I've been listening to the new d'angelo album Black Messiah, on youtube (I know, basic as fuck), and in between songs I keep having to endure these anti-smoking ads.
I don't smoke. Alright, I might have a smoke or two when I'm drinking. But I can count the number of times I've bought a pack on one hand. Three fingers. I am d.o.n.e. with muhfuckin' anti-smoking ad campaigns.
People smoke, people get sick; some of this is smoking-related, some of this is not. The amount of money, effort, and energy wasted on anti-smoking campaigns, hard-earned money stupidly spent, and the effort/energy that might be expended on causes which truly merit our resources, this irritates my sense of decency, my common sense and common reason. I am entirely in agreement with David Hockney, one of the great artists of our time to boot. If I ever amass a vast quantity of wealth, I'm putting some of it into a pro-legalization-of-cocaine advocacy group, because I believe this would vastly disrupt the cartels (power and influence of, violence and atrocities committed by) who are breaking my heart in Mexico, and make more life in the drug-consuming zones (Europe, the US) more entertaining.
But back to d'angelo: the new album is dope as fuck. I haven't said that in a few years. This album is like voodoo: it's ethereal, funky (Sly, where you at?), soulful, cosmic, complex, symphonic. And d'spite the heroin, d's voice sounds as if it hasn't aged a day in fifteen years. With all the horror and pain and suffering and tragedy in this country and the world, we need d'angelo. We need him bad. And maybe we also need heroin?
I saw the new Chris Rock film, Top Five, with Brooklyn and Loisa in DC Sunday. The same day we went to an incredible Ethiopian place Loisa had meant to visit for some time, went down to Anacostia, and ultimately ended up at the MLK Jr. Memorial. Coincidence? I asked Louisa if there was a theme to the day and she laughed, "I know exactly how you'll tell this story, M, 'Loisa insisted on a tour of black DC.'" Speaking of, Rest in Peace to the Mayor for Life. It's hard to believe he's gone, really, but as the demographics continue to shift in the District, well, in a way it makes sense. The twentieth century is over. Some things have improved, some things have worsened. I hope, like Chris Rock said a few weeks ago, white people have become a little less crazy. DC remains, like most of Amerikkka, a hard place to be black.
Some have remarked this is Chris Rock's Annie Hall, and I'm not sure about that (it isn't because Top Five disappoints). No, I simply find the movies very different, though they do both illuminate different social worlds of New York. The best and most important scene in Top Five is the Top Five scene with Tracy Morgan, set in what I believe is a Harlem NYCHA apartment; Cedric the Entertainer delivers a best supporting actor worthy performance (though he'll never be nominated) as the quintessential Houston con-artist, Jerry Seinfeld and DMX have amusing appearances each, and Rosario Dawson gives us a brilliant, calculating, vulnerable, and journalistic representative of the paper of record, the NYT. I find it interesting that Jay and Kanye co-produced this film, especially in light of Kanye's recent marriage to Kim K.
Loisa is an amusing character. She's adopted academic utilitarianism to a problematic degree; she makes serious decisions based on the philosophy. I think it's crazy, but Loisa is a great person, who has dedicated herself to a cause through and through (she works for a major humane organization), and I consider her to be one of the kindest and most genuine people I've ever met.
There are slips, though.
Once, Loisa and Grace drank to excess, several years ago in $Skid Row$. Unexpected from Grace this was not; just a day before a few of us had brought take-out margaritas to McCarren Park, and, after the margarita was for the most part consumed, Grace in her shriek-cackle recounted her recent amorous adventures. "I don't know what it is, it must be my pheromones! Sven--do you remember the Swede? Sven texted me the other day, 'Grace, when can I come over and fuck you again?'" Grace relished the fuck. There were families and elderly folks nearby reading their newspapers, I was mortified, though the elderly men seemed entertained.
On the night Grace and Loisa drank to excess, Loisa I had never seen so intoxicated. She remained very much in control of herself, which is why this story shocked me so. Loisa is proper, Loisa is moral. Loisa, muttering about something or other, I interrupted--dental dams had come up earlier in the night, and I asked her, "Besides people with HIV and other serious STDs, who else uses dental dams?" Loisa: "People with Aspergers." Shocked. I turned, with wide-eyes, to look at Loisa, who upon catching my eyes burst out with a Grace-like demonic cackle.
