now when arrows don't penetrate, cupid grabs the pistol, he shoots straight for your heart, and he won't miss you

Love poster; illustration by Kris Atomic; vintage Valentine's Day card; "Be my Valentine" by Lula Mag; Rob Ryan's "This is for you" hand cut-out, from The Curiosity Shoppe

Honestly, I don’t get the big frenzied hoopla over Valentine’s Day. Maybe because I’ve never seriously been in love before, but I don’t see why people get so worked up over it – it’s just a day like any other. I have this theory, you see, no one actually likes Valentine’s Day. All the unattached people in the world are hyper-aware of their singleness, and go one of three routes: they embrace their freedom (e.g. go dancing with all your single friends), flaunt it (get drunk and canoodle with someone at a bar), or simply hate on the opposite sex, as well as secretly hate everyone who is romantically involved with the other gender. And everyone in relationships is so fraught with anxiety over V-Day plans and finding the perfect gift to exemplify their love that they don’t get the chance to enjoy it.

The problem with Valentine’s Day, as I see it, is that this “holiday” is too focused on others – and not a warm Christmastime feeling of loving others. It’s a terrible, nasty, guilt-ridden feeling where everything you experience that day is completely dependent upon the actions of other people. It's not that I don't love love - quite the contrary, actually. I love the idea of romance and excitement. It makes me feel heady and dreamy to see a boy, and consider him my own Cary Grant, a knight in a well-tailored suit and a sports car coming to whisk me away. But I detest the rules and regulations set forth by the Hallmark police. 

I am calling for a Valentine’s Day reformation! As the self-consumed individual that I am, I think that Valentine’s Day should be centered on our love for our selves. After all, how can you even begin to love someone else if you do not love your self first? (Gee, I sound like one of those corny self-help books)

So tomorrow, make a date with yourself. Be your own valentine! Treat yourself to something decadent, out-of-character, whimsically useless, something you’ve lusted after from afar but never got up the nerve to buy (like shoes … not, like, a person…)

Much in the same vein as Diana Vreeland, I ask why don't you: Put on your fanciest, frilliest undergarments (just for your own enjoyment), even if you’re just around the house wearing sweats all day. If you are going out of the house, try a trend that you always thought was cute but never had the nerve to try (socks with heels? a button down shirt half-tucked-in to trousers? feathers? wild color combinations?). Buy flowers and hand them out to whomever you’d like (or just keep them for yourself!). Have two scoops of Baskin Robbins for lunch (I recommend Gold Medal Ribbon, personally). Do a face mask-and-deep conditioner combo in your bedroom while dancing around to ABBA tunes and singing shamelessly into your hairbrush. Buy yourself a box of chocolates and don’t feel the slightest bit guilt if/when you finish the box. 

Title: from "Happy Valentine's Day" (OutKast) 

life is brief but when it's gone, love goes on and on

It's a wee bit of a collage overload, but ya can't get sick of Jimi!

Sometimes I think it was unfair for God to have ever made Jimi Hendrix. Someone as fantastically beautiful and talented as he was could never have lasted long, and after just giving us a taste of Jimi’s brilliance, God took him away. But moments like these are usually fleeting and are overpowered by my love of this man. Yeah, yeah, I know he was a guitar virtuoso who advanced music a lot, yadda yadda yadda. But I will temporarily ignore this, instead focusing on the intense beauty of Mr. Hendrix. Day-uhmm, he was fine (only Jimi Hendrix warrants this statement ever being uttered by me). I mean, he was simply gorgeous. And his style – I have never seen a man dressed so well. He wore wide-brim hats with plume feathers, tasseled military jackets, gold medallions, velvet coats, paisley headscarves, heavy threads - basically every one of my most lusted-after sixties items (i.e. if I could go back in time and rob 'Granny Takes a Trip' and 'I Was Lord Kitchener's Valet', this is what I would steal...)  

I again curse my way-too-late birth because I feel like we would have made really beautiful babies. And I mean that seriously.   

Title: from "Love" (I believe it's from Robin Hood... yeah, go ahead, judge away)

hills of forest green where the mountains touch the sky, a dream come true, I’ll live there ‘til I die, I’m asking you, to say my last goodbye, the love we knew ain’t worth another try

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." - Henry David Thoreau

A young Jane Asher

Francoise Hardy

Jane Asher, in a very David Bailey-esque shot

Sharon Tate

Charlotte Martin in a shot from the 1970s

Charlotte Martin

Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean

Sharon Tate

Sophia Loren

A young Elizabeth Taylor

Debbie Harry

Another shot of Charlotte Martin

Sophie Daumier

A shot from the gorgeously talented photographer Courtney Brooke

Katharine Hepburn

Marianne Faithfull

Paul McCartney and baby Mary

Mick Jagger

John Lennon, in the mid-1970s

Sal Mineo and Jill Haworth in Exodus

and though you want to last forever, you know you never will, you know you never will, and the goodbye makes the journey harder still

Chet Baker is one of my utmost favorite musicians. He's known best for his recording of the tender ballad "My Funny Valentine" - and his version is pretty much synonymous with the song itself - and the 1988 documentary that followed his turbulent life in the time leading up to his death - an accidental fall from a hotel window the same year the film was released. 

When Chet was a young musician in the 1950s, he was famous for his matinee star good looks just as much as his trumpet-playing abilities. The handsome young jazz musician was thought to be a cross between "James Dean and Jack Kerouac." 

Baker's career began to decline when the effects of his heroin use, which he had enjoyed regularly since the 1950s, began to affect his appearance, his ability, and his personal and financial security. By the end of the 1950s, Baker was pawning his instruments for money to support his heroin addiction. 

The 1960s found Baker serving a one-year prison sentence in Italy for drug-related offenses, while also facing deportation in West Germany and the UK for similar problems. He was still addicted by 1966 when he was severely beaten by a group of men after a performance in San Francisco. Chet made it out alive, but after being kicked in the face several times by his attackers, his mouth was split and torn and his front teeth were broken, essentially ruining his embouchure (the facial muscles & way the lips shape to the mouthpiece of a wind instrument). As a result, Baker had to relearn to play the trumpet and flugelhorn with dentures. He eventually developed a new embouchure with the dentures, and Baker was able to make a comeback in the 1970s. The effects of his lifestyle were very evident, as his matinee idol good looks had disappeared and, as Village Voice critic J. Hoberman put it, he became "a seamy-looking drugstore cowboy-cum-derelict." 

I think it's fascinating to listen to what Baker could do with not just a trumpet, but with his voice as well. He had a gorgeous voice. Perhaps due to his experience as a trumpeter, but Baker knew how to use his voice in the most subtle ways possible - it never sounds like he's over-extending himself or trying to make a record sound hot. He just sings. And it's beautiful. The gentle quietness of his voice is cool and refreshing, especially in comparison to a lot of other jazz musicians who do big vocal arrangements.