HALLOWEEN HANGOVER | A FALL SUPPLEMENT
The one I may test Substack's new chat feature in response to?
A killer skincare routine from Patrick Bateman, a villain.
Place a frozen ice pack over the face while doing stomach crunches. Your goal is an effortless 1000 crutches while preventing puffy eyes.
Follow up the ice pack with a deep pore cleansing lotion. In keeping with the source material, L’Occitane is recommended. Specifically the Shea Butter Ultra Riche Shower Creme.
Use a water activated gel cleanser on your body in the shower - replacing YSL’s Pour Homme with the brand’s L’Homme.
Apply a honey almond body scrub while still in the shower, also from L’Occitane, after rinsing off the cleanser.
Use an exfoliating gel scrub on the face.
After the shower, apply an herb mint facial mask to your now dry & clean face. Leave it on for 10 minutes before removing.
Use an aftershave lotion or serum (depending on your needs) with little to no alcohol. According to Patrick Bateman “alcohol dries your face out & makes you look older.” While Bateman’s aftershave lotion brand of choice is Phyto Men, we’re updating it here because Phyto Men no longer exists. However, this phytomedicinal (plant based medicine) moisturizer from Plantkos is packed with Ayurvedic herbs like licorice & ashwagandha as well as clinical ingredients like niacinamide.
Apply L’Occitane’s Shea Butter Ultra Riche Body Creme for moisturizer.
Finish with an anti-aging eye balm, replacing Bateman’s choice of Phyto Plage with Honest Beauty’s Calm & Renew Melting Eye Balm with Phyto Blend & a moisturizing protective lotion like Super Goop’s Glow Screen broad spectrum sunscreen or anything from L’Occitane with SPF.
An admittedly quality routine, this list also represents a necessary component in the life a man who wants to fit in to a world of late 80’s era finance professionals in Manhattan. A man for whom physical appearance, the clout that gets you reservations at the right restaurants, & the best of everything - from wardrobe to political views & business cards - are used to facilitate cover.
These things are costume & disguise. & Bateman’s very face is a mask that has been primed for the approval of the outside world.
When the skincare routine scene in American Psycho ends, Bateman pulls off his herb mint face mask & says I simply am not there”. Bateman’s literal mask peels off like the skin of a shedding reptile.
Along with the concealed faces in the mergers & acquisitions banker’s collection of photographic art & prints which include varied Le Mis posters, as well as carefully shot & obscuring angles of Bateman himself, the mask is a silent scream that announces how the social masks we adapt & wear because of what we learn through the experience of putting our truest & barest face forward - as well as what we learn about the ways they allow us to navigate our worlds while remaining largely unseen & unknown -underscore the story we are watching.
This concept comes to mind when gazing at the obscured faces in the work of Australian artist Steve Salo. The smeared details & facial features in his paintings are visual stories that we as his audience will never know.
Housed in private collections around the world, Salo has been quoted as saying that his paintings’ secretive figures say a lot more than he ever could, & that their creation comes from the same place of catharsis that he feels when engaging with the visual art, music, or performance of others. The multiple contexts for this singular experience of catharsis - a result of artistic input & output - is a testament to what Salo calls art's power to free the mind & connect us to humanity.
We are not all afforded consideration of our humanity however. As is true with a great many things not directly relevant to this particular letter, we have only to look at the portion of the population deemed criminal for examples of this.
I’m not talking about people labelled as criminals who may not have committed crimes. I’m not even talking about people who you should necessarily feel bad for.
I’m talking about the notoriously criminal. I’m talking about the Jeffrey Dahmers of the world. I’m talking about Jeffrey Dahmer.
Jeffrey Dahmer is a current focal point of the human tendency to glorify characters that weren’t meant to be glorified. A phenomenon traceable through the inspection of the reception of those very characters. They are men like “The Narrator”, Tyler Durden of Fight Club, Patrick Bateman of American Psycho, & real life serial killers like Dahmer, the subject of Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.
With writing from American Horror Story creator Ryan Murphy & frequent collaborator Janet Mock, & star Evan Peters as Executive Producer, the controversy garnering Netflix original is a based on a true life story that explores capacity - stoking personal anxieties about the ability & ease with which we can traumatize each other while offering insightful context for what must be the universal capacity to let things get away from us, to feel the pain of disconnection, & to find ourselves doing something we or others might consider heinous.
The show also seeks to humanize in a sometimes visceral way, featuring chilling elements such as documentary audio earlier in the season. As someone who has explored treatment of victims in the True Crime genre with my writing, the centralizing of characters based on real-life victims in Dahmer stands out to me as notably well done. The characters are fleshed out as whole people who came to unimaginably tragic ends as opposed to simply victims.
Not just well written but also visually appealing, Dahmer’s story, as well as the stories of his family & the men & boys he killed, is presented in a way that it hasn’t been before; a way that would be an impossibility without time away from mainstream media newsmaking & without access to archives that take years to become complete.
In the case of Dahmer, this archive must include media such as 2017’s My Friend Dahmer. A multi film festival award winning film adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name, My Friend Dahmer was written by Derf Backderf, a former classmate of Dahmer’s played in the film by Hereditary star Alex Wolff.
There is space for Dahmer. This is true despite echoing critiques that question the need for the limited series while seemingly missing the point & bringing into question whether the bylined critics & social media voices actually watched an episode.
I have additional thoughts on what’s missing from the critical conversation about Dahmer. Maybe something to expand on with the right editor? Either way, analysis outside of the controversy narrative felt warranted. True. Relevant weeks after the release of the series.
& now without further adieu,
Le Newsletter’s curated selection of recommendations for the borderland between Christmas & Halloween towns.
Colloquially known as the rest of the month of November.