Years prior, during a frightening prank, Loisa violently grabbed her "best friend" (who is a story unto herself), shook her, and yelled into her face, "Do you know what's going on?" As the "best friend" shook her head, she inadvertently let out a slight giggle, as she was in on the prank. Loisa noticed this, whilst continuing to shake the best friend: "Are you lying to me?" And then Loisa slapped her best friend, hard, across the face.
Loisa is capable of delightful surprises. To be fair, she denies both these stories.
Brooklyn and I had a long conversation about our hometown, our friends, and how we've not met anyone who had an adolescent experience at all similar to ours (sex, drugs, booze, euphoria, tragedy). The people we knew really were (and in most cases still are) unstable, were once beautiful and full of potential, and seized life with the kind of reckless abandon I've seen only in the movies.
I'm now back in our hometown. It's bizarre. I'm still processing how I feel here. The plan was to drive immediately to see relatives in another state, but this has been abandoned, so I've picked up a few radio shows and plan to see some friends I haven't caught up with in years. One of them, a former roommate who now has a fiancée and infant, has invited me to come over for drinks and dinner tomorrow, and I am concerned he's up to something, like he plans to drug me, with perverse intent. I also feel uncomfortable around babies, but how do you get around that with new parents? Sorry, I don't want to hold your child--it just makes me feel uncomfortable, I can't drop it like I can a cat.
I come from one of the flyover states; a few years ago I thought this was unusual and exotic, and I would admit this at nightclubs, parties, galas, whatever. I soon learned it was something to be embarrassed about, which was funny. "Are you kidding me?" I thought. But that's how it is in New York. Now, for the first time, on the ride home from the airport I saw with altered eyes the countryside, the sprawl, the people: empty, hideous, provincial. Today I had lunch with a Boricua friend at a local café that serves marginal New Orleans-inspired cuisine, which also happens to be a restaurant where many of my friends are employed, and we talked about these strange feelings I'm having. She wasn't surprised.
I'll be here for two weeks, until just before New Years. I feel a bit like Quentin at the end of Absalom: "I don't hate it I don't hate it I don't hate it." And I don't! I'm not a pretentious asshole. But life and time and people are a curious and confounding mess which through we must muddle. Like Betteredge, I have my Robinson Crusoes, one of these being The Moonstone, which I read on the flight from DC to my state whilst eavesdropping on a wonderful couple bickering in small words full of years of disappointment and indignation.
I can't wait to see the Pynchon adaptation, and have begun a foray into the films of Douglas Sirk, the Rossellini/Bergman triplets, a few Antonioni films I haven't yet had the chance to view, and favorite roles of Bacall, whom I miss dearly. I intend to attend the Mariinsky at BAM in January of 2015, and today bought an LP of the 1966 Bayreuth Karl Bohm-Birgit Nilsson Tristan and Isolde for exactly twenty-seven cents. Music that encapsulates the homelessness of the human condition, the isolation and bitterness and beauty of life.
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Friday, December 12, 2014
Goodluck in the Park, Chopin, and Enough is Enough
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| Goodluck, Central Park |
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| Goodluck Again |
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| Snow on the boardwalk, Brighton Beach |
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| Mural, Ideal Glass, 2nd Street at Bowery/2nd Ave |
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| Gwen, Margarita, Constance, and Mamie |
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| Ms. Diallo |
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| The Food We Serve Is As Good, As Music Of Chopin |
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
A walk down Madison Ave
Last night Jose told me about the CIA Torture Report, that the contents of the report were worse than he had expected, far worse. I couldn't believe it--that it could be worse (we're both informed and have read widely on the subject since the revelations broke some years ago). I thought certainly the use of waterboarding was likely to be far more widespread than anyone could believe, but was, like Jose, expecting the report to be watered down, to identify rogue actors within the enhanced interrogation program, that kind of thing. Unfortunately, the report features items such as "rectal feeding," detainees kept in "coffin-like boxes" for "266 hours," the threatening of detainees with sexual assault of their children or mothers, detainees on life support after only days or hours in captivity (which indicates the report doesn't fully outline the degree of the savagery), and detainees who died during torture. The sadism described is medieval.
I was so upset I had to take a long walk, and additionally thought maybe I would find myself a chocolate chip cookie or croissant. How could people, people like you or I, torture other people, like that? With such brutality! And with such sadism.
