Stutterpuss: PLANET PRISCILLA (LONG VERSION)

PLANET
PRISCILLA

The lasting impression my mother Priscilla has made is quite remarkable. People have come up to her to say that they remember her from as far back as 30 or 40 or sometimes even 50 years and can often describe what she had been wearing on that particular day decades ago. What she has done her whole life can't be called just ''dressing'. Everybody dresses. You could say it's more like she's been redecorating herself for the past 70 years. It was the perfect way to bring her talent for decorating out of her house and onto her back for the world to see. She turned herself into a walking installation that for decades has never stayed the same.

Minimalistic is the perfect word to describe what Priscilla is not. As a matter of fact, she thinks the whole concept of Minimalist Design is ridiculous. As she sees it, decorating a room means filling it with things, not taking things out of it. Her goal has always been to see how much she could put into a room and still have it look good. Getting alot of different things to go together is much harder than just matching a few things. I call it POP Design, or Piles Of Priscilla Design. After all, she always said that empty space makes her sad, so it makes sense that there never was any in all the places she ever lived.

Like her decorating, there was no specific clothing style or time period she tried to imitate. A lot of people let magazines tell them what to wear and what their homes should look like, but Priscilla did it more instinctively. She dressed with the same quirkiness and confidence that she used for decorating rooms, mixing and matching in ways that most other people would never think of or dare to do.
It was guaranteed that no other woman was going to be dressed like her, which meant she would stand out wherever we went. In the winter the attention was even greater when she could wear any fur she wanted to borrow from my father's second-hand fur store. She kept her collection rotating, but at any given time the closets at home were stuffed with fur coats, jackets and hats until springtime. We were at our most conspicuous when all five of us had on our matching raccoon coats, including my father in his that was almost the size of a bedspread.

MY BIG FATHER BERNIE
IN HIS BIG RACCOON COAT.

Growing up in the used fur business, we were raised to think it was totally normal for a family to all wear matching raccoons. Looking back, I can imagine what we must have looked like coming down the street ( To my great disappointment, there is not one picture of the five of us in our raccoons. It is the Holy Grail of photographs for me, and I know it must exist, either lost inside one of my mother's disorganized photo albums stuck between two pages or as a snapshot taken by some shocked tourist who had never seen such a sight).
My brother Mitchell and sister Melissa hated the attention Priscilla would always bring to us, but I loved it. When she didn't get the usual amount of stares and compliments I would actually be disappointed, and sometimes even get in a bad mood over it. It didn't seem to bother my mother as much as it did me, probably because she truly had a love for the clothing, regardless of how much attention each outfit got.

VALENTINO DRESSED
AS A GAUCHO.

I have never seen anyone with such courage when it came to clothing. One day she would be in Gaucho pants and riding boots like Rudolph Valentino, and the next day she would be dressed like Al Capone.

PRISCILLA CAPONE.
THERE'S A MACHINE GUN
UNDER HER SILVER FOX.

She wore any color she wanted because no color looked bad on her. No hat looked bad on her either. Very few people could get away with wearing some of the ones that ended up on her head, not to mention some of her hairdos as well.
Not once did I ever see her doubt or second-guess anything she wore. It was part of the unflinching confidence she had in knowing what she could get away with and make look good. This in itself is amazing, considering she was the same woman who all through my childhood didn't have enough confidence in herself to sew on a button, read a map, cook a turkey, figure out what to do in a voting booth every four years, or do math without crying.

'Anything can be turned into a hat if I can get it to stay on my head ' was one of her mottoes she lived by---

I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS ON HER HEAD
BUT SOMEHOW SHE MAKES IT LOOK GOOD.

THIS GREAT OUTFIT HAS
JUST ENOUGH GENGHIS KHAN
TO BE PERFECT FOR THE GREAT WALL.

SWITZERLAND. THAT STRIP OF RANCH MINK
ON HER HAT LOOKS LIKE SHE IS GIVING
A SALUTE WITH A CAT'S PAW .

LONDON. NO ONE COULD WRAP A RAG
AROUND HER HEAD LIKE PRISCILLA.

ISTANBUL

SOME PEOPLE THOUGHT THE HAT

SHE RECENTLY WORE AT HER WEDDING

WAS A LOAF OF CHALLAH BREAD.

IN SEARCH

OF MY MOTHER'S ROOTS

EVERYTHING ON PRIS' FACE WAS BIG---HER EYES, HER EYEBROWS, HER NOSE AND HER MOUTH. FRIENDS WHO SEE THIS PHOTO IMMEDIATELY THINK OF BARBRA STREISAND.

