I grew up in the 1980s. Those were my teenage years and, like Rob Sheffield in Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, the music of that decade figures prominently in who I was then and the person I am today.

Much of the music that came out of the 80s is still some of my favorite music of all time: R.E.M., Sonic Youth, and The Replacements along with single wonders like "Say It Isn't So," "Don't You Want Me," "Girls On Film," and any hit off of Madonna's first album.

Talking to Girls About Duran Duran proves that our memories are undeniably linked to music. Like the flashbacks you get when you hear a certain song, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran is a continuous flood of stories triggered by listening to a single song. The stories are Rob's but each of us has our own stories for each song, too.

The book is full of Sheffield's great commentary on 80s pop music gold. For instance:

The Banana Splits didn't look any more ridiculous pretending to play guitars than Missing Persons did.

If you're making fun of somebody for having new-wave hair, the words "You! Flock of Seagulls!" are going to come up.

Of all the complex females in my life, Madonna was the one who taught me how to be completely exasperated by a woman, and how to like it.

The Replacements were imaginary friends who I could practice on while I was learning to have actual friends.

As someone who felt the same way about The Replacements -- and much of the music of my teenage years -- Talking to Girls About Duran Duran is a conversation with old friends over a box of records and cassingles.

Ah, John Waters. Campy, filthy, subversive, delightful.

I'm not a big fan of his films but you have to admit the guy has balls. And in his book Role Models he proceeds to entertainingly write about the people who have influenced his unique style and outlook on life.

For instance, this passage about the great Tennessee Williams:

Yes, Tennessee Williams was my childhood friend. I yearned for a bad influence and Tennessee was one in the best sense of the word: joyous, alarming, sexually confusing, and dangerously funny. I didn't quite "get" "Desire and the Black Masseur" when I read it in One Arm, but I hoped I would one day. The thing I did know after finishing the book was that I didn't have to listen to the lies the teachers told us about society's rules. I didn't have to worry about fitting in with a crowd I didn't want to hang out with in the first place. No, there was another world that Tennessee Williams knew about, a universe filled with special people who didn't want to be a part of this dreary conformist life that I was told I had to join.

From Tennessee Williams to Johnny Mathis, Lady Zorro (the lesbian stripper from Waters' hometown of Baltimore) to designer Rei Kawakubo, Little Richard to pornographer Bobby Garcia, Waters regales us with stories about his role models as if we were sitting together over cocktails at some Baltimore dive bar on a Friday night. Yes, please.

The Dumps
Teddy and the Bears
Save Grand Canyon
Los Meesfits
Frangipani Mayo
One L
Major Love Event
Soft Opening
Lord Scrummage
Bubbly Mommy Gun
Grape Soda
Tunabunny
Cars Can Be Blue
Ginger Envelope
Night Moves Gold
Bambara
Cinemechanica
Holy Liars
Gift Horse
Venice is Sinking

[Source: AthFest 2010 Venue Lineups]

Blake Nelson has an exceptional ability to tap into what it's really like to be a teenager. Most of us look back on our teenage years with our adult perspective and write them off to the awkwardness of adolescent social life and the transition into impending adulthood. That changes our perspective, though. We forget what it was really like. And that's what Nelson captures so well: that teenage psyche, the internal struggle we forget. The "problems" teenagers have are overshadowed, almost reduced in scope, by the real problems and responsibilities that com with being an adult.

It's those real problems, the very real internal struggle and turmoil, that haunts Paranoid Park. The main character, a 16 year old skater, is so caught up with the thoughts inside him that he can hardly enjoy or even live the life of a "normal" teenager.

From his internal monologue:

It made me mad that people always talked about helping teenagers. There was always some new program, some new plan to help kids. There were ads on TV, on the radio. Hotlines, and this and that. But did any of it work? Not in the slightest. Here I was, with a real problem, with a serious problem, but was there anywhere I could go? Who do you call when something really goes wrong? Those geeks in the student-counseling office? When you had a real problem, there was nothing you could do, no one you could talk to. It was so typical. And so unfair. Why didn't they set up an anonymous number you could call, so you could talk to someone who actually knew something, someone who could give you real advice and tell you what your options were?

For once in my life I genuinely needed help, and where could I go? There was nowhere. There was nothing. And it really pissed me off.

Nelson makes dwelling in the mind of a teenager as interesting and psychologically compelling as dwelling in the mind of an adult.