The thing about New York: you're never too far from human misery, and every day you're confronted with a new tragedy, whether it's desperate looking women scavenging for cans in the bitter cold, vacant-eyed men roaming the streets yearning for compassion or death, homeless children and teens, abandoned house pets nuzzling disinterested legs. It's tough. Some days I come back to the apartment and weep for all the misery in the world, all the suffering, all the sadness. Well, not weep, but tear up and stare at the ceiling, despondent.
The city isn't just proximity to human misery--if it were, no one would want to live here! What redeems New York is human possibility, and the beauty of the warmth and compassion of the majority of the people who live here, when it comes to helping strangers. You've probably read a story about the homeless man who needed a new backpack, his old backpack disintegrating, when, in the nick of time, a stranger hands him a new backpack. This kind of thing happens all the time, and though a backpack isn't really what the homeless man needs (how about an apartment and a job), there are cities where he wouldn't even get a backpack (Chicago and Los Angeles immediately come to mind).
Possibility and beauty are the other major redeemers of New York. At my depressive nadir last night, I sat in the Pacific Street station, waiting for the train, reading The Moonstone, while a young woman played the guitar and sung nearby. She was a distraction, though, mostly because she good, very good. She covered a song which by now we've all heard, Pumped Up Kicks (just in case), for which she won amateur night, apparently. Here's the version she's uploaded. Neither are very good, and there is some odd fuzz at the end of the version on her youtube channel, but I know why she won amateur night--she has a fantastic voice, a mature, self-aware style, and someone should sign her, develop her, and cut the album. She calls herself Opal Ell, and we need new names like hers as a culture, new voices, and especially young voices who sing in the subway and on the streets, people who take whatever platform they can because they have something to express and the talent to express it beautifully.
Opal turned my night around, and I visited Strawberry Fields because it's been thirty-four years since John Lennon was gunned down as of a couple days ago. I went on to my lucky fountain, said a few words, and left two pennies on the edge of the basin, now drained of water for the winter.
It was a nice enough night, so I cut across the Park and strolled slowly down Madison, which I've come to consider one of the most sepulchral places on the entire island. It's so dodo, all of it, such a hyper-expensive morass of hopeless loneliness and dissatisfaction. The fact that Donna Karan, from her perch on Madison Ave and her house in East Hampton, is considered to be a representative of the downtown scene and downtown at this late moment when the downtown scene has had its last gasp--there is an aspect of New York and America in general that has lost its soul. New York is a microcosm of the world in many ways, and also a microcosm of the United States, so the corporitization, suburbanization, and mass, homogenous commodity culture that has taken over the city is representative of what has occurred and is occurring in the rest of the country and in the world. It will pass, like everything else. But we shouldn't let it pass without acknowledging its existence, critiquing it, analyzing it, and understanding it (this condition), because if we neglect to do so what follows may be far worse than whatever it is we anticipate, like the CIA Torture Report.
Fashion needs new designers, young designers with ideas. This kind of culture, along with most forms of artistic expression, is born in the streets. It is a low to high process--one needs only to examine the French restaurants of New York to understand this: the classic, rarified menus of the fifties and sixties, themselves part of a much older tradition that evolved out of the countryside, are all but extinct. The last in the grand dame tradition that remains is La Grenouille, though it is, coincidentally, New York's best restaurant and certainly one of the best restaurants in the entire United States. Many bistros and brasseries have opened in New York, but these serve a kind of French cuisine I would consider to be pedestrian, middle class, or working class. I write this not to disparage these restaurants, as I frequent many of them, I solely intend to describe a change that has occurred, an elevation of something once considered inedible in French cuisine--or if not inedible certainly not fine.
Fashion needs an enlivening, badly, and a kind of emergent designer that doesn't aspire to design clothes for the wealthiest few, but to revolutionize what everyday women wear on a day to day basis. If this person knew his or her history, he or she would only need to look to the story of Chanel for an example.
Otherwise, Madison Ave is New York's glamorous dodo--a beautiful piece of taxidermy.
I was so upset I had to take a long walk, and additionally thought maybe I would find myself a chocolate chip cookie or croissant. How could people, people like you or I, torture other people, like that? With such brutality! And with such sadism.