THE COMPARISON STARTED AS SOON AS 'FUNNY GIRL' DEBUTED IN 1968.

PEOPLE STARTED TO MISTAKE MY MOTHER FOR BARBRA, ESPECIALLY WHEN PRISCILLA WAS WEARING A BIG HAT OR ONE OF HER FUR COATS. TRUCK DRIVERS WOULD HONK THEIR HORNS AND YELL OUT 'BARBRA!', AND A FEW TAXI DRIVERS WHO THOUGHT THEY HAD BARBRA STREISAND IN THEIR BACKSEAT GAVE US FREE RIDES. SOMETIMES PEOPLE WOULD EVEN COME UP TO US IN STORES AND ASK FOR AN AUTOGRAPH.

I WAS THRILLED EVERY TIME IT HAPPENED, BUT PRIS WAS NOT AS APPRECIATIVE.

"FIRST OF ALL, BARBRA'S NOSE IS BIGGER THAN MINE, " MY MOTHER WOULD ALWAYS POINT OUT. "AND SECOND OF ALL, I'VE BEEN WEARING HATS AND SHOPPING IN SECOND-HAND STORES AND WEARING USED FURS YEARS BEFORE SHE BECAME FAMOUS FOR IT."

PRIS IN HER LATE TEENS.

THE PHOTOGRAPH THAT STARTED IT ALL.
PRISCILLA AT 8 YEARS OLD.
ALREADY SHE WAS FLIRTING WITH THE CAMERA
TELLING IT THAT THEY WERE GOING TO BE GREAT FRIENDS
AND WOULD TRAVEL VERY FAR TOGETHER..

***

There are many divorced Jewish housewives on Long Island, but none are like my mother. First of all, she is the only Jew to ever be named Priscilla. Only Elvis' wife and Pilgrims were named Priscilla. You could say that my grandmother, Leonore, had the great foresight to choose a name for her daughter that would come to be synonymous with Drag Queens dressing up outrageously. It's a name that matched my mother's showmanship, along with her dislike of the modern and the simple.

People have always thought that I was joking when I told them her name. It was just too perfect. But really, what else could it have been? The thought of her being named Esther or Ruth instead is unthinkable.

Priscilla is the perfect name for someone who has spent a lifetime 'over the top', in both the best and worst sense. She's best described as an 'Auntie Mame who screamed alot and threw dishes at people'. It took me until I was 50 to finally put all of her past craziness and histrionics on a back shelf in my mind. That's when I was able to let myself really open up to the magic I see in her.
It was right there in front of me as I stood in her living room surrounded by framed photographs of her that spanned over 70 years. Every different outfit and hairdo that she ever wore, all together for the first time. Her favorite ones were out and the rest were in photo albums stacked on top of each other waiting to be seen.
The photos were a retrospective of her whole life, her complete body of work, a chance to see Priscilla in toto. It was the first time that I grasped the scope of it. Each photograph was like a little Christmas light that when strung together created a much bigger, brighter thing. I was suddenly letting myself appreciate the wacky genius of it all again.

"Ma, do you realize how amazing all these pictures are, especially when you see them together like this? You've made yourself into a piece of art over all these years," I said as I moved my attention from photo to photo, trying to take in all the different Priscillas.

" Oh great, do you know how old that makes me feel, Pooh? Do me a favor and please don't tell Joe that he just married a 77 year-old piece of art," she laughed, missing the bigger meaning of what I was trying to make her see.
"There is not one repeat outfit or hairdo. You're different in every shot. It's humanly impossible to have this many different hairdos. There are ones here that I haven't ever even seen."

" They're probably the ones I had during all those times when you wouldn't talk to me," she was quick to point out.

I looked at her apologetically, even ashamed. "Well I'm here to make up for that."

" I'm too old for you to ever do that to me again. From now on if you ever get mad, you re only allowed to stop talking to me for one week. Is that a deal, Pooh?'

I grinned and nodded. "I promise. And you have to promise to send me a picture whenever you change your hair, " I said, trying to steer her back to the conversation I wanted to have. "So far I've counted 59 different hairdos and I still have half of these photo albums to go," I pointed to the stack at my feet. "You've never counted out of curiosity?"

