context.html
this is a taste preference, maybe! but i tend to prefer art that has context about its homages and references instead of being vague for the sake of it. so if you are the same way, i thought maybe you would enjoy some of the inspiration behind my danceness index. all songs are listed by coincidence of when i pulled them up right now, except for the two "low" versions, which i'll stick at the bottom:
cant_get_you_out_of_my_head.mp4
my friend jean is passionate about growing aroids and other tropical plants and she invited augie and me to travel with her and her daughter to see ted's greenhouse in tinley park. on the way back into the city, i decided to record us raw singing "cant get you out of my head" in the car while our kids napped in the back, full on mcdonald's and sunshine. later, when i was editing it, i liked that the kids were napping and thought it could be fun to play with silence, by way of karaoke.
yeah!
i love the diversey bowl in chicago, even though i have never actually bowled there! its presence on a drive up west over the river in its neon glory is a view of a lifetime. i was walking home from a haircut and it was just a little rainy and i just had to cross over and film yeah! in the parking lot.
thong_song.mp4
crysta parkinson's "thong song" essay became my rising sun the day it was published. it's so funny it brought tears to my eyes but more than that, it put a name onto this feeling i've always had which is that: when i try to be sexy i feel embarrassed but when i try to be funny i can feel sexy as a biproduct of that. one thing that feels very on brand is that i bought these pleasers because i got into pole dancing a few years ago, and i was getting better at it, but the strap broke. well, pleasers are not cheap. so i let the hobby go as to not waste more money on platform stilettos. but the hysterical, wacky feelings of wearing a cat-mask and pleasers at home on a random saturday seemed in tandem with the "my girls and I are feral cats" sentiment of crysta's essay.
hot_in_herre.mp4
my husband andy directed this with only one rule from me: i wanted it to be in the shower. he set up the tripod and angled it for nudity and told me we'd only get one take so i had to hold it together. he cued me when to enter and threw me in blind. i was in shock by the initiative! here was my project and he was overtaking it. i was furious! (and very turned on by the gall with which he flipped the table on me.) so i followed orders and entered the shower when he hand-signaled at me. we kept laughing throughout to the point of distraction so i kept my one-take promise but cut segments in between to soften our 5 and a half minutes of footage laughing while "hot in herre" played on repeat. also at one point our son interrupted banging the door and saying "i hear you guys laughing!" which got cut.
hung_up.mp4
ariana eftimiu's essay on "hung up" says: It’s around 2007, and I am not a teenager in low-rise True Religions and a popcorn top, but a toddler glamorous in cheetah print Mary Janes and pink suede. I spend a lot of my time with my grandparents, who luckily do not complain about my littering their hair with butterfly clips or continuous pleas that there be some sort of performance happening on the TV. When there wasn’t one, I made sure to choreograph my own, so either way, they’d be entertained. striking for 2 reasons: 1, i didn't realize until that moment that "hung up" came out way later in time than i'd thought and 2, i was reminded by the extent of which children are influenced by music. this led me to "it's no use" from mr. rogers neighborhood episode 1608 which (i think) i saw for the first time when my son was a toddler and i was like, seeing it on a stressful day and felt seen. and at the end, to "little things" from sesame street, which was first performed by bob in episode 0528. i also didn't hear this song until i was well into adulthood—i'd been looking for songs to garden to and when this came up in the search it comforted me thinking about seedlings and rolly pollies and my dog annie and specifically, keeping fish and frogs, which is an interest my son and i found together and both enjoy.
stripper.mp4
i filmed this in response to rose pacult's essay which emboldened me to lean more into the sexiness of dancing. i will pretty much do anything if i think it's funny but it's always made me insecure to put on beauty, sexiness, and hotness. for the look of the film i wanted to emulate the scratchy, unsaturatred colors that are frequently used in gossip girl. rose references gossip girl in her essay because the brunette of the two main gossip girls, blair waldorf, has a vulnerable moment in the show dancing for a guy to sohodolls's "stripper." the moment in the show is relatable because blair is popular and well-styled and seems to have it all—but in that moment you see vulnerability, that she also struggles with feeling sexy. but when she gets comfortable and puts on the act, she's able to feel hot.