1. You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for you.
2. The sun’s not yellow it’s chicken.
3. Don’t say I never warned you when your train gets lost.
4. I need a dump truck mama to unload my head.
5. Something is happening here but you don’t know what it is.
6. Won’t you come see me, Queen Jane?
7. I got forty red, white, and blue shoestrings and a thousand telephones that don’t ring.
8. I started out on burgundy but soon hit the harder stuff.
9. I had to rearrange their faces and give them all another name.

Here's the thing about autobiographical essays: they matter deeply to the person writing them. Enough to even write the essays in the first place. Yeah, we all like to write or talk about ourselves and, ultimately, when we do it's for our own satisfaction, catharsis, empowerment, or whatever. So does it really matter what other people think?

That's why I like Emily Gould's collection of essays about her life before and upon arrving in New York City, And The Heart Says Whatever. Gould never pretends for it to be a collection of life lessons, for her or the reader. It's one person's story of life as a young adult in one of the most exciting and opportunity-filled cities in the world. Gould feels "the pull of a trajectory, a sense of experience piling up the way it does as you turn the pages of a novel." Sometimes you're in control, other times you're not. Sometimes you make the right decisions, other times you don't.

This is one of the most painful things about getting older, especially getting older in the same place where you were young: the constant realizations that you could have been doing everything better all along, if only you'd known how to read the map more accurately.

While at times I found myself pushing myself through to the end of a story, what I took from most of the essays is a sense of no regrets. Sure, some things could have been approached or carried through differently, but Gould did the best she could -- like each and every one of us has in our own lives, good results or bad -- and "would do it all again."

The current exhibition at Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta features the fashion photography of Lillian Bassman, Frank Horvat, and William Klein. It's appropriately titled for these sweltering Southern summer days: Heat + High Fashion.

From the press release from Jackson Fine Art owner and curator Anna Walker Skillman:

The works of Lillian Bassman, Frank Horvat and William Klein helped define and revolutionize Fashion Photography of the 20th century. Their images of some of the foremost models of the day, immortalized the style of a bygone era. Their Individual styles set them apart but their experimental approach to their crafts unifies them. Working for magazines such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Glamour, with some of the top art directors Alexey Brodovich and Alexander Liberman throughout the 40s, 50s and 60s, these three photographers broke conventional rules and set the ground work for the fashion images we see today.

Lillian Bassman's photos are particularly striking.

Frank Horvat is no slouch either.

This work is so visually stunning. It's beyond fashion, especially considering when they were made.

I just came across a collection of wonderful photographs of New York City's Lower East Side in the late '70s and early '80s by Michael Sean Edwards. The photos are vivid and gritty, both in subject matter and the look of the film.

Really wonderful stuff. Believe it or not, looking at these photos makes me wish I had been old enough to experience this New York. I'll admit I'm romanticizing it quite a bit but there's no denying the artistic and cultural energy of the time. Gone.

Richard Metzger at Dangerous Minds chimes in with some commentary on a few of the photos. Definitely worth the quick read.

Check out the whole NYC 1978-1985 set and all of Edwards' work. Lots of great stuff to look at.

I've been a big fan of Charlotte-based artist Sharon Dowell for some time now. Her paintings are like memories layered upon each other and stacked high in your mind. Whether it's one of her dazzling cityscapes or a ghostlike figurative painting, Sharon's work is exciting, pushing you to look a little deeper and longer.

I always want to know more about how people create: what inspires them, how they motivate themselves, etc. So I asked Sharon some questions about her work and inspiration.

Armando Bellmas: What moves you to begin a new painting?

Sharon Dowell: The satisfaction from completing a painting inevitably wanes and I begin to think about new ways to explore ideas, imagery, layers, etc. It's akin to being in a bustling city; that wonderful overwhelming feeling that there are so many things to do and see that the possibilities are never ending.

Sometimes inspiration hits with a feverish pitch and I cannot wait to get into the studio. Other times I glimpse something that I file away to explore at a later date, such as tangled power lines in a quiet alley or the beautiful geometry and order of farmland when fly across the country.

Armando: Do your ideas rely on actual snapshots of places and things or are you working from the memory of what you've glimpsed?

Sharon: A little of both. I try to capture the energy of place in my work. I usually have a camera on hand wherever I travel and my imagery is based upon my actual photos. When I am painting in the studio, the memory of that moment is incorporated into the work in the underpainting, color, and texture.

Armando: I love that layering of tangible and intangible. So in a painting like 'Pier', for instance, there's a memory in there, almost a reflection in the water and on the wood, tangible and intangible. Tell me about it.

