Marc Spitz

The notes I’ve taken for this book and the last two screenplays I’ve written… and the play that is going to open in October (more on that VERY SOON), have all been written down on these amazing orange pads. RHODIAS. I was browsing in a stationary store on sixth avenue about a year and a half ago when i first saw them. this type of orange is my favorite color. i read somewhere that it was frank sinatra’s favorite color as well, but it already was my favorite color (not that knowing it was frank sinatra’s would not have made me consider adopting it as my own). personally it traces back to a lamp i bought in a thrift store just up the street from ps. number 1 on central avenue in lawrence. i am pretty sure the shop is still there. i know the school is. it’s sort of shaped like the orange haired alpha secretary on Mad Men. hourglass. and the color, i came to learn, of a Rhodia pad. i’ve been mocked for having this lamp but as styles change, it’s become very chic. i have seen similar lamps in the window of that vintage furniture store on ludlow street (selling for about four hundred times what i paid for my own). it’s one of the few items that i’ve managed to hold on to as i’ve moved and stumbled from place to place.

maybe the orange and black scheme tweaks my latent Goth as well. it’s very drug store Halloween aisle.

SOME INFO:

Rhodia is a French company, about seventy five years old. according to the (extremely stylish) website, the company was founded by the stationers Henry and Robert Verilhac in 1932. they took the name from the Rhone river, which flowed past their production plant, situated in the French Alps. a pair of fir trees that appear just above the Rhodia logo symbolize the two brothers (i am a tree). they created the black and orange pad, with its waterproof card stock jackets, two years later and have been selling them to freaking French geniuses ever since. imagine say duchamp or godard or gainsbourg or er… plastic bertrand, scribbling notes to self on those clean, white leafs, between those sinatra orange jackets.

LINK

www.rhodiapads.com

if you care to check it out.

writing a note to myself on my phone’s virtual yellow legal pad while in a bar or at the dog park, or worse, on the street (although i hate myself when i do that… i feel devolved or something, or worse, old, as it’s unwieldy and my much younger ex can like update her fucking facebook page while walking and chewing gum) is certainly speedy and useful but it never makes me feel like an artist. writing anything in a Rhodia… entirely different story. even if it’s just a grocery store or Duane Reade shopping list. just carrying one of them is akin to carrying around a first edition or an expensive foreign fashion magazine. it completes a package. these pads aren’t expensive. they just project some kind of rarity. an artist/photographer friend of mine discovered them independently and he got hooked as well. he sits at the Radio bar on West 11th Street and sketches in one of the small, black ones, with the gridded pages inside. i don’t like those as much because they’re harder incorporate into a sidewalking ensemble, don’t you know?

anyway, much, if not all of the notes i took while writing Bowie, i took in orange Rhodias, and if the book is a success, i am going to treat myself to the box of pencils, the leather pad holder, and perhaps even the mousepad and (if it’s a best seller) the Paul Smith collection. searching through the Rhodia site as i write this, i’ve just discovered that Paul Smith, the mod fashion designer (another favorite of mine) is a fan. i’m not surprised. he has designed some of these pads (he is never without one on the street either). upon further consideration, I think the signature Paul Smith rainbow stripes across the bottom of the pad sort of ruin the clean look and defeat the purpose of the Rhodia aesthetic. i hate to say this but any notes for future projects i’d take in the Smith Rhodias would just be too self conscious, and when you are coordinating for an imaginary photo shoot that is your life (or you know, writing a BOOK) any surplus of self consciousness can be fatal. i will stick with the classic and just open a new one every week (as intended).

if i want some danger, there’s always the “metallic” option anyway.