The thing about New York: you're never too far from human misery, and every day you're confronted with a new tragedy, whether it's desperate looking women scavenging for cans in the bitter cold, vacant-eyed men roaming the streets yearning for compassion or death, homeless children and teens, abandoned house pets nuzzling disinterested legs. It's tough. Some days I come back to the apartment and weep for all the misery in the world, all the suffering, all the sadness. Well, not weep, but tear up and stare at the ceiling, despondent.
The city isn't just proximity to human misery--if it were, no one would want to live here! What redeems New York is human possibility, and the beauty of the warmth and compassion of the majority of the people who live here, when it comes to helping strangers. You've probably read a story about the homeless man who needed a new backpack, his old backpack disintegrating, when, in the nick of time, a stranger hands him a new backpack. This kind of thing happens all the time, and though a backpack isn't really what the homeless man needs (how about an apartment and a job), there are cities where he wouldn't even get a backpack (Chicago and Los Angeles immediately come to mind).
Possibility and beauty are the other major redeemers of New York. At my depressive nadir last night, I sat in the Pacific Street station, waiting for the train, reading The Moonstone, while a young woman played the guitar and sung nearby. She was a distraction, though, mostly because she good, very good. She covered a song which by now we've all heard, Pumped Up Kicks (just in case), for which she won amateur night, apparently. Here's the version she's uploaded. Neither are very good, and there is some odd fuzz at the end of the version on her youtube channel, but I know why she won amateur night--she has a fantastic voice, a mature, self-aware style, and someone should sign her, develop her, and cut the album. She calls herself Opal Ell, and we need new names like hers as a culture, new voices, and especially young voices who sing in the subway and on the streets, people who take whatever platform they can because they have something to express and the talent to express it beautifully.
Opal turned my night around, and I visited Strawberry Fields because it's been thirty-four years since John Lennon was gunned down as of a couple days ago. I went on to my lucky fountain, said a few words, and left two pennies on the edge of the basin, now drained of water for the winter.
It was a nice enough night, so I cut across the Park and strolled slowly down Madison, which I've come to consider one of the most sepulchral places on the entire island. It's so dodo, all of it, such a hyper-expensive morass of hopeless loneliness and dissatisfaction. The fact that Donna Karan, from her perch on Madison Ave and her house in East Hampton, is considered to be a representative of the downtown scene and downtown at this late moment when the downtown scene has had its last gasp--there is an aspect of New York and America in general that has lost its soul. New York is a microcosm of the world in many ways, and also a microcosm of the United States, so the corporitization, suburbanization, and mass, homogenous commodity culture that has taken over the city is representative of what has occurred and is occurring in the rest of the country and in the world. It will pass, like everything else. But we shouldn't let it pass without acknowledging its existence, critiquing it, analyzing it, and understanding it (this condition), because if we neglect to do so what follows may be far worse than whatever it is we anticipate, like the CIA Torture Report.
Fashion needs new designers, young designers with ideas. This kind of culture, along with most forms of artistic expression, is born in the streets. It is a low to high process--one needs only to examine the French restaurants of New York to understand this: the classic, rarified menus of the fifties and sixties, themselves part of a much older tradition that evolved out of the countryside, are all but extinct. The last in the grand dame tradition that remains is La Grenouille, though it is, coincidentally, New York's best restaurant and certainly one of the best restaurants in the entire United States. Many bistros and brasseries have opened in New York, but these serve a kind of French cuisine I would consider to be pedestrian, middle class, or working class. I write this not to disparage these restaurants, as I frequent many of them, I solely intend to describe a change that has occurred, an elevation of something once considered inedible in French cuisine--or if not inedible certainly not fine.
Fashion needs an enlivening, badly, and a kind of emergent designer that doesn't aspire to design clothes for the wealthiest few, but to revolutionize what everyday women wear on a day to day basis. If this person knew his or her history, he or she would only need to look to the story of Chanel for an example.
Otherwise, Madison Ave is New York's glamorous dodo--a beautiful piece of taxidermy.
Sharon Jones and Philip Glass
Last Thursday three of us took the A train to the Apollo for The Daptone Soul Revue: Sharon Jones, Antibalas, Charles Bradley, Naomi Shelton, and a few supporting acts/openers. I came up from the Foley Square protests for Eric Garner, Dean and his roommate/girlfriend from Bed Stuy where they live. Dean claims to have slept with three of four female roommates, and is now "dating" the third. Poor policy, I'd say, but quot homines, tot sententiae. Many of the characters in this diary take their name from literature, and, as you may have guessed, Dean comes from Dean Moriarty. He's no Sal Paradise but then neither am I--in fact the name Moriarty has always fuddled me, as I associate him with Sherlock Holmes worthy adversary. No matter--let's move forward.