Sharon: Most of my paintings begin with either patterns or an aerial view of a city--rooftops and streets, etc. It is my attempt to express that intangible energy one experiences in different environments--be it on a loud and bustling street corner or under a pier on a breezy day. The architectural imagery then creates a nice tension between the two layers. I allow the underpainting and texture to show through in certain areas. Visually, the transparency of the layers feels ghostlike, referencing who or what may have occupied that space in times past.

Armando: Would your work be different if you lived someplace else? How does living in Charlotte affect your ideas?

Sharon: I'm not sure if my work would be different, but I do feel that the one year I lived in New York City influenced my subject matter heavily. I had a difficult time painting there--so much wonderful distraction! But when I came back to Charlotte, I was able to have a studio, a sanctuary where I could focus solely on my work, and that made a huge difference.

I have painted scenes of Charlotte, but a lot of my subject matter tends to be of other places--Helena, MT, Asheville, Iceland, San Francisco, NYC, you name it. As mentioned, when I travel, I have my camera on hand and thus build up a large database of images to cull from. Because I am exploring (and romanticizing) these new places, I think they are sometimes a little more exciting to paint when I get into the studio.

[Check out more of Sharon Dowell's work.]

It's pretty obvious by now that I love to read. I'm not always good about following through with recommendations from others, though. I have pretty specific tastes as far as my fiction goes.

So in an effort to open myself up to the recommendations of others I signed up for The Rumpus Book Club.

The Rumpus is one of my favorite websites. Books, music, film, comics, art, sex -- they cover it all. Our tastes jive. I trust them. So it was a no-brainer to let them pick one of the books I read each month by joining the book club. (Get more details about The Rumpus Book Club here.)

The inaugural The Rumpus Book Club book is the John Brandon's second novel, Citrus County. (The Rumpus Book Club members received this one a month or two before it's release date from McSweeney's -- another club perk.)

So here I go opening myself up to the recommendations of others and the first book is mainly about a sociopath that does some pretty disturbing shit. So disturbing, in fact, that I find it difficult to continue reading the book after the first 75 pages or so.

This passage is from the first part of the book:

As far as Toby could tell, Uncle Neal's business was to clean things that nobody else would clean, from grimed old engines to abandoned slaughterhouses. Toby's uncle, it was safe to say, was a pariah. He lived in a world of regret, if not remorse -- about what, Toby couldn't say. Toby's uncle always joked about killing himself, and Toby had begun to suspect he wasn't joking. He didn't have much incentive to stay alive. Uncle Neal, like everyone else, believed Toby was a run-of-the-mill punk, another angst-ridden adolescent. He had no clue what Toby was capable of.

But here's the thing about a damn good book like Citrus County: as disturbing as the story is, Brandon's writing is so methodical and intriguing that you can't stop reading. I wanted to stop a few times but couldn't. I had to find out what would happen, how the characters would deal with their predicaments, and how Brandon would twist and turn the tale towards the end -- despite the disturbing shit.

I stuck with it, putting my faith in Brandon's writing to get me through it. It was worth every word.

1. Living well is the best revenge.
2. I believe in coyotes and time as an abstract.
3. Maybe these maps and legends have been misunderstood.
4. Stay off that highway. Word is it's not so safe.
5. If you are confused check with the sun. Carry a compass to help you along.
6. The only thing to fear is fearlessness. The bigger the weapon the greater the fear.
7. It's easier to leave than to be left behind.
8. This fame thing, I don't get it.
9. I suffer the dreams of a world gone mad. I like it like that and I know it.
10. A handshake is worthy if it's all that you've got.
11. Don't go back to Rockville and waste another year.
12. I'd sooner chew my leg off than be trapped in this.
13. Take your instinct by the reins. Better best to rearrange.
14. Dreams they complicate my life.
15. I don't know what I'm hungry for. I don't know what I want anymore.
16. What noisy cats are we.
17. No time to question the choices I make.
18. I am Superman and I know what's happening. I am Superman and I can do anything.
19. Nightswimming deserves a quiet night.
20. Not everyone can carry the weight of the world.
21. I sit at my table and wage war on myself.
22. When the world is a monster bad to swallow you whole, kick the clay that holds the teeth in and throw your trolls out the door.
23. My night is colored headache grey.
24. Everybody here comes from somewhere that they would just as soon forget.
25. It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

[Originally posted to Facebook on February 3, 2009 as part of that "random things about you" meme. Posted here for posterity. See also Things he got.]

Blah Blog Blah has a post up about Allen Ginsberg's old apartment in New York City. The photos in the post aren't much to look at but the words that accompany them are those of a former neighbor and intimate observer.

