In a recent issue of TimeOutNY, on (I believe) page 131, this Company XIV ad was sitting cheek-by-jowl, so to speak, with this Labapalooza! ad, and so if you fold the magazine just so, you’ll get an Under the Poppy show….”Deliciously excessive,” why yes indeed.

How much a product of its time is a piece of fiction, art, music, etc.? and how much a product of itself?  Today I’m thinkng of “Sword Blades and Poppy Seed,” Joanna Russ and Amy Lowell, and Aurore Dupin Dudevant; of Under the Poppy, finally done, now, finally complete.  The writing of this book, the research, the people I met, the friends I made – it’s been an amazing experience.  And in some ways, it’s just begun.

Thank you – you all know who you are – for all the conversation and encouragement and outrage and support along the way, thank you for being here with me.

You’ll find what you are after, as the song has it … I’m just back from a lovely trip to New York (thank you, Mr. Hat!) and Providence, where I enjoyed myself in the city, and was royally feted for my birthday by very dear friends.

One of the things we did was leg it over to FIT, where we reveled in the museum’s current exhibitions.  “Seduction” is a lovely, if brief, examination of some of the varied ways in which the charm and wit of provocative dress can seduce both wearer and viewer. (They did have a corset on view, yes – black embroidered cotton sateen, black lace – but no, it was not available for museum-goer try-on.)

But “Gothic: Dark Glamour” was the stunner. Rick Owens, Victorian mourning dress, Rodarte and blood in the water, strange beauty, Yoshiki Hishinuma, and, and, and … The creativity of the exhibit’s layout was a fitting accompaniment to the fashion on view, and both were highlighted by the exhibit’s commentary, abetted by the Cocteau quote insisting that “One must forgive fashion everything, because it dies so young.”  Though I prefer Walter Benjamin, noted by curator Dr. Valerie Steele, pointing out that “the essence of fashion is fetishism, because it is based on the sex appeal of the inorganic.” Which speaks as well to both the puppet and the theatre: both can be avatars of charm and menace, or embarrassing monsters of kitsch – as can the gothic; insert your own wince-inducing example here – but when handled with care and goosed as necessary, the resultant frisson is like nothing else, and lingers in the memory like a stranger’s kiss.

Would that my camera had not chosen that week to break – though the stern guards at FIT were allowing no photographs anyway.  I suppose that’s what memory is for?

. . . are the natural allies of puppets, of course, as is the landscape of dreams.  You can see both here, in the art of Rick Lieder: Invisible Toys and Wild Dreams.

Is he not fantastic and alluring?  He is my birthday mec from Rick Lieder.  So appropos!

I don’t indulge, myself, though a young man I know (hi, Mr. Hat!) has recently had some acquaintance with the stuff.  “Lucid” is a cute name, and if you say “I got so pellucid last night!” that’s kind of cute, too.

Again, it’s one of those sideways fin de siècle frissons.  What is it about the louche, the torn and lush, the beautifully transgressive, the arch – oh, the arch! -  the frankly and unapologetically other, that murmurs so vividly in the current moment?  It speaks in every culture, in varied voices, and it speaks in every time, but it seems more insistent today, at least to this cultural observer.

Deeper, beyond the hectic current of the mainstream, with its safe pop flash, is this fecund, sexy undertow where fashion, art, music all intersect like guests at a speakeasy party, to throw down, and burn holes in the veil. . . It’s exhilarating, isn’t it? With or without the (representational) Green Fairy.

Being myself the recipient of a beautiful cameo this holiday season (thank you, Deb!), I’ve had an eye out for other lovely examples of same. Here’s a group of beauties, any one of which would look stunning on you.

These kinds of time-out-of-time examples – of fashion, music, culture in general – seem to be coming thick and fast these days.  Is it fin de siècle again?  Already?