Today KfQ and I booked the same job, a magazine shooting three future covers in one day. Here she is, curled up like a pretzel before the start of her shoot.
The makeup artist put five different unguents on my face before even starting with the paints. She leaned in with beta-hydroxy to brighten my skin, slathered Crème de la Mer, dabbed eye cream, smoothed on pore minimizer, and finally covered my face with a putty-coloured primer. (Always a good sign: Face spackle cements on the foundation like none other.)
“How long have you had this broken capillary on your cheek?” she asked while wielding an egg-shaped sponge near my left eye. Too long, I thought to myself, then explained that I first noticed it after the semester I took 18 credit hours and held two part-time jobs and read a bunch of novels I no longer remember and slept around 5 (non-continuous) hours, at least most days. I rather wish it were what a hobo I met once called “wine burn,” from some hardcore partying of my youth.
Her crack at me (or, perhaps: her persnickety level of observance) notwithstanding, the woman made me look and feel like a goddess. I spent all day touching my face in wonder and trying to surreptitiously catch my reflection on glass surfaces. Anything to revel in the illusion of having ridiculously good skin. I’m writing this now, 12 hours after her first brushstrokes, and although the lipstick is of course gone, nothing she applied to my face has faded, drooped, melted, shifted or settled. As far as I’m concerned the woman should get a medal.
My mother agent just sent me a high-res scan of the sunglasses editorial from Glamour Italia.
Alongside my face is the caption, “JENNA: Neozelandese, vive tra Londra e Parigi. La sua passione è scrivere, tanto che ha anche un blog su internet. Il suo look è bon ton ma sempre con un tocco second hand. Gli occhiali? Li sceglie macro.”
I remember the interview wherein these nuggets were gleaned — it was at the end of a long shoot, in the middle of a transit strike, and while Eduardo, the extremely sweet fashion editor questioned me in English, he interpreted my answers in real-time for the benefit of a scribe holed up at Glamour Italia HQ, whom he joined on the telephone in simultaneity. It was kind of confusing to be talking to a person who, as soon as I opened my mouth, would begin talking into the phone line in another language, pausing when I paused, and, more worrisome still, generally continuing on long after I’d closed my mouth. And I was pretty sure the whole time that Eduardo was feeding the scribe words I was not exactly saying — I for instance do not wear those fly-eye grandma sceglie macro I think I’m endorsing in print here — but I couldn’t be sure since I don’t speak Italian.
I gather from the above that I’m a Kiwi [true] who splits her time between London [never set foot there] and Paris [true at the time], whose passion is writing [true], and who keeps a blog on the Internet [doesn't everyone?]. I have a look that is something [??] and something [??] and secondhand [guilty as charged]. And my fave sunnies? Big ones [no dice].
Is this the jist, Italianophones?
8 responses so far ↓
Adam // March 11, 2008 at 8:01 pm |
Hi Jenna- I’ve checked out the blog from time to time and enjoy it. I saw a post not long ago where you talked about reading Bret Easton Ellis and had to point out that this sentence:
“Too long, I thought to myself, then explained that I first noticed it after the semester I took 18 credit hours and held two part-time jobs and read a bunch of novels I no longer remember and slept around 5 (non-continuous) hours, at least most days.”
makes it very obvious…
Have fun.
Peter // March 12, 2008 at 1:36 am |
Jenna,
I asked Wolf, the only Italo-speaker I know, if he’d check out the blurb above and fill in the blanks down here below. He’s still mad at me for having flaked to get his photos (I like to think they finally sent them to him, after my seven-month-late phone call to the office last week).
But jeez, you know, the offices are in Bayview, and you know what people say about Bayview here, so, you know, it wasn’t until I walked to the vert ramp/punk show last week did I realize that the area’s not that scary at all. Anyway, do you think Wolf would have braved Southside Chicago or North Minneapolis to retreive a portfolio of mine? He’d be too afraid of getting his 2014 Honda Accord jacked (or keyed, or peed on)!
Anyway. Let’s see if Wolf can roll up his manicottos and do some tradurre.!
photojenna // March 12, 2008 at 5:26 pm |
Actually, Adam, you’re incorrect in locating the genesis of that sentence in Bret Easton Ellis. (And I still haven’t read past the first 15 pages of Less Than Zero, but I will grab Peter’s copy when I get back to SF.)
I stole that sentence almost directly from an e-mail I wrote to my friend Chris O. on the 20th of June, 2006, shortly after the close of the semester in question. It was a grim time, the first point in my life where the external narrative — the one where the papers I wrote on the books I hadn’t read came back marked ‘A,’ someone at the newspaper who should know said I had written “some of the best pieces the section has ever seen,” I paid my rent within legal timeframes, applied for internships, and voted in and had opinions about both local body and student government elections — seemed impossible to reconcile with my subjective experience of the past months, which included recall of only one book, a particularly bad memoir by Paul Auster, multiple failures to meet deadline and a firing warning from my editor, fights and break-ups with Peter, and a complete inability to place one word next to another in my mind without first crying in front of my glowing laptop for at least an hour. Objectively, my life at the time was like part of a novel written by Jonathan Franzen, where things lead to other things, and even if the progression is always decidedly mixed, you at least know you’re in sure hands, and are given the tools to suppose what it all means. But from my perspective, I felt like I was in the cutting-room Didion mentions in “The White Album,” where things happen out of order and events contradict and voices are cut off in mid-sentence, where people walk backwards out the door when the wrong knob is touched. Being promoted, getting good grades, having a relationship progress to co-signing a lease, and finding a topic for the thesis I at that point still thought I would write all seem to point towards the former idea, the narrative where life, within certain parameters, seems to make some sense. The inexplicable crying, the fact that the smartest, prettiest, youngest, most generally dazzling person I know was killed in a car accident on her way home from spring break, the screaming fights with the person I love most, and the four-to-five novels a week I no longer remember, all seem to point towards the latter idea, where things happen without a script or any sense of proportionality. Also days after finals I moved to San Francisco for an internship; when I wrote Chris I was very lonely, and I had plenty of time to brood. Spring of 2006 not a particularly happy period, despite my 4.12 GPA for the semester.