Dean is in the process of taking a master's in social work at one of the famous New York schools. I think of him as being foppish mess, full of inchoate and incoherent ideas expressed with an energetic convoluted-ness. He's immature and nearly thirty, and when he drinks his tentacles fly around the room dripping pus about haphazardly. I like Dean, but his behavior is difficult to manage and, because he's immature and thoughtless, the behavior is often offensive. We'll come to this.
What a thrill it was to walk into the Apollo. I thought of Adelaide Hall, Ella Fitzgerald, Mahalia, the Soul Stirrers, Aretha, Ray Charles, and of course, James Brown, of all the music and history that has passed through the theatre over the years, and all the regular folks who have come to hear the music. I had never been to the Apollo before, and it was a culmination of many things--I had a feeling of understanding, of oneness with a current of being, a feeling I haven't had since talking Kant in college, something I first experienced in Pizarro's tomb in Lima. There I felt the burden and logic of history; the the Apollo I felt a supreme beauty and coherence. If that makes any sense at all.
Naomi Shelton did Harlem Mavis Staples; she hobbled out onto the stage with assistance, but as soon as she started singing--mmmhmmm. That woman has a serious voice and knows about the good news. A few acts later came Charles Bradley, who has been waiting all his life for this moment (he's in his sixties) and screamed and hollered as he churned and oozed around the stage in a costume even James Brown might've been too demure to don (it featured a phallic, sequin-covered tie that hung between his legs). Antibalas brought down the house--they went over time, and it appeared as if the stage management had to remove them from the stage. Much of the band seemed carried away, in a trance, and so were we in the audience, people dancing, writhing, clutching at their genitals. The thing was only steps away from an orgy. And then Sharon leaps onto the stage after a Hardest Working Man in Show Business-style introduction. I didn't know how anyone could follow Antibalas, but Sharon blew them out the water. That woman has a power in her voice that I've never heard. Sharon covered "Every Beat of My Heart," which Gladys cut in 1961 when she was just eighteen years old. Sharon can sing eighteen years old. The pinnacle of the show--there were two in Sharon's set--came when she preached, frantically, hysterically, as if the music, feeling, and spirit were about to carry her off, about her cancer, how she caught it, how it almost killed her, and how she beat it. I thought the theatre might come crashing down--I don't think the Apollo has seen a show of that caliber since the sixties. Sharon finished up with her version of James Brown's "There Was a Time" in which she teaches us all about the mashed potato, the tighten-up, the chicken, the twist, the camel walk, the boogaloo, and a selection of other interpretations of dances of the 1960s. This is up there with the best shows I've seen, and I've seen most of the best (the notable exception being Prince).
Dean was drunk when we left, drunk and looking for trouble. I had come from the Eric Garner protests; we were in Harlem. Dean insisted on smoking a blunt in front of the police, in front of the Apollo, without a clue as to what that might mean, how that might make people with a different skin color feel--something they could never get away with, right in front of the police like that--and in front of the Apollo, which is a respected landmark. It was semi-disgraceful. I rode the A to 59th with Dean and his roommate and then transferred to the D.
Saturday last Cash, Sadie, Princess, and I saw The Etudes at Bam. What a treat it was to see the old lion himself perform the first two etudes, with the forgivable slovenliness of the composer, tempo uneven as if Philip himself is, in this first performance of all of the etudes, himself becoming reacquainted with his own work. It was beautiful and melancholy, aged lovers holding each other on the train, each more in love with the other than ever, youth an eternal present rather than a distant memory. Ten pianists tackled the etudes, and it was fascinating to see these divergent interpretations. Princess, Cash, and I loved the etudes; Sadie sort of didn't get it, although I think she was happy to have been brought along. Sadie has told me she doesn't like medieval or religious art, and Sadie's a Spaniard through and through: she rejects ritual, yet requires it, requires the evocation of sex, of violence, of redemption. Cash has improved immensely since moving to New York, he loved the etudes and had unexpected and intelligent things to say about it.