" I would just forget the number anyway. You know how I am with numbers and math."
" Do you at least know how many countries you've been to?
"You know it's funny. I used to carry around the names of all the places on a folded piece of paper incase I forgot them when people asked me, but then I ran out of room on it, and I could never find it in my pocketbook anyway. It's almost easier saying the countries I haven't been to since there's less of those," she laughed." Ok let's see how many of them I can tell you now. Here we go" She started out confidently naming country after country one after the other while I wrote them down in my writing pad. When she reached 19 repeats started and she soon gave up. " How many is that so far?" she asked

"26".
" There's definitely more than 26. I know it's thirty-something. I just can't remember any more right now. I need more coffee if Im going to make myself think this hard. I'll try again later. Everytime I think of one, I'll call you."

AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT, I WASN'T HOME SO MY VOICEMAIL RECORDED TWO CALLS FROM HER . THEY ARE PERFECTLY PRISCILLA....

PRISCILLA'S OFFICIAL TRAVELOG

CHINA
SOUTH AFRICA
ZIMBABWE
INDIA
VIETNAM
GREECE
RUSSIA
ITALY
TURKEY
NORWAY
SWITZERLAND
PANAMA
GERMANY
CUBA
ARGENTINA
BRAZIL
CHILE
MEXICO
FRANCE
MONGOLIA
BURMA (MYANMAR)
AUSTRALIA
NEW ZEALAND
IRELAND
ENGLAND
HOLLAND
SWEDEN
PRAGUE
VIENNA
BUDAPEST
DENMARK
ISRAEL
TAHITI
EGYPT
ANTARCTICA
SLOVENIA
CROATIA

1. CUT LINES

2. IGNORE SIGNS

3. POSE IN SHRINES

Priscilla expanded her understanding of the world by wearing outfits inspired by where she was at the time. A country's history, geography, or language wasn't as interesting to her as it's fashions and how nice she was treated. When people asked for details about specific places, she never could offer much information. Like numbers, facts didn't stay with her too long either. Her descriptions were very general, and she categorized each country in terms of whether it was hot or cold and sunny or cloudy, whether she loved the food or hated it, and whether everyone spoke English or nobody spoke English.

When she traveled, it was less about her impressions of people abroad than it was about how the locals reacted to her. It was almost her job to be the center of attention on the tours she took, and she did it well, except when it got more annoying than entertaining.
One thing that must have been annoying for sure was Priscilla's habit of somehow getting sperated from the tour group and lost. She told more than one story of search parties having to be organized to find her. It usually happened because she didn't pay attention to a tour guide, or to whomever else was saying something important. She would either turn onto the wrong street, or get distracted by people from other tour groups wanting to take a photo of her, or step into a clothing shop without telling anyone.

I'm sure she drove a few of the guides crazy along with some people on the tours, but she also made each tour more lively, and showed her fellow travelers how to be a little more bold and daring.
At the end of her trip to Israel , the tour guide gave her a tee-shirt with Has anyone seen Priscilla? across her boobs.

A WHEELBARROW FULL OF PRISCILLA.

BEING PERSONALLY CARTED AROUND
BY THE TOUR GUIDE IN ISRAEL.

JERUSALEM. LOOKING LIKE A STYLISH TERRORIST
NOT WANTING TO WAIT IN LINE AT THE WAILING WALL.

IN FRONT OF THE TAJ MAHAL AT 5 A.M.
SO SHE COULD GET A PHOTO TAKEN
WITHOUT ANYONE ELSE IN THE BACKGROUND.

LOOKING AS BEAUTIFUL AND AS EXOTIC AND

AS SERENE AND AS REGAL AS THE TAJ MAHAL ITSELF.

PRIS WOULD CONVERT TO HINDUISM
JUST TO WEAR A SARI.

CLOWNING AROUND ON HOLY GROUND

PRIS IN MAYANMAR, WHICH SHE
CALLED MALLOMAR BY ACCIDENT.

HOLDING UP A TEMPLE WALL WITH JUST ONE HAND.

AFRICA. PRIS IS TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO TURN THE
SHIELD IN HER HAND INTO A HAT.

THIS MAN COULD HAVE BEEN MY STEPFATHER IF HE GOT HIS WISH.
OR MAYBE HE JUST WANTED A PIGGYBACK RIDE FROM MY MOTHER .

PRIS ON THE RUNWAY IN AN
IMPROMPTU FASHION SHOW IN AMSTERDAM

PRIS NOT HAVING THE SLIGHTEST IDEA

WHAT THEY WERE SINGING IN ARGENTINA.

ONE OF THE MANY RANDOM STRANGERS
WHO WANTED TO POSE WITH PRIS.

AT THE AIRPORT HEADING TOWARDS VI ET NAM,
THIS YOUNG STRANGER COULDN'T CONVINCE HER
TO JOIN HIS ONE-MAN TOUR.

