Touched by greatness

I finally met my internet friend Amy Crehore in the flesh at the Green exhibition in Santa Monica last night. Her very erotic and luscious layered painting Deja Vu Waltz (detail to the right) was featured in the show, and by *featured* I mean that it was without a doubt the feature attraction. We tried to find the afterparty at Zanzibar afterwards, but it didn't seem that anyone else showed up and, after being told by four ebullient and somewhat scantily clad young women that the club was, well, cough, and sotto voce a bit more for 'younger people' meaning not us, I ended up taking her out to dinner as a postpartum celebration. Let me take an aside here to point out that I had been stricken with a bit of the Irish flu all that day since dear Lynne's dear mother had been attempting to afflict me with alcohol poisoning the night previous, but all indisposition was dispelled as the first cool and healing touch of the hosted artshow bar's Skyy Vodka - which I had sensed from across the parking lot - touched the back of my throat. Not my usual brand as I am a bit of a snoot and supercilious snob when it comes to vodkas but still deserving of the appelation aqua vitae, ever blessed and most pure holy water. Anywho, Amy is a lovely, passionate, talented and unassuming person, deserving of her recent fame and her rôle as the next big thing.

But being here in Malibu helping Lynne with an installation reminded me to call an older and dearer friend Lady Lisa Lyon, one of those people in my life that I can call and and our conversation immediately takes up where we left off even if we haven't talked in ages. I'm so fond of this Mapplethorpe photo of her, which is how we met, receiving a fan postcard from her fronted with the image just a few days after I had stood, tumescing, gazing at a large print of her emerging from the foam like Aphrodite. Her adoptive father John Lilly and I shared an Alma Mater as well as an interest in the edges of experience (and, I suppose, a household full of beautiful women if I had been so fortunate) and he queried me after an isolation tank experience as to whether I had been able to communicate with some of the beings who control our very lives.