Spiotta and the Insouciant Summer Suit

These photos were all taken at the Guggenheim Lab last weekend on a previously overlooked corner of my neighborhood. Essentially, the Guggenheim Museum has sent up a "lab" in my neighborhood through September to host artists, architects, academics and their ilk all joined in examining the questions surrounding the future of cities, public spaces, and urban livability (if you will). The day I took these photographs was lovely, slightly humid, but breezy enough for this Guggenheimish-affiliated person to step out of her apartment in a summer suit. Notice, she carries the jacket, mostly, but I thought she looked great: official and hip.

The other woman is a sound collector originally from Alaska. Part of that day's discussion was on the sounds of cities, and participants (including me and one offspring) were sent off to collect sounds from the surrounding environs and email it back to the Lab. Each sound would then be harvested from an in-box and would be part of an integrated sound scape that the slightly nebbish dude here was going to compile. My companion and I ventured over to the nearby Whole Foods, where we captured the bumping of cart wheels on concrete, the sounds of a cleaver on a cutting board, and shoppers musing over a giant whole swordfish partially submerged in ice. It made me acutely aware of the great variety and subtlety of sounds in a seemingly quotidian landscape. This realization was almost moving, actually. Once back at the Lab we heard our fellow sound collectors' sounds: the dining room of Katz's Deli, the throp throp of a handball game, a drum circle, subway sounds, and more!

Reading: Speaking of fashion, I recently finished Dana Spiotta's Lightning Field (2001) this week. If ever pressed, I'd have to say that this is one of the most fashionable books I've ever read (especially for a piece of literary fiction) clothing becomes a character, a force constantly pulling at the narrative. The main character in the traditional sense, however, owns several high end, high concept restaurants (Vanity and Vexation, is one) and is a receiver of Spiritual Exfoliation Therapy. It's probably no surprise this is set in LA? An excerpt from the novel illustrating what I mean by the importance of clothing follows, (and my review of the novel's on GoodReads):

"When she spotted the last pair [of tights] in medium, in the sort of oatmeal cream that would make her feel October and Ivy League, coed and coquettish, or at least like a sort of wrapped Christmas treat, all warm and inviting to the touch, she say yes, knowing, in a sinking way, it was obscene. She just wouldn't think about it--not even attempt the usual relativism of what was three hundred dollars here or there: Two couples out for dinner? A plane ticket to Seattle and back? One month's health insurance? An evening's worth of cocaine?--and, actually, not thinking about certain things had become so easy lately, so much a newfound capacity of her conscious will. And by Friday the Winter-Spring Collection, such as Luscious Lent in Satin-Finish Ash, and even Ramadan Rayon Rose, in a more modest 170 denier, would be in, for preview, to the most special and and loyal customers. A group with whom Mina surely belonged" (78-9).

Spiotta's latest novel, Stone Arabia, was out last month, and tops my stack of summer reading, although the stack is larger than summer is at this point, sadly