bootylicious.mp4
the fall of 2019 was the worst season of my life for the umbrella reasons that i was poor and also feeling lonely. andy and i's son had just turned 2 and i was in grad school—to my knowledge the only parent in my class—and because of that and other feelings of shame i put a cone on myself. i felt like no one at school got me, though i now wish i could go back and give myself a hug. i wish i had been more vulnerable and asked for help. i was working around the clock as a student and with an endless stream of badly-paid jobs. this was before i had met good mom friends, which i was later lucky to find. that semester, i had a class with this essay author!, avery ferin, who was an undergrad and really not much younger than me, but i took interest in her and a couple of other girls in the class who sat together and seemed to be having a good time. i could have sat with them and made jokes too but my self esteem was low then so i didn't make any friends in that class. i was making a 4.0 and (i think) being a good mom but i really had to "put it on" to get through that semester. i was underslept, underfed, commuting an hour out of my way from albany park to edgewater to lincoln park to class to edgewater to albany park daily to drop off and pick up my son from the only "action for children" nursery in the area. action for children is a government subsidy for low-income families to receive childcare. the program was a blessing for us as new, young parents that were still finding our spot in the world but there are some olympic-level beaurocratic hoops to actually receive the subsidy. most challenging was that children weren't allowed in this government office, so people who needed childcare didn't have easy access to run the paperwork. after weeks of push and pull, i finally befriended an admin who worked in that building. she let me in the side door with my son in tow so we could get this paperwork sorted. that same week, feeling truly at the bottom of the well, i had been excited because as part of the class i had with avery ferin, we would get to be in the newberry archives and examine copies of the little review. well i'll be damned! i was obsessed with margaret anderson and that crazy weinberg documentary "beyond imagining" about her. small radical publishing was my LIFE. well lo and behold, a very same day we'd been scheduled to work there for class, i saw online that my beloved friend—my doomed person, the subject of low—was involved with an event at the newberry. i pretended i got sick and fled the building before i could be seen. i felt like i wasn't welcome in my own world, that i couldn't do what i was passionate about, that i was better off invisible. so i acted invisible for a long time. and i always looked fondly at avery and her friends who (from the outside) seemed to be getting what the class was intended for, a way to talk with other people about literary magazines. when i made this video i wanted to convey the happiness avery excuded in that class. and i didn't even know she was a TMNT fan until after i posted it. it was a photo of her dressed up as ninja turtle which totally warmed me.
fuck_the_pain_away.mp4
this has little context but it's a funny story: first of all, i was overambitious with my hooping skillz but to be fair that is a children's hoop—so it's very light and tough to do tricks with. I'M MAKING EXCUSES FOR MYSELF but if i'd had an adult hoop my performance would at least be B+ and not C-. secondly, the idea was to have the garage open mid-song, but when andy and i were setting up the garage broke on its first way up. so we had to manually close it and get it fixed. but the show must go on! so we laughed it off and recorded the video with it fully open, in the moment, and dealt with the garage after.
star_guitar.mp4
the original "star guitar" video grabbed hold of me way back when and never put me down. the night before i was going to be competing with kyle simonsen, i wanted to recreate it by riding a train in chicago and filming the sequence that way, as an homage. but i also wanted to hit the gym and didn't have time, so i set up the tripod in my car looking at the sky over buildings and shot it driving home, blind to the footage. after i settled in at home i thought some of the shots were actually pretty cool so i looped and played with speed in what i had. the next morning i was so happy because i read kyle's essay and learned it was about the music video, too.
toxic.mp4
i recorded this in february, based solely off my lifelong love of britney spears and her philosophical riptides and her great outfits and her appreciation for dancing at home alone. it's cool that kendra decolo says "Britney Spears in her turquoise flight attendant uniform hunching her shoulders like an alien predator about to attack" because that's what i was trying to emulate with my body in this, but didn't have words for it. i had stuffed tissues in my shoulders to recreate the jaggedness of britney's shoulder pads.
everytime_we_touch.mp4
i wrote a triple-dog-dare to twitter: post a video of yourself singing everytime we touch as sincerely as possible, i said. what i meant was: the scariest thing i could ever imagine doing was singing everytime we touch, staring into the camera, with my whole heart, and not laugh. a vulnerability test. and then! two men couldn't resist the triple-dog-dare: my husband andy as well as xness veteran james charlesworth, who i met last year but have known him as a brother across planets and timelines. he slid right into home plate sandlot-style to this dare, clutching his guitar. i just had to add string lights and scream "woo!"
