Our Postcard - Molly Bloom in bed

For you New York locals, we have started papering the town with our Radio Bloomsday 2010 postcards and many people have asked about the images. Molly Bloom photographed by Louie Correia adorns the front and back of the card. We built a set in my bedroom, covering two sides of the wall with several 6 foot sheets of white butcher paper, then pasting on several layers of the New York Post, before adding a layer of gesso, to create the idea of a book. We then used charcoal to draw lines and handwrite two pages from Molly Bloom's monologue beginning with the word flagellate. Finally, we painted over the charcoal with black acrylic paint and a square brush. Our photographer, Louie Correia, a gifted graduate of FIT and a descendant of several generations of Portuguese Circus performers, came over for about 4 hours and took approximately 400 images with a digital camera of Molly Bloom at different stages of her day in bed.



Our aim is to present Molly Bloom as if she has just been hurled from the pages of a giant copy of Ulysses. Art in motion. Literature in progress. On the front color side, it is daylight and she is rehearsing with Blazes Boylan just after they make love around 4 oclock in the afternoon. On the backside, she is alone in bed in the wee hours of the morning waiting for Bloom to come home. Molly Bloom, the singer, the artist, working and living and eating and loving all day long in bed. Bed as the female power center of the home. Bed as canvas. Bed as work station. Bed as concert hall. Bed as the stage for life. Bed, bed, bed.

Let us know if you see the postcards and tell us where! Or send us your address and we will mail you one old school. Special thanks to Raphaele Shirley, Bobby of Bibberbox and Olivia Beall for their advice and expertise.

What is Bloomsday?

Bloomsday is a literary holiday. It is celebrated each year on June 16th commemorating the day that James Joyce's epic novel, Ulysses, takes place - on June 16th, 1904. Joyce chose this date for his novel in honor of the first time he went out walking with his future wife, Galway girl, Nora Barnacle the inspiration for the character of Molly Bloom.

Ulysses is considered by many to be the greatest novel of the twentieth century. Certainly, it popularized the stream of conscious monologue within literary texts. James Joyce was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1882. He spent most of his writing life in exile in Paris and Zurich where he died in 1941.

On Bloomsday every year, actors, writers and readers of all sorts get together and read Ulysses aloud. These celebrations take place onstage, in the street, in private homes, on the beach and in our case, broadcast live on the radio from 7pm to 2am on WBAI, 99.5FM or wbai.org anywhere in the world.

One of the most famous chapters in Ulysses is the final Penelope episode or the Molly Bloom monologue which takes place as Molly is lying in bed, thinking about her day, her lovers, her life. Consisting of eight very long run on sentences without punction, Molly Boom's solilquoy is a sexy, powerful, magical piece that takes 3 hours to perform. Caraid O'Brien will be performing the entire Molly Bloom monologue this year beginning at 11pm.

In the photo above, the actress Marilyn Monroe reads Molly Bloom's thoughts from Ulysses.