Papacookie Flight of the Fancypants: RIC ROYER’S DESPAIR/ALEXANDRA KALINOWSKY SINGS SCHUMANN/ENID ELLEN

Text by Miriam Atkin, photos by Richard Bergeron

This was great because the Belnord management had just issued to all of the doormen a shoot-on-sight mandate for Jonathan’s guests.  No joke! It was posted at the security booth that morning, with a minimalist-type artist rendering of someone who looked just like me—tall, black, with a perfectly round head, nice-broad shoulders and no hands—circled in red with a big slash cutting right though my middle!  I felt this picture stood for all us creative geniuses the world over: oppressed, shadowy, midnight men with inky outerspace where our bodies should be, aiming to answer the nothingness we find at the core of being by turning it into something. And we’re cool so long as there continues to be a whole lot of nothing, but then the powers-that-be are all smiling good naturedly at the avant-garde saying “isn’t that something?” and before we know it there isn’t anything left for us at all. 

But we made it.  Not one shot fired.  Our enchanted attendees were ether itself, wafting through the filigree of the Molten Gates of Something up to Our Heavenly Lord Cookie and in the end the gatekeepers had an uneventful evening.  Which brings us to the night’s theme: ghost bodies. 

 Ric’s oral transmission of the weeping willow’s rheumatism after which we all coughed and slouched in remembrance of when we used to believe that love had anything to do with the living. ( below ) 

Alexandra’s heartbreaking nod to both Clara Wieke (via Schumann) and the ghost of Theodor Uppman, our original Cookie, with Johannes Brahms in the background. (below)

Enid Ellen’s pale and sandy oceanic tones washing up on a misty morning alongside the mother’s body in a whale carcass; glowing angel in a fish. ( below )

More images of the sacred entities that were not harmed by the gate watchers.  We love our guests, friends, newcomers, and hosts. ( below )