We didn't bother with each other much, but he'd take photos of my shirtless carpenter boyfriend when he'd use the fire escape for an impromptu workshop. You never knew who'd be gathered around his kitchen table: a PBS film crew, a minion of men with black garb and payis chanting Sabbath prayers, etc.

Get a little more about Ginsberg's old homes here and here.

Blah Blog Blah's post got me to thinking about the recent exhibition at the National Gallery of Art featuring Ginsberg's photographs from the Beat era.

Ginsberg's photographs are far more than historical documents. The same qualities that governed his poetry -- intense observation of the world, deep appreciation for the beauty of the vernacular, and faith in intuitive expression -- also permeate his photographs. Drawing on the most common form of photography, the snapshot, he created spontaneous, uninhibited pictures of ordinary events to celebrate and preserve what he called "the sacredness of the moment."

I love the captions that Ginsberg added to the photographs.

Myself seen by William Burroughs, Kodak Retina new-bought 2'd hand from Bowery hock-shop, our apartment roof Lower East Side between Avenues B & C, Tompkins Park trees under new antennae.

Hey Jack Kerouac...

Jack Kerouac wandering along East 7th Street after visiting Burroughs at our pad, passing statue of Congressman Samuel "Sunset" Cox, "The Letter-Carrier's Friend" in Tompkins Square toward corner of Avenue A, Lower East Side; he's making a Dostoyevsky mad-face or Russian basso be-bop Om, first walking around the neighborhood, then involved with The Subterraneans, pencils & notebook in wool shirt-pockets, Fall 1953, Manhattan.

This one ties in just right with the old apartment story.

I sat for decades at morning breakfast tea looking out my kitchen window, one day recognized my own world the familiar background, a giant wet brick-walled undersea Atlantis garden, waving ailanthus ("stinkweed") "Trees of Heaven," with chimney pots along Avenue A topped by Stuyvesant Town apartments' upper floors two blocks distant on 14th Street, I focus'd on the raindrops along the clothesline. "Things are symbols of themselves," said Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. New York City August 18, 1984

My mind is wild with the thoughts of the energy that filled the room while Ginsberg had his morning tea. Or even the energy the view from his apartment gave back.

Reliable mediocrity, I've decided, is the most important thing for the continuation of human existence. We can't get by on Romantic disaster. We would die of exhaustion.

The words of Addison Schacht, our hero in Sam Munson's wonderful debut novel, The November Criminals.

Addison spends most of the novel -- which is actually his rambling and blunt admissions essay to the University of Chicago -- confessing to everything that is on his mind as he finishes his senior year in high school. The confessions are anything but typical for a white, Jewish seventeen year old.

That fact coupled with Munson's wonderfully descriptive and empathic prose make for an engrossing read.

For instance, this passage about the gun Addison and his girlfriend Digger have just acquired for "protection":

A huge percussive cough, from nowhere. A simultaneous kick from the gun itself. My nerves sang. And a reverberant gong-beat rose from the car heap and indistinct night birds took flight on both riverbanks. "Jesus fuck," Digger screamed, scuttling even farther away and shifting her hands: the right now tented over her heart, the left still over her ear. Posed like an old-timey phone operator. You know, a switchboard girl or whatever? Listening to some outrageous conversation. The swift, tremendous noise of the shot itself thrilled me. Just that simple: it thrilled me. I won't lie. Although the weird target we'd set up had survived my assault untouched. Digger walked back and slumped against me, shoulder-to-shoulder, in comradely praise. Her heart was vibrating, and I caught her scent as I massaged my tingling shooting arm. "Holy shit, man," she whispered. "Holy shit. Can I try?"

Several years ago I was making photos for a company that made school pictures. This company's specialty was making photos of preschool age children. As a result, I was in preschools all over Charlotte every morning chasing 3 and 4 year olds with my camera. The upshot: it was great exercise.

One of those fine mornings I was in the lobby of a church preschool in downtown Charlotte, done with the shoot and wrapping up from the chase. I looked up and saw this woman walking past me, sliding her feet forward more than walking, dressed in her Sunday best even though it was a Tuesday, and an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips.

How could I pass up this serendipitous photo opportunity?

I pulled my camera out, walked up to her, and asked if I could make a quick portrait of her. She stopped shuffling, didn't say a word, and just slightly nodded her head up and down. It was just the two of us for 20 or 30 seconds; woman, camera, man.

After I snapped the shutter I smiled and thanked her. She made no gestures, just turned away and continued to shuffle forward.

Where was she going? What was her story? I don't know and I didn't ask. I had my own story of her in a portrait.

