7. normal womanly moon-based urges
not lycanthropy, more like a craving for fresh mozzarella
Moon’s full tonight. The moon makes us all a little wild. Or maybe it doesn’t, scientifically, but if it wants to, why wouldn’t you let it?
Every time the moon is full, I fantasize about taking the trip to see surrealist painter Leonora Carrington’s Mexico City house. She lived there for 65 years, from 1946 until her death in 2011, and it was more than just her home. It became that house for the circle of women, men, and cats who came into and out of her life - and the base of operations for her and her best friend: artist, costume designer, and it girl Leonor Fini.
I think about Leonora’s house a lot. Most of the conversation surrounding surrealism stick to a couple of decidedly male names - Dali, Ernst - but I’ve always found the works of women like Carrington and Fini to be much more my speed. (Their circle of Mexico City surrealists and expats also included the great Frida Kahlo - but many many people have written about Kahlo’s incredible life, and Carrington and Fini’s friendship has always spoken to me.)
In the correspondence of Carrington and Fini, the great Max Ernst is just a lover. In most other books I’ve read, Ernst is the subject, and you learn the names of Carrington and Fini as his lovers in the footnotes of his life. But they weren’t a stack of exes, the women were best friends, exchanging letters and gifts and sometimes heartbreaks over the same men. Leonora’s house became the hub of creativity, a haven for women who wanted to be humans and not sidekicks. At one time, Leonora Carrington’s Mexico City home contained seventeen cats and two lovers, which is a great example of learning from your best friends, and why I have some problems with the idea that Ernst was some sort of heartbreaker. Fini was famously quoted as saying, “a woman should live with two men - one a lover and the other more of a friend.”
Her and Carrington also shared a deep love of costume and set design, as seen from the above photos where Carrington worked with Alejandro Jodorowsky to create stage plays. (Jodorowsky and Carrington had somewhat of an occult creative relationship, of which evidence is scattered in intriguing essays but hard to find.)
Leonora Carrington died in 2011, but her home’s been recently reopened to the public. Someday I’ll spend a full moon there, preferably amongst my own occult creative weirdoes and a few cats, and hope to see what they saw.
NEW BUSINESS, POTPOURRI
I told myself I’d get a note out to you all this weekend - mostly to welcome the gobs of you who have arrived since the launch of several Substacks. I have to say - I’m having as much fun as many of you seem to be, signing up, interacting, etc. I really like these new spaces we’re curating, and I wanted to put some effort into mine today.
It seemed like a good day for it - being the full moon. I’m not going to wax occultic on what I think moons mean, because frankly, it’s pseudoscience. It is! I can accept that, and also be a woman who marks moon phases in her planner. I would argue that in certain matters of self-understanding, the places angels fear to tread, a healthy avoidance of science is even necessary to get good results. But what I do know - I just think the moon is really neat.
That’s worth making art about, to me. So here’s some more good art about the moon. Get in touch with every weirdo who’s ever lived and enjoy some art about the moon, man.
LUNA: NEW MOON by Ian McDonald. A good friend of mine turned me on to these a few years ago and I read them in one mad fugue. It happened to coincide with a several week period where I was flying nonstop, so I read most of it in metal tubes, the air whooshing past my ears, my feet far from the Earth. People call these books Game of Domes as a joke, but honestly - ASoIaF wishes it ever got as sexy (and queer) as these books do.
MOON and MOON by BAT for LASHES. A favorite track from one of my all time favorite albums. It’s sort of a concept album about lovers and things, but really it’s just a vaguely celestial, deeply damply feminine album made for wading into pools in the moonlight. Or simply good music to paint to.
Super interested in this 2019 MAKING MOON hardcover featuring information about the miniatures and other props that went into the 2009 Duncan Jones sci-fi flick, Moon. Actually if you haven’t seen MOON…maybe go watch it before you look too far into it. It’s a fun watch, and it’s got some fascinating practical effects in an age where there aren’t nearly enough of those anymore. (Old woman yells at CGI cloud.)
This poem, The Two Headed Calf, by Laura Gilpin. It gets passed around as an adaptation featuring comic art every so often, but…I confess, I like this one much better without the art? Not to spoil a nine line read for you, but I feel like the artist choosing to draw the calf as a sweet and lovely looking thing completely strips the poem of meaning. When I first read it, I pictured the calf as something whose deformities are counter to the loveliness it feels. (But what do I know. I just think the moon is neat.)
Lastly, these moon phase stickers. I use them to loosely keep a sense of the moon phases - I’m not strict, the stickers are about the size of a half dollar, so I’ll stick one in every week or so, and then simply write in when the moon is full or new. If nothing else, it’s a form of time-telling that predates any other my genetic memory might be aware of. It’s good to know the rhythm. Never hurts to know what nights are darker than others.
See? I said no lycanthropy.
CALL TO ACTION
I have half a dozen essays and things in the chamber, half written, and I’m not sure which you’d like me to finish and put up first. If there’s a specific kind of article you’d like to see from me - now’s the time to request it! Let me know in the comments what you want to see and I’ll look it over.
I make no promises. If I don’t feel like it, I don’t. But let me know, and maybe the moon will shine her light upon you. Wouldn’t that be cool?
Additionally, I’m not on Twitter at all right now, so if you want to ask me something, the comments below are the place. But be nice - or at least, intelligent.
Stay weird. Talk soon.
-TH
01:09 08.22.21
As someone who is Mexican (and lives in Mexico) I feel ashamed to say I didn't know this artist existed. In school we're taught about Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Alfaro Siqueiros, Clemente Orozco as some of the greatest Mexican painters/muralists, but it's well know that during those years many politics, artists and scientists emigrated to Mexico so I guess many of them got lost in history and people just don't talk about them enough.
Personally I almost never go to Mexico City because it is a chaos (too many people, too many traffic and it's easy to get lost) but I might make an exception one these days to visit Leonora's house because she sounds fascinating. And talking about visiting México, have you ever been here? I feel most tourists only visit our beaches (and I don't blame them, they're gorgeous) or the pyramids but each state from inside the country has many things to offer culturally, gastronomically and recreationally speaking. I have traveled almost all around the country so I know what I'm talking about, though maybe now it's not a good moment to recommend traveling, because the delta variant is making the situation worse (at least here in Mexico) but maybe one day when things get better.
Abrupt change subject I know and sorry this is so long already but I really like the new direction Excalibur is taking. And I really liked the Hellfire issue, I mean RICSTAR!! but also I couldn't help to think while reading, is this brown and gay MEXICAN man now the king of a bunch of magic ancient Celtic dudes? Weird but interesting, I'm curious to see how this will play out.
Anyway, take care of yourself and again thanks for sharing this, for bringing to the light another one of those brilliants minds who make of Mexico their home.
I’ll always trust a creative person to know what’s best to put out, and then I’ll live vicariously through you.