dirrty.mp4
i recorded this in february. jazz squares, the grapevine, squaredancing, etc. are the butt of a lot of jokes but being the texan that i am i see how these movements can also be very sexy. i thought this xtina song i've always liked would be a good opportunity to show how.
hot_+_cold.mp4
march 5 was an anxiety-inducing match day and i absolutely love the pentacostal divorce deep dive by megan culhane galbrait, which is full of delectable pop culture factoids. before brushing my teeth or putting on deoderant, i had to save hot n cold from the contest. i wore my real wedding attire. i reenacted katy's cancelled elmo special. i did not save hot n cold. i went to work and moved on with my day, sad.
feel_good_inc.mp4
i recorded this in february. for all the same reasons listed above in "hung up" about the discovery center office, smoking weed has been a calming and restorative ritual for me! i thought this would be the perfect song to do it to!
hit_em_up_style.mp4
i recorded this in february, inspired by outfit blu contrell wears while driving her bmw in "hit em up style."
hey_ya.mp4
my son very much directed this video. i showed him which song i meant and asked if we could make the video in the room he makes art in. he took the challenge instantly and didn't know it was called a "polaroid" but he was like, "let's use the camera where you shake the pictures at that part!" the first take was perfect. i am glad i got to be a part of what he wanted to do.
hips_dont_lie.mp4
i recorded this in february. back when i was making theatre and dancing more seriously, i loved trying to do isolated movements and shakira is the queen of isolating her ribs and hips. knowing how hard it is to isolate parts of my body in dance, i wanted to give the eye-optic of shakira's isolation by wearing a fringe around my waist. shakira's isolated movements look easy but probably take a hell of a lot of concentration and control.
cha_cha_slide.mp4
i thought it would be funny to do the cha cha slide on a staircase, and it was. the dress was made by my son's friend's family. they're mexican and for our annual neighborhood block sale sold beautiful embroidered hats and dresses in their yard. my best childhood friend (who is also mexican) was about to get married on mexican independence day and i was the maid of honor. i sent pictures of the dresses to her and her fiancé, who immediately venmo'd because he wanted to buy them for us. i gave her the dress and cowboy hat at the wedding and kept one set for myself. because i associate cha cha slide with family friendly wedding dance, i thought it would be a good dress to wear.
milkshake.mp4
lol. this one is funny and luckily it was meant to be. but i hope it's somewhat alluring? to be honest, that is one of my favorite sexytime outfits, but i also love doja cat and her music video "mooo." i grew up wearing relatively modest clothing and in college, also, never liked to show much. swimsuits even tended to give me the ick until after my son was born. i have a newfound love and lack of shame for my body, which only grows with movement and staying on top of my fitness/recreation. i wanted to challenge myself to wear that outfit on camera and prove to myself that showing my body wasn't as scary as i thought.
single_ladies.mp4
this was one take: my attempt to recreate the single ladies video without watching it beforehand. i think it came out pretty good but what's interesting is that before i hit "record," i realized i wasn't comfortable filming in that leotard with no bottoms. so i put shorts on and got more comfortable.
take_me_out.mp4
on february 29, andy got home to find me in a pile of costumes making these crazy music videos. i was in a state of chaos because i wanted to feature the lightbox and play with it in a mechanical way to the music, but i wasn't getting the setup right. so i asked for help and he took charge—i love that he's in it and how it came out as a successful two-hander. andy is actually a trained performer, and i felt inspired watching his stillness and intent on camera because i am less experienced.
turn_my_camera_on.mp4
my inspiration for this song was supposed to be self-love, a feeling of taking myself on a date to an analog photo booth and putting on display my overcoming of guilt and reservation. but when i had my lipstick on and got to long room, i felt anything but cool. i felt like a nervous child, unsure of where to get started. my heart was beating really fast. one thing people in recovery don't talk enough about (in my opinion) are our good experiences of drinking—the times we had fun and felt wild and enjoyed community. long room was one of my favorite places for that. one of my last-ever big nights out drinking, i blacked out there with the people i loved. it was cold in chicago on the night we celebrated megan kirby's graphic novel "another day in paradise," which i had published. we shut down the bar and took the silliest photos in the photobooth. my good friend and housemate jean's dad came out and drove us all home in my car because he is sober. on the afternoon i filmed this video, i went there by myself. getting there alone, i felt stressed at first. the memory of that party calmed me down and i lived in the joy of it until i felt my heart slowing back down. i realized i felt too much like i'd try to look pretty, so i put on my stardew valley baseball cap from my tote and put my headphones in, momentarily closing myself off. i ordered a nonalcoholic whiskey ginger which was made with love by a very nice girl with spiritless kentucky74. i enjoyed my drink, gave her a whole $20 for it (and for listening to my story about being sober and still wanting to enjoy long room) and did two takes for the film in the booth: one with my hat on and one without.