It wasn't until later that day, while looking at the image on the computer, that the true magnificence of this image appeared to me. The hat, the blouse, the "I love Jesus" strap, the look on her face, the miles on her skin, the unlit cigarette -- wow.

Joshua Braff's Peep Show is a messy tale of an extremely dysfunctional family. How dysfunctional, you ask? One parent is Hasidic (mother) and the other a reluctant pornographer (father). The sadness and hilarity take off from there.

Narrator and budding photographer David Arbus is seventeen years old and lives, almost reluctantly, with his father and his stripper girlfriend. Meanwhile, his younger sister Debra lives with their mother and is entrenched in the life of a Hasid. The conflicts, both in his head and with his parents, fill David with immense turmoil. For instance:

Tuesday morning is my graduation. My father wakes me with another new camera. It's a Graflex, a Crown Graphic 4x5 with an Ektar 127mm f/4.7 lens. He puts it in my hands before I even open my eyes and it's beautiful and thoughtful. "Got it for dirt cheap," he says, and I hear Brandi in the hallway, "It's from me too."

"I love it," I say, and when she pokes her head in, I think of my mother and whether she knows what day it is. If I call her, she'll say, right, right, I'm so sorry and tell me it's some Jewish holiday like Erev Stinchus Pinchus. I'll tell her she's a better stripper than a mother, a better liar that a Hasid. Yeah. That'll make her love me.

Peep Show is sad, sensitive, funny, and ultimately heartbreaking.

Check out this reading of Peep Show by Joshua Braff's brother, Zach Braff.

I set out to take a long walk along the shore. I need it.

It's just past sunset, the light is soft and beautiful. The winds are strong, pushing the waves, making them bigger, louder as they tumble and rush towards the shore. It's as if the roaring waves are what I'm listening to through the iPod buds planted in my ears.

I'm listening to the new record by The National, High Violet, for the first time. As I start my walk the first tune, "Terrible Love," slowly builds with all the moodiness and drama I've come to love and expect from The National. The tension in the music, the urgency of the waves, the packed wet sand beneath my feet, and the silky evening light are slowly making me feel alright. There's still this thing that I need from the walk: solitude, uncertainty, clarity -- not sure exactly, but I'm getting there.

Then, two and a half minutes into the walk and into the tune, as if right on cue with everything, The National's Matt Berninger sings over and over with a persistent integrity:

It takes an ocean not to break
It takes an ocean not to break
It takes an ocean not to break
It takes an ocean not to break

It's quiet company
It's quiet company

I stop, turn towards the water, and just enjoy this serendipitous moment as everything around me, for just this fragment of time, comes together. It takes an ocean not to break, Bellmas. Are you listenin'?!

After a minute or so I take a few deep breaths and keep on walking. In quiet company.

I'm on a roll with contemporary fiction. Sam Lipsyte, Nick Hornby, James Hynes, Per Petterson, and, now, Jonathan Tropper.

This Is Where I Leave You is one of the most entertaining, laugh-out-loud books I've read since Lipsyte's The Ask a couple of weeks ago. The family in the book, The Foxmans, are funny, vulnerable, sarcastic, misguided, smart, and so alike that they can't stand being around each other for any extended amount of time, let alone the time it takes to sit shiva after the death of a the family's patriarch.

This passage, immediately following an episode where a piece of a toddler's poop goes flying through the dining room and onto the plate of one of the Foxman siblings, is particularly telling:

We are all standing now, posed around the table like a painting, the Foxman family minus one, contemplating the steaming, erudite turd on Paul's plate. It's utterly inconceivable that we will survive seven days together here, caroming off each other like spinning molecules in a chemical reaction. There's no way to know how it will all shake out, but as far as metaphors go, you can't do much better than shit on the good china.

Stop reading this blog post right now and go get a copy of This Is Where I Leave You.

Now!

I was at the edge of the ocean today. I was alone for a moment, looking out at the water, the waves, the shades of blue meeting to form the horizon.

A vision of the the late Jeremy Blake appeared before me, his back to me, walking straight into the water until I couldn't see him anymore. Then, as if waiting for just the right moment, a song by Beck started in my head.

Put your hands on the wheel
Let the golden age begin
Let the window down
Feel the moonlight on your skin
Let the desert wind
Cool your aching head
Let the weight of the world
Drift away instead

Moments later, looking down, I saw sand, periwinkles, sea glass, and water rushing around my feet. My son's voice bringing me back outside from my waking dream, my own head, back into my own life and away, for the time being, from ghosts of people I never knew but whose stories I have never been able to shake.