Princess had been shopping for a stylist all day, and was fraught when she arrived--she'd been to Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Barney's, Bergdorf, and the first three were just crawling with the hordes. Poor thing. She was dressed like a Geisha and I realized she has a fluid/natural/organic grasp of style, it's impressive. She talked about a few years ago, when I had incorporated "Crunk" into my name, and how she thought that was iconic of a certain time, age, era, etc., which of course I loved to hear. She works at the boom boom room and has lately begun to enjoy heavy drinking. Cash looked at me with delighted surprise when she told a story about returning to her $Skid Row$ apartment so drunk, and, being unable to find the key, falling asleep in the hallway. When she woke up in the morning, she threw up, and still couldn't figure out how to get into her apartment. "We should hang out with Princess more often," Cash said.
I'm reading Wilkie Collins' mystery The Moonstone, which is the most wonderful winter novel. On the horizon is a beautiful biography of George Sand I found at City Opera, a first edition, Infamous Woman, Conrad's Lord Jim, Valley of the Dolls, The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Many things. Saturday I leave New York for DC and my hometown soon after that. I'm nervous, I feel unsafe when I leave New York for these provincial pieces of my past.
DC promises to be amusing, as I'll lodge with Brooklyn and we have much to catch to gossip about. Brooklyn plans to visit New York for New Years, but New Years is such a pain in the city I have no idea what we'll do. Brooklyn's best lady friend Eliot will be there, who I once nearly slept with I think, although of course I could be wrong. That night she wore an orange jumpsuit, and Brooklyn was drunk and I sort of felt Eliot ran out on me, and Brooklyn kept semi-aggressively commenting "I know why your mad." It was so bizarre and unusual, like one of those strange and fragile surrealist attempts at cinema.
I made a trek out to Soul Food Kitchen on far out Fulton in Bed Stuy last night: might be the best soul food in New York. I had catfish, mac n' cheese, okra, and greens, and I'm bringing carry out to Kate for her birthday party Friday.
Why would anyone ever leave New York?
Dean is in the process of taking a master's in social work at one of the famous New York schools. I think of him as being foppish mess, full of inchoate and incoherent ideas expressed with an energetic convoluted-ness. He's immature and nearly thirty, and when he drinks his tentacles fly around the room dripping pus about haphazardly. I like Dean, but his behavior is difficult to manage and, because he's immature and thoughtless, the behavior is often offensive. We'll come to this.
What a thrill it was to walk into the Apollo. I thought of Adelaide Hall, Ella Fitzgerald, Mahalia, the Soul Stirrers, Aretha, Ray Charles, and of course, James Brown, of all the music and history that has passed through the theatre over the years, and all the regular folks who have come to hear the music. I had never been to the Apollo before, and it was a culmination of many things--I had a feeling of understanding, of oneness with a current of being, a feeling I haven't had since talking Kant in college, something I first experienced in Pizarro's tomb in Lima. There I felt the burden and logic of history; the the Apollo I felt a supreme beauty and coherence. If that makes any sense at all.
Naomi Shelton did Harlem Mavis Staples; she hobbled out onto the stage with assistance, but as soon as she started singing--mmmhmmm. That woman has a serious voice and knows about the good news. A few acts later came Charles Bradley, who has been waiting all his life for this moment (he's in his sixties) and screamed and hollered as he churned and oozed around the stage in a costume even James Brown might've been too demure to don (it featured a phallic, sequin-covered tie that hung between his legs). Antibalas brought down the house--they went over time, and it appeared as if the stage management had to remove them from the stage. Much of the band seemed carried away, in a trance, and so were we in the audience, people dancing, writhing, clutching at their genitals. The thing was only steps away from an orgy. And then Sharon leaps onto the stage after a Hardest Working Man in Show Business-style introduction. I didn't know how anyone could follow Antibalas, but Sharon blew them out the water. That woman has a power in her voice that I've never heard. Sharon covered "Every Beat of My Heart," which Gladys cut in 1961 when she was just eighteen years old. Sharon can sing eighteen years old. The pinnacle of the show--there were two in Sharon's set--came when she preached, frantically, hysterically, as if the music, feeling, and spirit were about to carry her off, about her cancer, how she caught it, how it almost killed her, and how she beat it. I thought the theatre might come crashing down--I don't think the Apollo has seen a show of that caliber since the sixties. Sharon finished up with her version of James Brown's "There Was a Time" in which she teaches us all about the mashed potato, the tighten-up, the chicken, the twist, the camel walk, the boogaloo, and a selection of other interpretations of dances of the 1960s. This is up there with the best shows I've seen, and I've seen most of the best (the notable exception being Prince).