RECOMMENDED
Wellness | SuperHair
Moon Juice is a new affiliate brand & a personal point of interest for years now. Because of the change of seasons & what that can mean for our hair & skin - I’m recommending SuperHair. Like all of Moon Juice’s offerings, this multivitamin is rich in adaptogens like ashwagandha & contains bioavailable vitamins A, E, C, D, K, & five different types of B vitamins. SuperHair also contains ginseng & other nutrients from sources such as biotin, kelp, & pumpkin seed. These ingredients work together to balance stress hormones & promote healthier hair overall.
Subscriptions to Moon Juice products are on sale at the time of this newsletter being published, & exact measurements for each active ingredient in SuperHair can be found on the product page linked above.
Esotericism | a First Edition of the Mike Willcox Tarot & Oracle
2014’s Saint Laurent (not to be confused with 2010’s Yves Saint Laurent biopic, L’amour Fou) features a scene that shows a young Yves flipping through his many books in search of design inspiration. He had already recreated Dior as head designer & was ready to recreate his own eponymous label.
It was the 60s. The designer found his inspiration in Mondrian’s Composition with Red Blue and Yellow. The resulting creation was the Mondrian dress; a color blocked paneled sack dress currently housed at the Met Costume Institute. Even if you don’t know it, you’ve likely seen it.
Piet Mondrian himself was inspired by Theosophy, an anti-materialist mythos initiated by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, a well travelled Russian occultist spreading her brand of pantheistic mysticism out of New York in 1875. Theosophy & its focus on ascention from the natural world through a spiritual union with the divine is said by writers such as the New Yorker’s Peter Schjeldahl to have resonated with Mondrian’s wants from life & art.
Theosophy would place a new on Mondrian’s increasingly metaphysical and then minimal works. This step is his artistic journey began, approximately, in 1908.
The painter began to apply the values of Theosophy to his representational works of flora & totems until around 1912 when, in the process of distilling the mystical movement down to the aspects that felt most freeing and applicable, he began to extract & perhaps experience something new.
A kind of practical magic.
In the end, Mondrian’s aim to use painting as a way to “find things out”, became a testament to stripping away as aesthetic preference & practice, as well as a response a so called “extreme” religious experience. This new testimonial painting practice, which would produce the geometric patterned paintings the artist is most commonly associated with, was about the approaching & understanding the craft of painting as something intrinsically potent. Regardless of the produced form or formlessness.
In the tradition of mysticism as artistic inspiration, the First Edition of the Mike Willcox Tarot & Oracle, a boxed set containing a gold stamped deck containing oracle, zodiac, & major arcana cards as well as a gorgeous hardcover guidebook with chapters on symbolism & personal meaning is many things. Not the least of which being an accessible option for starting an art collection with limited pieces from living artists.
Wilcox has been incorporating symbols & talismans from the natural & spiritual worlds into his work for years now. Using his unique style & inclination toward the symbolic to produce something in the esoteric space, especially a tarot deck, feels like a perfect next step.
Viewing | Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire
An update on the original Anne Rice novel & film adaptation starring Tom Cruise & Brad Pitt (who it always felt weird to hear repeatedly call himself “Creole”), this prestige AMC original stars Jacob Anderson (Game of Thrones’ Grey Worm) as plausibly Creole vampire Louis, & Belle actor Sam Reid as an intriguing & despicable Lestat. The main cast is rounded out by Bailey Bass, who you may come to know for her role in upcoming instalments of the Avatar franchise & will also maybe recognize as looking Creole but needing dialect coaching for her depiction of Claudia (a character written as an eternal five year old & portrayed in the previously mentioned film by a young Kirsten Dunst).
It is worth noting that despite the film’s ensemble cast, its actors aren’t necessarily missed as a result of the performance of the new ones. However, while Eric Bagosian (Arno from Uncut Gems) does an amazing job as the interviewer Daniel Molloy, something about the way of an aging Molloy meshes well with what we’ve seen from an older Christian Slater. Almost forcing you to think of how an older Slater could have perfectly revised the role.
That’s the news. Or the newsletter at least. Offered through a haze of confrontations with Christmas decorations, a yet to have occurred Thanksgiving, & dessert centered horror movie watching that says “November? I don’t know her.”
What does any of this mean for how you’ll spend the rest of the month?
What do you envision now that you know what you know?
I envision myself watching new episodes of Interview with the Vampire in pieces from the latest Selkie collection, discovering & sharing new artists, connecting creatively with you through my Night Pages writing workshop, & reading more short fiction - like Marco Mannone’s Pumpkin Spice Slaughter, satirical short fiction with the joke on hyper consumption & capitalistic obsession.
With the values of late stage capitalist flavored hyperconsumption under investigation in my own life - I’m thinking a lot more about writing as work & craft. That being said, Mannone self-publishes his work & sells physical & audio books via Amazon. This means sharing a link from late stage capitalism as an empowered entity (Amazon), if I want to encourage you to support the work of an independent author.
I’m doing that.
& watching a list of movies & shows that currently includes Triangle of Sadness, The Witch, The Cruciable, Sophia Coppala’s Marie Antoinette, & Tim Burton’s Wednesday - the latest addition to the cannon of Addam’s Family IP.
Need help envisioning what you’ll be reading when you read more of Le Newsletter?
Next month’s edition will feature interviews with Peurto Vallarta based artist Señor PV, Belize based & Texas raised fine artist, jewelry designer, & creative novelist Margret Hulse, & NYC based artist Rossana Romero.
Limited previews will be provided as new elements are added to what will be an interactive, weekly updated edition of Le Newsletter that only paid & founding subscribers will have full access to.
Until next time,
xx, A, Z, C, M…