DARK SIDE OF MY MOON

year three postpartum

This is a rewrite of an early Art Monster essay from 2019 to celebrate the reissue of An Encounter with Lux Prima, Karen O’s collaboration with Danger Mouse, on vinyl. 

I can recognize Karen O’s voice in an instant—the longing, the arrest—and I’ve loved hearing how the nuance of both change over time. When she and Danger Mouse showcased “An Encounter with Lux Prima,” at The Marciano Art Foundation, I was still living in LA, nursing a young kid, and just beginning to write again after three solid years of around the clock caretaking. The show promised to be a visual extravaganza, including creative directors, sound designers, lighting designers and projection mappers but somehow, in either a post-postpartum daze or as an incredibly wishful thinker, I had missed that the show was going to be a listening party, not a performance, and that Karen O would not even be on site. This is the story of me realizing that I was not actually going to see her in person that day and also of my questioning whether I must officially mourn the loss of the fantasy that a punk aesthetic would be my salvation.

The tickets were for a Saturday at 10am, so I track this date as my first official Artist’s Date: a regular visit into the realm of my own desires. The invite read to please wear black. I had given up that east coast uniform a while ago, in favor of the cozy LA sweat pants and yoga gear attire but that didn’t mean the request didn’t conjure some deep emotions. Somewhere inside me is a person who finds solace in taking instructions.

On Friday night, I ran out to Alter on Sunset, a Brooklyn based boutique, to get my requisite skinny black pants and then went to visit Allie, who has nothing but black in her closet. We chose a few possible blank tanks from her endless collection, some of which had been gathered in preparation of her own year-long live music touring schedule. I snapped a photo for her while I was online, the next morning, when at 9am people were already lined up. Everyone was in midnight, head to toe.

In the lobby about eight speakers amplified the sounds of dripping and electricity and wind, as if we’d stepped into an underground tunnel aka the subway. Imagine: the burnt out light sizzling, the water dripping down from somewhere and the tingling sound of metal on the tracks signaling a train on its way. You’re alone. And you’re been waiting for the C.

As I waited I wondered if someone had built a stage in the museum. Would the performers be on the ground level? Will it be like Karen O stepped into my dream?

A few weeks back when I heard the show was happening, the list was already full. Then I had a dream where I was able to go anyway and later that day I mentioned to another mom in the park that I used to write art reviews. The words came out like they were about a distant person. At home I looked at the online invite again and spotted the press contact. The phrase rang inside me again: I USED TO WRITE ART REVIEWS, and I remembered that the “I” was me. One quick email later, where I asked for a press ticket and said that I was the west coast correspondent for Droste Effect, an Italian Arts magazine (not mentioning it had been a hot second since I had published) and I had entered the land of the living (dead).

Beyond the lobby and past the black curtains, we entered a dark space with a stage and a big black boulder in the middle that was covered in cloth. A single blue light illuminated a wide 3D triangle over the whole stage and we walked onto a fake grassy area with four pebble paths leading to the center. A tiny rainbow glowed where the triangle of light hit the ground, the last color of which was a true alien purple. I reached my hand into the cone shaped light and it got sucked in, as if I touched another realm. Which, in my lively imagination, was where Miss O would appear, as either a human or a hologram.

Fucking awesome UFO landing in a public park (were my first thoughts). Yes, this is cool, I said to the person next to me. 

We were not in the subway but there was still a windy rumble running through the speakers with recorded feedback cutting through the more ambient sound. The rumbling got louder. The train was coming. But a futuristic one – signified by a flash of tiny lights running in a ring around the room, matched with a warbling sound. The flashing lights moved in a circle and there was a spiral sound as if something was arriving from another planet.

The light from above projected a thin line that hit the top of the rock — like the Sword and the Stone – and the triangular orb was gone. An organ sound started up like the beginning of an 80’s sci-fi movie, or reminiscent of the opening of Twin Peaks, and an ethereal voice floated out of the speakers. 

It was all very Dark Side of the Moon. Then it began to come together. I had read a review of the album that described Pink Floyd’s influence on the music. I remembered that albums had listening parties, and that people in the world go to them. This was not going to be a performance by the Art Monster of all Art Monsters. Instead this was a marketing event. I felt instantly naive and out of touch. Later, I would think about the expectations I have for other women, gargantuan as those women may be. Karen O had a four year old. Of course she wasn’t doing six shows in three days, some starting at 10am on the Saturday after Good Friday? The same one that’s a day before Easter Sunday? Not that a rockstar can’t do whatever the fuck that they want. 

