4th January 12
And that’s who you’d see smiling back at you, if you’d been at the Zanzabar in Louisville most nights last week.
Christina Billotte Week, Part 2.
3rd June 11
OK, I’m sorry, but I have to interrupt this hiatus yet again for a very important update for Christina Billotte Week. Christina Billotte Week, originally occurring in 2010, was one of the most beloved events in the annals of S. 12th history. Perhaps even the most successful, in we measure “success” in terms of “resembling a zine from the 1990s” (still my basic standard measuring unit for aesthetic success). I was actually considering launching Christina Billotte Week 2 this year, until I realized I had said pretty much everything I’d ever thought about Christina Billotte in 2010, and I had very little to add.
Because professionally, there was nothing to add. CB seemed to have been one of these mysterious figures in the annals of American pop that disappeared without much of a professional trace. I keep using the word “professional” because that is obviously the nature of my relationship with her as a public figure; I am not so young and dumb that I make the Rock Kid mistake of confusing a person’s artistic output with their personal life. In fact, to that end, a photo of CB with her daughter showed up randomly in my Tumblr feed earlier this year, which seemed to indicate she has become a mother. But other than that, I don’t know much else, and that is really none of my business, anyway. As far as her musical career is concerned, 2005 is when it seems to end, and until I become friends with Christina Billotte (something which seems, at best, highly unlikely), that really marks the end of my own personal engagement with her. That is, if a fan-creator relationship can be said to be “personal.” Which it probably can’t, actually.
Honestly, I don’t see how you music writers do it, how you hold that line between public figure and real person. Especially those of you that came up in the 1990s, when everything was so damned earnest, and it was a given that there wasn’t much of a divide between an artist’s day-to-day life, and their artistic output. Look at every stinky thing that has been written about Bob Dylan or Liz Phair, how upset people get when it’s suggested that there is a vast gulf between how the artists experience their own lives, and how we experience whatever ends up on the record. Even with an exceptionally slippery group like Pavement, historically there’s been some feeling among fans along the lines of, “Man, I would totally get along with these dudes, because we both have the same way of thinking. I am absolutely Stephen Malkmus’s fact-checking cuz, something that he would readily acknowledge if we ever met.” This is what makes so much music so exciting, that personal identification, but this is also a little bit dangerous, for both the fan and the artist.
But anyway, I am getting away from my point, which is that I have nothing much to add about CB’s career, and any further digging in would be getting away from the recorded output and my own experiences with it, and getting towards A.J. Weberman-styled garbology.
Which is maybe why this little tidbit is so interesting. Take a look at this article in the student newspaper of the Cal State - Long Beach student newspaper about a recent BFA student art show. Somewhere in the middle:
The center of the museum is coated with Christina Billotte’s goodies called “Stairs of Cake.” The ceramic, metal, wood and cement sculpture looks delectable, like a stairway to heaven of devil’s cake and other sweet treats.
(So yes, obviously, I have a Google Alert set up for “Christina Billotte,” because what if she releases a new record? I would need to know!)
But it seems as if CB dropped out of music and began studying ceramics. I’d heard that was the case, because it says right at the end of the Wikipedia article: “Billotte has been a resident of Los Angeles, CA, since 2003, where she is currently studying ceramics.” It’d appear now as if she completed her degree. So a congratulations to our hero Christina Billotte. If she’s making a fine art career out of ceramics, I’ll be excited to see where it goes. Really, it just feels good to know she’s out there making things, whether I am able to experience them or not. I hope, at some point, I’ll be able to.