HAPPY THAT SHE WORE PANTS
INSTEAD OF A DRESS THIS TIME.

NEVER TURN AROUND FOR THE CAMERA
IN A BASKET ATOP A MOVING ELEPHANT.

CUBA.THE OX PARKED ITSELF

LIKE THE BUS AND WOULDN'T MOVE.

PRIS USUALLY HAD BETTER LUCK

WITH ANIMALS

THAT WEREN'T ALIVE...

Priscilla's philosophy on photography is quite simple. A picture is wasted if there isn't a person in it. She took it upon herself to pose and fill in the empty space between the camera and whatever was in the picture, such as The Berlin Wall. It went hand-in-hand with how she felt about not having empty space in any rooms that she decorated.

THESE TWO PHOTOS WOULD HAVE PROBABLY
ENDED UP IN THE THROW AWAY PILE
IF PRIS OR SOMEONE ELSE WASN'T POSING IN THEM,

PRIS IN FRONT OF WHAT
LOOKS LIKE THE WORLD'S
BIGGEST WOODEN BEER KEG.

Photographs of architecture or monuments alone bored her, and never made it into any picture frames or photo albums. Neither did any photos of just landscapes by themselves. She considers a landscape to be an accessory, like a really big hat. "And people don't go around taking pictures of just hats alone. A hat has to be on somebody.Then it's a picture worth taking" she once explained to me when I was very young in defence of her stance against photographing nature by itself. "It's not that I hate nature, Pooh. It's that I just like not being in nature better. But you know how much I love the sun," she added to prove she was still in touch with nature through tanning.

FARMER PRIS AT HARVEST TIME

WHEN PRIS WAS NEAR THE
WATER AND ABLE TO TAN,
SHE WAS AT HER HAPPIEST.

AT 71 YEARS OLD.

A POOL COUNTED AS NATURE.

ONE OF THE HOLES THAT WAS USED AS
CAMOUFLAGED TRENCHES
BY THE VIETNAMESE DURING THE WAR.

ANTARCTICA. WISHING SHE
BROUGHT SOME FURS ALONG.

NO TANNING THIS TRIP.

The crazy thing about these photographs is that there are more of them. I didn't have time on my short trip to the East Coast to look through all the photo albums. It's a treasure trove of hairdos and outfits that I haven't ever seen.

NOTICE THE SHAPE OF THE
LITTLE SLEEVE ADDED TO THE
CUT-OUT SHAPE TO
BLEND IN WITH THE DRESS.

Amongst all the pictures were the ones that didn't come out as perfectly as Pris had hoped. There was one particular thing in each of these photos that bothered Pris about how she looked. There was also something about her in each photo that she particularly liked.
The answer was simple, at least to Pris. If everything looked good in the photo except for her lower body, she performed emergency surgery on it. Or if she happens to love the dress she's wearing but hates how her hair looked, then off with her head!
My mother put these pictures in her photo albums right along side the rest of the pictures, as if nothing was strange about them. Maybe she thought people wouldn't notice that her body was gone if they liked her hat enough. Whatever she was thinking, it's all part of a wackiness and a genius that seperates Priscilla from anyone else I've ever known.

PRIS LIKED HOW HER
HAT AND HAIR LOOKED
BUT EVERYTHING ELSE
FROM THE NECK DOWN HAD TO GO.

PRISCILLA WAS NOT ONLY A PIONEER IN FASHION, SHE WAS ALSO A PIONEER OF PHOTO EDITING. HER TECHNIQUE IS TAUGHT IN ONLY THE BEST FINE ARTS SCHOOLS.

CUTTING A CIRCULAR SHAPE TO REMOVE JUST THE HEAD
IS TOO HARD SO SHE TOOK THE EASIER ROUTE.

***

THE AMOUNT OF DEDICATION, CREATIVITY, COMMITMENT AND COURAGE MY MOTHER HAS SHOWN IN HOW SHE HAS PRESENTED HERSELF TO THE WORLD MAKES HER A TRULY TALENTED, GENUINE, UNINTENDED ARTIST . LOOKING AT ALL OF THIS, AT ALL OF HER, I REALIZE HOW LUCKY I AM TO BE HER SON.

HATS OFF ( EXCEPT HER'S, OF COURSE) TO PRISCILLA , QUEEN OF THE DESERT AND EVERYWHERE ELSE .

Stutterpuss

Sunday, June 29, 2014

PLANET PRISCILLA (LONG VERSION)

1 comment:

Blog Archive