The City, George Grosz (1916/17)

The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is an album that ought to come with a warning label: Do Not Play While Operating Heavy Machinery. The very antithesis of Norah Jones and Michael Buble - "easy-listening jazz" - dancing between tumult and rapture, overwhelming tenderness and exquisite anguish, it resists any attempts to cast it into the background. It is music so expansive and all-encompassing, you could throw yourself headlong into it and never be seen again. For your own safety, and the safety of your passengers, resist any temptation to play it on a car stereo.

"My music is evidence of my soul's will to live."

- Charles Mingus

Recorded on January 20, 1963 by an eleven-piece band, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady feels like a spontaneous eruption, a revolution: Charlie Mariano and Booker Ervin on saxophone are the eloquent and virtuosic firebrands at the front of the fray, Rolf Ericson's trumpet an insistent crier, fists pounding the air, Jay Berliner's acoustic guitar the somber and reflexive outsider, the piano (Jaki Byard) a captivating, lyrical Romantic. Both intensely personal (Mingus himself considered The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady his defining masterpiece) and whole-heartedly collaborative, it is a testament to the imagination of the individual and the power of the collective.

While originally written as a ballet, it is difficult to imagine what breathless contortions of the body could further elevate - or keep up with - the shifting themes and tonal complexity of the music. Those 40 minutes, hot-blooded, sensuous and grandiose, scale every register of human emotion, unfolding and culminating in the final movement, "Of Love, Pain, and Passioned Revolt, then Farewell, My Beloved, 'til It's Freedom Day". Like Allen Ginsberg's Howl, that other roaring lament of the Beat era, nothing quite captures it but the experience of listening for yourself.

Track C: Group Dancers, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady - Charles Mingus (1963)

* * *

The institutionalisation of Classical training led to a deification of the composer as artist and the expectation of strict adherence to the written score; anyone who played Bach out of turn was automatically regarded as "maverick" - or more dismissively, "unorthodox". Little surprise, then, that so many jazz players should be classically trained musicians looking to escape from its strictures. For in jazz - from simple, plaintive standards to the most elaborate freeform ensemble pieces - structure and extemporisation go hand in hand, with spontaneous riffs on a theme often regarded as the highest practice of the art.

The aim: to take what is practiced and familiar, and infuse it with a sense of real time, the contingencies of the moment and the personality of the performer.

Wood Wood Adrien Striped Tee / Pablo Picasso photo / Isabel Marant Zonca Belt / Kelly Framel turquoise tassel necklace / Alice + Olivia pants / Costume National slingback heels / Lauren Manoogian Triangle Cuff

A modest, unadorned version of the long-sleeve striped shirt - or "Breton stripes", famously worn by Coco Chanel and Pablo Picasso (top right) - that's been a fashion staple for much of the twentieth century, the Wood Wood Adrien Striped Tee ($95 USD) in brushed heavy weight cotton jersey has an appealing, almost rustic, simplicity. Its length and cut is versatile; it can be worn hanging loose over the waist of a pair of tough corduroys, or tucked into a skirt or khaki shorts.

My instinct, though, would be to dress up the shirt a little. Pair it perhaps with Alice + Olivia high-rise wide-leg pants ($330 USD) in a rich burgundy satin, and cinched with a black Isabel Marant belt (right centre). A turquoise tassel necklace by Kelly Framel ($275 USD) and this leather Lauren Manoogian Triangle Cuff ($120 AUD) - with their tribal motif, like something you picked up on holiday - add a touch of the unexpected. And to lend height to the 40s silhouette, these understated Costume National suede slingback heels ($700 USD); they have an attractive casualness, reminiscent of slippers beneath pyjama bottoms, yet are still elegant with their open toe and cutouts at the sides.

Central to this outfit is the play of different textures: dark suede against reflective satin, antiqued silver on brushed cotton. A melange of pieces, each with their own distinctive identities, verging on the haphazard, but grounded by bold black and white stripes.

Labels: alice + olivia, charles mingus, costume national, isabel marant, kelly framel, lauren manoogian, most wanted, pablo picasso, wood wood

10/30/2011 [4]

A young waitress with sleek, boyish hair and matter-of-fact grace applies lipstick in the bathroom mirror of a smoke-dimmed club.

Despite her youth, she has the air of someone who is never surprised by anything. Certainly not by the louche, middle-aged man sprawled all over the grimy floor tiles. Needle in one hand, he is injecting heroin into his other arm. He wears a shirt and pants that have seen far better days.

"You spyin' on me, kid?"

"No. I work here."

"Since when?" (1)

Not the most likely candidate for a knight in shining armour. Not that she will admits she needs saving.