tik_tok.mp4
longtime ke$ha lover, checking in. i was even ke$ha for halloween one year, from idk 2010? so i had previous experience putting the ANIMAL on. i confess, for this reason, i was at an unfair advantage to own it immediately, but the next day and for weeks after i've had my nose stuck in j. nicholas geist's extensive ke$ha scholarship, including a thoughtful understanding of her lyrics' poetics, and he only keeps going deeper.
bad_romance.mp4
this was not choreographed but my idea was to convey a feeling i have often, which is the basic cliche of the inside not matching the outside. i've always felt like this bad ugly depressed ogre inside but when i've expressed this to people, they haven't taken it seriously because i'm a shorty that loves to laugh. i didn't know how it would happen but i've been working on bringing my darkness forth more into the spotlight of my personality instead of keeping it in the safe.
low_v1.mp4
when i signed up for march xness, i picked "low" because i thought it was a banger. it's a song i've always loved dancing to. but when i sat down to write the essay and i was reading the lyrics, i felt surprised by this big sadness. i started to rethink many of my fav upbeat dance songs in this way. i recognized that this annotation of low was fitting right in with jung's active imagination techniques. i meditate every day now, some days for 10 minutes and others for several hours. i'm not loyal to one type of meditation and switch it up. at home, we call my office the "discovery center" because it's my favorite spot to meditate and move. the discovery center has become such an important part of my life and now keeps me up at night, filling a role solo-drinking held before. i'm now nearly 16 months sober yet still up full moon losing myself. when i can find the ability to release and get to that secret place, some cool stuff happens. for this video i wanted to channel my 2007 identity, a goth myspace girl that loved to dance.
low_v2.mp4
i've written at length, but privately and not in any prestigious published way, about the tree of heaven in my backyard. it's colloquially called "the tree of hell" due to the seriousness of its invasion as a species. they are difficult to remove because, unlike many trees, droppings from the tree of heaven spawn new trees. to kill a tree of heaven you have to first kill the tree by poisoning it, let it die from the inside until it won't spawn, and then cut it down. the tree of heaven on my property is beautiful to rest under in all seasons, but it haunts me. because it's growing under the house and kicking the floors up. and it's spawning all over the block. and it's ripping my neighbor's sidewalk right out of the earth. and that because when i meditate, no matter what i'm trying to do, my brain takes me there. this video looks sad and scary but really represents all my favorite things about my doomed person. he's the one that saw this weird part of me from the first hello and ran toward it instead of away. i have a hard time carrying myself as Caroline, A Persona with people sometimes. i feel scared and exhausted, more comfortable being the smiling mom in a baseball cap at the playground after school. the day i met this man and we became friends, we discussed the youtube series Petscop which is a creepypasta-adjacent rabbithole of videos under the horrific premise "The game i found." Petscop is positioned in the video by "Paul" as an unfinished game that gets discovered. the game begins normal enough but as paul continues exploring the rooms and discovering elements of the game that were left unfinished or completely dark, the game gets scarier and more gravely cerebral. the first email my dear friend from the "low" essay wrote me referenced Petscop, saying "keep watching the windmill." with low_v2 i wanted to emulate the real pain i feel about what feels to be an unfinished story in my life. you start in a normal place then travel to rooms dark and unfinished. very much present in this video is a counterbalance of joy; as i filmed it in my garden—which i love at my house which i love with my family which i love. and also, a big strange sense of humor that i think my doomed person is the only person on earth who quite understands. it's just a way of saying to him, "i made this wacky thing. you'll get a kick out of it," and also "i miss making things with you. when i listen to 'tragedy' by the fleetwoods it comforts me. i'm sorry that we can't be friends but i hope you are as proud of me over there as i am of you over here."