"My real name is not Angie, you know. It's Anna, Anna Panskova." I'm talking to Angie, no, Anna Panskova: 22, model, Muscovite, lead singer of her indie band "Tony Sopranos." She's wearing a Mika Miko punk rock shirt and I'm staring into her emerald eyes and suddenly I get it, I just get it.
I get why Salvador needed his Gala Dali and Man Ray his Kiki de Montparnasse.
"This is just a day job," she says. "I'm touring Europe with my band in three months." When she talks about music, her whole body moves with her eyes. She plays a song. She writes all their songs. She says her band is young, except her, she's getting old. Then she sings: hands out, lips pout, eyes fierce, everything else joyful, and I'm seeing a stage floating behind her already, swallowing Anna Panskova whole in glitter and gauze, light showers and applause. She lights up like she does in the photos. Her eyes hard vials of poison.
It was something close to love at first sight. We had a room full of models for casting, and there she was -- chopped blonde hair, black eye liner, technicolor shirt. My playlist was on the 349 Music Monday tracks I jacked from Ronald. She moved the whole time -- the whole damn time like the universe was hers and all these other beauties around her? Amateurs.
I love the girls who dance in a stuffy studio to my iPod. I love that when I tell them, "sweetie, you've got a sensual look, but I need you to bring out your inner man, bring out your fierce." First they look scared and then they do what you say like professionals. We all fake it until we make it. When they get it, I shout an awesome and there's that power, there's that smile, and I smile back at the beauty puppets. I feel the power too.
Anna Panskova was literally our next to last model, and when she strut I didn't say a thing. I just told my photographer JP to keep going, keep shooting. When she's done she said to me. "Hey, this was fun. I love it. I can look like man so this is fun."
"I like her," I said to JP. "Let's keep her."
Two days later Anna Panskova crashed through the doors of our photo studio, wet haired and a vision, right into me for a hug and kiss on both cheeks. I'm feeling kindred spirit burning and that damn, I kind of miss beautiful white girls.
During hair and makeup, she asked the makeup artist what song was playing. "Is this your music? I loved what you played at casting! What is this song called?" Later that afternoon, we spent a good 10 minutes looking for that song on my 349 song playlist.
"You know, it's that guy, then he's joined by a girl in chorus," she sang here, but my mind was a blur.
When we finally found it, she's happy and I was secretly too. She played DJ for half of the shoot and I jacked a few of her titles myself. The Tings Ting, Museum of Bella Artes, Russian indie bands. I thought of the days back in Brooklyn. We were 20-year-olds and lying on the floor of some basement apartment listening to Sigur Ros. The floor was cold and Rob asked Sasha, "what is she doing on the floor like that?" Sasha said, "she's listening to music."
From Brooklyn to Beijing six years later, some things don't really change. We keep on falling in love with the people who love that song that meant something that take on another layer of meaning because hey friend, do you love it too? Do you? Do you? Cuz if you do, I heart you like a fool.