Neil Jordan is a writer/director (and sometime-novelist) with a "big-hearted tolerance" and a particular talent for sympathetic, even Romantic, portrayals of characters that society ordinarily shuns or overlooks (2). His films - which include the Oscar-winning The Crying Game (1992), in which Stephen Rea played an IRA terrorist who falls in love with a transgender singer (Jaye Davidson), and Interview with the Vampire (1994), an adaptation of the Anne Rice novel which sparked a whole sub-genre of vampire-as-antihero - are about rebels and outsiders, defiers of conventional morality and customs, whether by fate or by choice.

There are two such loveable rogues at the heart of The Good Thief (2002): an ageing gambler/thief named Bob Montagnet, played by Nick Nolte at his most wrecked and beautiful, and 17-year-old Anne (Nutsa Kukhnianidze), a Bosnian immigrant. The setting is Nice, the French Riviera, where Europe and North Africa meet.

Starting in the bowels of Remi's disreputable club, they gradually ascend through the stratas of this colourful and decadent underworld - cafes, boudoirs and Monte Carlo casinos. When at the end they emerge together, dazed and triumphant, stepping literally into the daylight, they are physically as well as mentally transformed; her in a glittering black sheath dress, he in an elegant tuxedo.

But whether winning or losing, this is that type of film where everything is done with style.

"The Good Thief splays out The Crying Game’s neon-night seediness on an exotic European locale, specifically Nice and Monte Carlo but more accurately a foreigner’s dreamy idealized conception of such a romantic liminal zone. The film looks ravishing, its dusky Christmas-lit set pieces bringing to mind Wong Kar-Wai, Alfonso Cuarón’s Great Expectations, and the visual light games from certain scenes in Eyes Wide Shut."

- Justin Stewart, Reverse Shot (3)

For me, the experience of (re)watching The Good Thief is like slipping back into a conversation with a much admired friend, someone who taught you how to become the person that you are, and whose words still have the power to stop your heart with desire and envy. The moment when "Parisien du Nord" starts to play, and the opening credits appear like an absinthe dream over the jewel-coloured neon of an alley behind a gambling den, is both a homecoming and a seduction.

The Good Thief, in other words, is to me what Breakfast at Tiffany's is to so many women, a jewel of pop culture that is my own beauty manifesto. Others point to Audrey Hepburn as the epitome of chic, but for me that iconic status is held jointly by Bob and Anne. (4)

Witty and sexy, with their never-gone-to-bed rumpled nonchalance, their smoke-roughened voices, the line-up of thieves and con-artists in The Good Thief, and the nocturnal world they inhabit, exude a cool and easy lyricism that is almost a life philosophy, a way of being. Its soundtrack, filled with Leonard Cohen and French-Algerian raï music, is a constant companion to my humdrum day-to-day. If I were Alice and could have my pick of rabbit holes, this darkly dazzling version of Nice would be my notion of Wonderland.

* * *

As always when wearing such a busy print, care must be taken that it doesn't wear you. Mixing prints and colours takes skill and a willingness to risk looking like this; if you would rather let the dress speak for itself, keep the rest of the outfit minimalist. Being comfortable, holding yourself in a way that is relaxed and fluid, goes a long way toward helping project the feeling that you belong in an outfit. If you find that this does not come naturally, try a glass or two of wine.

The runway look features mid-heel pumps and leather belt in exactly matching turquoise. These Reed Krakoff snakeskin and leather sandals (£504.17), on the other hand, in contrasting coral and pink would provide a pop of warmth without being too bottom-heavy or overwhelming, while the silver leather and snakeskin detail echoes the neutrals in the dress. A warm red or orange lipstick, such as NARS Heat Wave ($24 USD), or alternatively, a brightly saturated fuchsia like Anna Sui #360 Lip Rouge V, could then provide striking counterbalance.

(2) Eric Hynes (2006), "The Butcher Boy", Reverse Shot, http://www.reverseshot.com/legacy/winter06/jordan/butcherboy.html

(3) Justin Stewart (2006), "Chance Encounter", Reverse Shot, http://www.reverseshot.com/legacy/winter06/jordan/goodtheif.html

(4) Gong Li's character in Miami Vice (2006) also holds that place of influence over me, but that's another film, another column altogether.

Labels: estee lauder, most wanted, neil jordan, oscar de la renta, reed krakoff

8/12/2011 [8]

Jewellery figures in a minor subplot in Mansfield Park, although Freudian critics have had a field day with its image of two gold chains, one too thick, one "just right." Both rustic and delicate, Cathy Waterman's tree pendant brings to mind Fanny's (and Austen's) Romantic influences, her rare rhapsodies about nature, her identification with the country.

Labels: cathy waterman, comrags, frederic malle, jane austen, maloles, most wanted, olivia giacobetti, smythe

4/20/2009 [7]

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