Every hour learning and every stitch counts. The full orchestra where everyone must be in tune to play each piece soundly. Singing the Singer in New York City, I am Brooklyn. Gütermann threads and Italian silks with the finest tools. Todo alegria aqui en Bushwick. Dreams and diligence in microscopic sewing.

“This needle here she uses, she does magic with, really she is a magician” -Al Pacino’s character in Scent of A Woman

There I was floating in the blissful river, the jungle sound in the background, the sunlight filtering through the stream. Along the river I saw to my left the bird of paradise flying out from the shore. I am home and floating there is my true self alive. Yet as I glided down the river I remembered to feel the floor and noticed how soon it was dissolving. The ground no more, all you can do is float on, though you are about to approach the end of the river. A dead end. Alligators arose and were swimming along, this as a sign to get out now. I reached the side of the bank life pool where I knew it became too deep that needed to hang on the sides if wanted to get out alive. I reached the side of the bank and pulled myself out. There I realized how thick the terrain of trees was that kept you close at edge. I have only covers for plastic containers to protect me from the alligator attacks. I knew they came from the river and deep in the jungle. From there I knew to walk through and the cityscape and diners were ahead. A pursuit of food and old neighborhoods was next to be survived. It was there where I sat with my mother in our living room sipping soup from the neighborhood, recalling stories where I thought…I swam with the alligators how can we drink this soup? They are right there in Allegheny, this is our source of water. Walk further to other dreams and diners.

“American writers do not have a fixed society to describe. The only society they know is one in which nothing is fixed and in which the individual must fight for his identity. This is a rich confusion, indeed, and it creates for the American writer unprecedented opportunities.

That the tensions of American life, as well as the possibilities, are tremendous is certainly not even a question. But these are dealt with in contemporary literature mainly compulsively; that is, the book is more likely to be a symptom of our tension than an examination of it. The time has come, God knows, for us to examine ourselves, but we can only do this if we are willing to free ourselves of the myth of America and try to find out what is really happening here.

…

In this endeavor to wed the vision of the Old World with that of the New, it is the writer, not the statesman, who is our strongest arm. Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world. ”

From Chapter 1: The Discovery of What It Means To Be An American of the book “Nobody Knows My Name” by James Baldwin.

A short film, “Costume to Collection”, was presented that surveyed  the process of creating the costumes for the film The Kingsman: The Secret Service while branching out a fashion collection with Mr. Porter. A lot of good insight from Arianne Phillips and what is happening in the current events of the costume design community. Above all the brilliance of tailor work from Savile Row. Suits, ties, shoes, dress shirts, watches, glasses, and gadgets galore that anyone can marvel at advance technique of styled glim glam.

“At present men make shift to wear what they can get. Like shipwrecked sailors, they put on what they can find on the beach, and at a little distance, whether of space or time, laugh at each other’s masquerade. Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. We are amused at beholding the costume of Henry VIII, or Queen Elizabeth, as much as if it was that of the King and Queen of the Cannibal Islands. All costume off a man is pitiful or grotesque. It is only the serious eye peering from and the sincere life passed within it which restrain laughter and consecrate the costume of any people. Let Harlequin be taken with a fit of the colic and his trappings will have to serve that mood too. When the soldier is hit by a cannonball, rags are as becoming as purple.” Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience Published 1854 – Henry David Thoreau

Tap dancing thoughts and neurons