Dean was drunk when we left, drunk and looking for trouble. I had come from the Eric Garner protests; we were in Harlem. Dean insisted on smoking a blunt in front of the police, in front of the Apollo, without a clue as to what that might mean, how that might make people with a different skin color feel--something they could never get away with, right in front of the police like that--and in front of the Apollo, which is a respected landmark. It was semi-disgraceful. I rode the A to 59th with Dean and his roommate and then transferred to the D.
Saturday last Cash, Sadie, Princess, and I saw The Etudes at Bam. What a treat it was to see the old lion himself perform the first two etudes, with the forgivable slovenliness of the composer, tempo uneven as if Philip himself is, in this first performance of all of the etudes, himself becoming reacquainted with his own work. It was beautiful and melancholy, aged lovers holding each other on the train, each more in love with the other than ever, youth an eternal present rather than a distant memory. Ten pianists tackled the etudes, and it was fascinating to see these divergent interpretations. Princess, Cash, and I loved the etudes; Sadie sort of didn't get it, although I think she was happy to have been brought along. Sadie has told me she doesn't like medieval or religious art, and Sadie's a Spaniard through and through: she rejects ritual, yet requires it, requires the evocation of sex, of violence, of redemption. Cash has improved immensely since moving to New York, he loved the etudes and had unexpected and intelligent things to say about it.
Princess had been shopping for a stylist all day, and was fraught when she arrived--she'd been to Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Barney's, Bergdorf, and the first three were just crawling with the hordes. Poor thing. She was dressed like a Geisha and I realized she has a fluid/natural/organic grasp of style, it's impressive. She talked about a few years ago, when I had incorporated "Crunk" into my name, and how she thought that was iconic of a certain time, age, era, etc., which of course I loved to hear. She works at the boom boom room and has lately begun to enjoy heavy drinking. Cash looked at me with delighted surprise when she told a story about returning to her $Skid Row$ apartment so drunk, and, being unable to find the key, falling asleep in the hallway. When she woke up in the morning, she threw up, and still couldn't figure out how to get into her apartment. "We should hang out with Princess more often," Cash said.
I'm reading Wilkie Collins' mystery The Moonstone, which is the most wonderful winter novel. On the horizon is a beautiful biography of George Sand I found at City Opera, a first edition, Infamous Woman, Conrad's Lord Jim, Valley of the Dolls, The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Many things. Saturday I leave New York for DC and my hometown soon after that. I'm nervous, I feel unsafe when I leave New York for these provincial pieces of my past.
DC promises to be amusing, as I'll lodge with Brooklyn and we have much to catch to gossip about. Brooklyn plans to visit New York for New Years, but New Years is such a pain in the city I have no idea what we'll do. Brooklyn's best lady friend Eliot will be there, who I once nearly slept with I think, although of course I could be wrong. That night she wore an orange jumpsuit, and Brooklyn was drunk and I sort of felt Eliot ran out on me, and Brooklyn kept semi-aggressively commenting "I know why your mad." It was so bizarre and unusual, like one of those strange and fragile surrealist attempts at cinema.
I made a trek out to Soul Food Kitchen on far out Fulton in Bed Stuy last night: might be the best soul food in New York. I had catfish, mac n' cheese, okra, and greens, and I'm bringing carry out to Kate for her birthday party Friday.
Why would anyone ever leave New York?
Monday, December 8, 2014
Ghosts of Midtown Past
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| 57th |
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| Vaguely Socialist Peasant on 48th |
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| Wonderful 1930s Greco-Gauguin Dreamtime |
Saturday, December 6, 2014
Found in New York
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| The Post Office |
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| Ceiling detail |
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| Alright, so occasionally I use the photo filters |
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| The creatures that haunt my dreams |
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| Near Fort Tryon |
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| Tompkins and Jefferson, Bed Stuy |
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| The Godfather, Tompkins and Fulton, Bed Stuy |
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| Isaac and Michael |
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| Sharon Jones |
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| Reminds me of Merida |
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| Llorona, Lower East Side |
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| Why can't people be more like fish: simple, and kind? |
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Kafka
I mentioned the Brooklyn Heights girls--the two I almost lived with? Well, one of them told me all about her intense curiosity in Kafka's letters, diaries, journals, etc., of course it goes without saying he was a fascinating, unusual, a neurotic. Según Freud, the illness of the neurotic is the illness of modern civilization.
