Friday Night at 8: Transformation (or 100,000 Cinderellas)

Lou Reed:

Who doesn’t love the thought of transformation?  Pumpkins into a golden coach and all.

Cinderella, oh that’s what they fed me as a girl and I stumbled into many transformations as a result.

Modern culture calls it a “makeover.”  Well, yeah, you can change the surface in so many ways.

But transformation?  Oh that’s another thing entirely.  The surface is the form, the transformation fills that form and makes it breathe, like Galatea, like … well, I can’t think of any other examples.

Midwest city, yearning for real culture and finding none, I go to college and meet a strange group of wild misfits.

We end up renting a flat together and there are many stories I could tell about that, but I’m not going to.

One night we were sitting around getting stoned.  I already had a reputation as an some-time introvert with a clownish sense of humor and an intellectual bent, big imagination.  When high, I was likely to burst into songs and spontaneous theatrical skits, and I fit in well with the misfits, for they all dug that and created their own parts with gay abandon.

Oh, yeah, we were sitting around getting stoned … remember one night Elton John’s Yellow Brick Road had just came out and a big group of us were gathered around the stereo listening to the LP, astounded to the lyrics … “tender young Alice, they say …”

Hmpf!  I keep digressing.

Waldo and Jeffrey had taken over a waterfront dive bar in the downtown (which is now a mall) and I would watch them go out all dressed up in styles frowned upon both by the straight citizens and the hip hippies.

I’d watch them go out and hear the stories the next day, they amused me.

Jeffrey had three department store mannequins he had placed around our large flat.  One of them was named Jeanette (forgot the names of the two others).

Right next door there was a vintage clothing store named “Not So Far From Zanzibar.”

Stop me if I’ve told this story before.  Well you can try to stop me, but I doubt once I get going I’ll stop till the story is told.

So anyway Jeffrey would buy these vintage clothes and put them on Jeanette.  One of the items was a serious black lace corset, serious because it had metal hooks and eyelets and probably whalebone ribs for all I know.  It was a wonderful piece of lingerie, it looked so delicate but the underpinnings of it were so strong.

Well as I said, we were hanging around the flat smoking pot and Jeffrey gets this idea I should try on the corset.

Now up until then my preferred style of fashion was blue jeans and workshirts.  I was not a hippie, but I hated getting dressed up, was embarrassed by my … endowments … and so I used the culture of the times for my own convenience.

But I was stoned and in a wild mood so I tried the corset on.

Transformation!

I knew all the people that would be at the dive bar on the waterfront, our flat was the gathering place of all the misfits, and there were plenty of them, just not a lot compared to the general population.

Jeffrey and Waldo decided to dress me up and take me out to their dive bar as a sort of demented “coming out” debut.

Cinderella time.  Jeffrey ratted my hair and molded it with hairspray and bobby pins into a perfect 40’s style do.  Both he and Waldo were artists, painters, so it was an impressive result.

I yowled each time he stuck a bobby pin in my head and pulled my hair to tease it into a big wierd mass.

He responded “It hurts to be beautiful!”

Ok.

So the makeup, the accessories, all that.  False eyelashes, rhinestone bracelets.

And we take a cab to the dive bar.

Cinderella goes to the ball!

Oh I had fun.  The drag queens all thought I was a drag queen, too and named me “Miss 40’s.”  I danced with everyone and kissed everyone.  We all pretended we were  Hollywood  movie stars and called each other darling and smoked cigarettes out of long ebony holders, well some of us did.

Waldo and Jeffrey provided the form.  I provided the substance.  For a half-mad young woman who couldn’t help but act out, this was very convenient!  I was extremely popular.  I got so popular I ended up having a little hate club of around 5 or 6 people, who called me “Rhonda” for some reason.  Waldo said that meant I had really arrived.

I’ve had many transformations since then.  Each one was very entertaining and enlightening.

I find it sad that in our American scene, too many people settle for the make-over and don’t hold out for the real transformation.

** bongo beat **

Went out last night to the theater, to see 3 one-act plays by new young artists.  All three were just great, both the writing and the acting.

Art scene in Manhattan is thriving.

Lots of transformation going on.

I’m glad, because for too many years Manhattan was veering into yuppiedom with baby carriages everywhere and too clean streets and no sleaze any more.  Not good for a big city, I think.

So Robyn, your first comment in the fabulous Friday Philosophy says “life is change.”

Change is part of it, that’s for sure.  Part of transformation, I mean.  Taking your piece of it and owning it, dancing with it, allowing it to transform you as you meet it and yield to its mad music.

Happy Friday to one and all.