And I didn’t want to re-read that letter, but I just checked and the sentence’s nut is there.
But, seriously, since when is making overdramatic claims about the difficulty with which my education was obtained and the sleep it cost anything other than vintage Jenna? And did you just not notice the absurdly multifoliate, paragraph-long clunkers I’d try to get past the copy desk at the Daily Iowan, which in the end never did fire me?
Still, though, you’re correct in that reading Less Than Zero felt kind of like reading The White Album — a surprising introduction to just the writer I had been wishing to meet, without even knowing it, for a very long time.
Adam // March 13, 2008 at 3:25 pm |
Jenna,
Wow. I appreciate the long response and the dedication you have to this blog. I’m working these days for a cool little Internet start-up in Chicago (yes, Chicago, and not a start-up in SF) and while I enjoy what I’m doing here quite a lot, I still peruse this most excellent blog you have going. The BEE reference certainly came partly from having heard you slip his name into a previous blog but also because, well, I never read the letter you wrote Chris and I have read everything Ellis has written. As well as much of Didion, and once you get on to the Ellis you will see just how much he ripped off from that brilliant frail queen. (For instance, I imagine that once you read Less than Zero, you will see that it is an 80s knock-off of Play It As It Lays, albeit a fantastic, excellent work in its own right; however, BEE acknowledges in interviews that the novel is entirely influenced by PIAIL and Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises).
So, I don’t mean to discredit where the sentence came from and I meant nothing but praise by suggesting its derivation (an interesting tidbit about ripping off oneself – in the 90s the former frontman for Creedence Clearwater Revival, John Fogerty, was sued by his old record company because his new solo album contained a song that’s intro sounded too much like a CCR song – which Fogerty had written). Anyways, I know exactly where the emotions you’re discussing come from, as well as the mess of thoughts that can run through a busy, wondering-what-the-fuck mind. And I DO of course remember the stuff you wrote for the DI, but I don’t remember anything quite like that.
I enjoy the blog thoroughly, and this little comment you’ve tacked on here especially, because I know the places, exams, courses, and newspapers you mention. So keep it up Jenna, and I wish you the best of luck.
photojenna // March 13, 2008 at 9:26 pm |
So you’re saying Play It As It Lays is worth reading, then? I’ve always been warned off Didion’s fiction.
Because you’re a nerd:
http://www.theparisreview.org/media/3439_DIDION.pdf
What is your start-up starting?
Adam // March 13, 2008 at 10:14 pm |
Play It As It Lays is worth reading – and works – because Didion is trying to do just what Hemingway tried to do in The Sun Also Rises or Ellis in Less Than Zero, or even Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby. That is, create a feeling and a set design more than a 3-act play. Precisely when all four of these entirely not-famous writers ditch the plot for the sake of getting inside the narrator’s head they succeed, in my opinion. That’s of course not to say that any of these novels don’t have a plot, but it seems to me that the plot is secondary to these (largely autobiographical) character portraits each writer paints. Once committed to the character – whether you love, loathe, admire, or empathize – then you become involved in the plot. But in none of the stories does the plot grab you first.
In Didion’s, I think she succeeds at letting you know how it feels to be nearing 30, emotionally alone, going through a trauma, living in LA, involved in the entertainment industry, and trying to feel sexy when you feel anything but. The short chapters (some no more than vignettes), flashbacks to important moments in her life when it appears that nothing really happened, and first-person POV is exactly what Ellis drew on for his novel.
Read one and then the other immediately after and tell me your response, if you so desire – I’d be curious.
I’ll read the Didion piece later on tonight.
As for my start-up, we work in voice technologies, bridging the gap between the phone and the Internet. You can take a look at http://www.ifbyphone.com. I do a lot of marketing, writing, customer service, some graphic design and a bunch of other random things and – to be honest – really love it. I work on the blog (http://public.ifbyphone.com/blog/) and in general find it a satisfying way to spend my time. In case you were wondering.
Rick // August 11, 2008 at 8:47 am |
Hi Jenna:
I was surfing the net, and I came across the above close-up photo of you, and I was really taken by it. I just wanted to say how lovely you look. Your blue eyes are transfixing. Really stunning. I love the lip color, too. What a wonderful photograph.
Thanks for sharing.
Regards,
Rick
in Florida
Francisco // October 19, 2009 at 7:23 pm |
Kind of a late comment, but that Italian paragraph says “JENNA: Neozelander, lives between London and Paris. Writing is her passion, so much that she has a blog on the Internet. Her look is very bon ton (“good vibe” in French… kind of a Frenchier way of saying “cool”). Sunglasses? She likes them huge.”