We listened to the songs together in a room and I felt the force of the music industry sucking at my soul. People behind me laid in the fake grass and small white lights flashed toward the stage where the rock sparked about. Another song began and the era was then the 70’s. We lost the science-fictional thread. I started to feel glad that at least this was free. The next song came and sounded like the Edward Scissorhands soundtrack and the rock glimmered a little more. What felt missing was a sense of the communal. We had park benches. We had music. We had grass. But somehow, it did not feel like we were in this together.

Lights danced on the rock and tiny veins and pattern marks graced the surface. It began to glow white and to pulse and have something running through it, as if the rock was about to give birth to something terrible. I was still holding out that it would burst open and Karen O would be inside. Then it turned black again, with tiny colors and the best song so far began.

The rock turned a lava red and then a very cool fish scale like color and then was alive again with white veins. It’s gorgeous then like a chrysalis. I decided to summon the long lost stoner in me and be in the here and now. Tiny sperm travel up the rock and I thought to myself: We all have the same beginnings. I remembered Karen O’s statement that this was the first music she’d written since bringing life into the world. Her singing and lyrics took me in that moment and held my heart with the words: “Make me crystal pure, cast my heart anew.” It was her voice, as I remembered it, but it was without any of the normal edge I expect from her, yet still definitely her. It was worth it to hear these moments in a place like this: she had gone through something I had just gone through: she had tried to put the name to the face that everybody was still calling stranger.

The room turned red with a thin red shape around the rock and the classic Karen O singing returned with a wonderful raspy lo-fi drum crashing out from behind the melody. A nostalgic moment and the rock projected a black sheath into the space; long live my goth heart.

Rain began to fall on the rock. A tiny beautiful song with a heartbreaking guitar part began and the rock was dark. It felt nice to be in the rain without getting wet. A triangle of light formed around the rock and the stage. I noticed that the aisles that lead to the center of the room were made of tiny rocks that were perfectly raked. The projection created a light crack on the rock, as if there was a door that was going to open. It looked like lava again and then like gold.

This was a very powerful rock and we knew this because of the mystical asian melody and classical asian instrument sound of the next song. I began to fall for this shit. It was a light installation. It was gorgeous. The rock’s surface began to look like a pink malachite stone and then like a blue ocean stone and then it turned black and dripped with sparking lava and then into a black cosmos with pink and purple with far away stars.

My cynicism returned. This rock can’t do anything for me, I thought. The laughter of a child struck through the sound and I remembered the precious moments I was missing with my daughter – for the first time since 8am, I wished I was with her. To be fair, I had never lasted more than 2.5 hours without feeling a longing to be reunited.

The lights turned and the show concluded. People started to get up. Others were clapping. For the rock. Some people laughed.

Part of me thought that so much had changed that I just could never go back to fully appreciating whatever this was. I had just watched a human learn the entirety of the English language from scratch in two years and that took the cake. I no longer lived in New York. I WENT to those shows. I saw the microphone eating maniac romp across the stage, I drank those six margaritas. I saw the towers fall.

But it had beaten what I usually do on a Saturday morning; a massage at a local joint that plays ocean sounds while you lie on a heated table – a curated nap, as Shannon had called it. In the parking lot, my car wouldn’t start. My therapist texted. I was late for my appointment, which I then had to cancel. I ate a museum cafe lunch in the car while I waited for AAA and text Olive’s dad. Feed the creature, I wrote. I tallied up how much I spent on this adventure: black pants: $81, pregame breakfast, $20, car battery $121. Add that to three years of time which in my life has become so underpaid that you couldn’t put a number on it.

I pitched this story in two places: I have a 2,500 word essay on mistaking the listening party at the Marciano foundation for a live show – at 10am. On a Saturday. Themes include, motherhood, artistry, collaboration, installation and disappointment. No answer And then let it sit for a long while.

But you know, some things can’t help but keep a hold on you. In a dance class a month or two later the teacher included the songs on Lux Prima on her mix for our hour of improvisation together. Without the presence of the rock, without the lights and the sound show and the prearranged gathering, the songs sounded perfect–Karen O’s voice a tiny crystalline reminder of the life I once sought and might still uncover, deepened by the birth of my daughter and all that motherhood brings.