaved vagina with pink, swollen labia.[6]
The DJ spins at a table suspended bychains from the ceiling, separated from the crowd by a railing of steel tubing decorated with worn-out dials and needle-meters (left over from the room’s previous life), which also serves as a shelf for drinks. The floor-length windows running one side of the room are covered by mechanized metal blinds, which the lighting technician opens during moments of musical climax to allow the morning sun to wash over the crowd.

Peter de Potter

Peter de Potter did a photographic installation on the window façade of the first floor of the Berlin Congress Center. The series showed pictures with a remarkable size of the artist’s personal archive.

I am not surprised it was in Berlin, fits in so great.

















Peter de Potter is a Belgian artist. Since 1996 he has been contributing both as artist and writer for Belgian (including Weekend Knack) and international publications (including i-D). He was also involved in the exhibitions "The Fourth Sex" (Pitti Immagine, Florence, 2003) and "Excess" (Pitti Immagine, Florence, 2004). Furthermore, he was curator of NEO80 (Pitti Immagine, Florence, 2004) where his video sculpture "The Young Gods" was also exhibited. His work has been published in various magazines including Arena Homme Plus and Atmosphere.

"Peter de Potter means a lot to me. We collaborated for 10 years but now he does things completely independently. A part of the world that I represent has been shaped with the collaboration of Peter de Potter. This personal and working relationship has had that impact. Saying that, he is a completly independent artist in his own right that I feel the world has to see". Raf Simons

Pictures and text Peter de Potter & CQC

I really need a good night out. To be half dead next morning, feeling my blood boiling strong enough to hear the thunder storm of my birth town far far far away. That's not me thinking, that's Berlin thinking through me. I'm just a channel. One out of many here.

Due to my nature I'm a pathetic one.

Creators keep God alive

I guess everybody is already sick enough with my Nick Cave inspirations, but we all would have to deal with it. There's no better inspiration than another artist, someone merciless upon oneself both inside as getting that all out is such a pain and outside as alcohol and tattoos and drugs require to be enthusiastically merciless. Nick Cave locked himself for 3 years in a room in Kreuzberg to write his first novel, "And the Ass saw the Angel" in 1985, and the Berlin Wall was still there.



I accidentally came across a full version of Nick Cave's The Flesh Made Word  lecture. This piece was re-recorded in 1998 for Vienna Poetry Festival, originally conceived and executed for the BBC Religious Services Department in 1996. So it's about God and sacred texts and imagination, and it touches issue which I've been obsessed with for ages - power of words and nature of text and it's great ability to ruin you and bring you back again.
Just listen. It's beautiful. And there's at lest another reason why we all are here, my friends, feeling our pain and despair and sometimes love.
 Creators keep God alive.





Picture is Annunciation by Fra Angelico.

"Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends"

Neal Fox is a London based artist and illustator, his last exhibition in Daniel Blau Gallery consists of stained glass windows featuring our beloved wicked dead saints. Hunter S. Thompson, Jean Jenet, Francis Bacon, Serge Gainsbourg and many more. And what's the best of it? Words. For me it's always words and quotes. Not to mention how true for some reasons these pictures are.









Since graduating from RCA in 2005, London based artist and illustrator, Neal Fox has had work featured in The Guardian, The Independent and completed projects for rockers Babyshambles.  The artist has also managed to put together some impressive solo exhibitions at Galerie Daniel Blau in Munich and Galerie Suzanne Tarazieve in Paris of his personal work. And on top of all that Fox also continues to finds time to publish Le Gun, an annual Arts Journal, he co-founded whilst at RCA. In his newest work the artist uses stained glass windows as his canvas and draws inspiration from the wild stories his grandad used to tell him and crazy modern day pop culture. Dazed caught up with the artist to find out more about the exhibition, opening on the 7 July, and what new mythology he is creating in his art.

Dazed Digital: What inspired the work that will be featured in the exhibition?
Neal Fox: I've been doing drawings for a few years now which use my grandad John Watson's ghost as a kind of shaman figure, on a cosmic journey through time and space, a crazy bender through pop culture. He was a bomber pilot, a writer, a chat show host, a publisher, a Soho drinker. Growing up i was inspired by his mythology, but my drawings have become more and more about collective mythologies. The figures who feature in the windows have all been in my drawings in the past. They are all iconoclasts, and they have an element of debauchery to them. I think of them of as kind of alternative saints, who have shaped the ideas of the people and culture that followed them by breaking the rules.

DD: Why did you choose the medium of stained glass and what kind of challenges did that pose?
Neal Fox: It was suggested to me by my gallerist Daniel Blau. He had made a series of windows with the artist Matt Mullican, at a great place called Meyer of Munich, where they have been making stained glass for hundreds of years. I liked the idea of using such a loaded medium in my own way. I spent a lot of time over there working on it all. I was a novice but they had experts in the traditional methods helping me get the hang of it. Its quite painstaking work because all the black lines are hand painted on to hundreds of different pieces of coloured glass and then leaded together. I overdosed on bratwursts and schnapps and nearly killed myself skiing on several occasions. I stayed in the factory at night which is full of old stained glass windows, so i had some weird dreams.

Text via Dazed Digital