Last night I went to flight attendant friend's holiday party in deep Queens. Deepest Queens, an area the look and feel of which makes it feel like it could be anywhere or anything. It's so abstract. Flight attendant friend and I met a few years ago on a flight from New York to my state of birth; I had a little shoulder-bag with me that I had stowed in one of the overhead bins. During those quiet moments before take-off, the flight attendants closing and inspecting the aforementioned bins, passengers settling in with a book, their anxieties, thoughts of wherever it is they have left and wherever it is they are to go, and the head flight attendant pulls out my shoulder-bag, a Colombian mochila, and, in a tone audible to the nearby fifteen or twenty passengers, says, with my bag held up, "Whose purse is this?" For once, my seatmate is a very attractive woman. What humiliation. Immediately with some awkwardness I stood up and claimed my bag, and told the flight attendant that "it's a shoulder-bag not a purse." Chuckling from the surrounding rows. "Looks like a purse to me!" she responded. Carly, my seatmate, doubled over in laughter. We struck up a conversation and discovered we were on our way to the same town, so I gave her a ride home from the airport. We've been friends ever since. She's a flight attendant with a major carrier, and the more of her friends I meet, the more I respect the carrier. The flight attendants are well-treated, a diverse and intelligent mix, multilingual, fun, and best of all, genuine. Be kind to your flight attendants, readers!
So last night I went to the fur-themed holiday party Carly threw at her apartment in Queens. Immense apartment, the only abode I've been that can hold a candle to Brooklyn's place in DC, so far, full of women and gay men dressed in fake fur of all kinds. Eventually I met a charming redhead who reminded me of another friend, also a redhead, a dancer, with similar facial features and a matching attitude. Incredible as it is, I was to discover the similarities between these two women run deeper: the two share the same first name. But the redhead of Carly's party came with a highly unusual maiden name: Kafka. It's a family legend Franz is a cousin once-or-twice-removed. Kafka comes from Phoenix, though she married a Brit, has a lovely baby daughter, and had been living in London until city life became too complicated. Before she married, first and last names were alliterative Ks. She shouldn't have ever changed it, I told her.
Kafka has appeared twice in my life in the last few weeks: what could it possibly mean?
I've been listening to Fela as I write, which reminds me: I finished Chimamanda Adichie's Americanah a few days ago. Ultimately I found the novel disappointing--thematically there are three distinct experiences Adichie explores, and the first and second are far and away the most interesting. As Adichie's protagonist reaches maturity, she loses depth--she becomes dull. The quality of the writing remains high, but the agony of it, the effort that went into it, all this changes--the texture, once beautifully and carefully sculpted, becomes smooth and indistinct. It seems as if Adichie ran out of steam at a certain point, and simply needed to finish the book, to put it behind her--this is understandable. I look forward to reading her next book, as I believe as a writer she does have the capacity to produce a masterpiece.
I've begun Wilkie Collins' Moonstone, which is a wonderful book and wonderful winter reading in particular, and has reminded me of the out-of-the-past idea of the "morally fallen," the disgraced woman (and occasionally man) of epochs long past. I was discussing Red Hook with my cousin, and I mentioned that I always think of Red Hook as the place where one should move after a disgraceful affair, a place to hide, to be alone, to reflect on the foreclosed life that might have been. She agreed, and knew someone who had done just so, only to become involved in another lurid affair, can you imagine? The Moonstone proves to be delightful, as I knew it would. The edition I have is cumbersome and unwieldy, and this summer I found a pint-sized copy of Conrad's Lord Jim, so I may carry that around in my coat pocket when I'm unable to lug around a large tome.
My friend Grace is in Los Angeles this week photographing and drawing bulbous nudes with tattoos, her favorite subject. Grace is a favorite, and may be the reason I obtain the position with Sony Pictures. She shrieks, she screams, she exposes as much tattooed flesh as possible whenever possible. I can't wait for her to move back to New York. I don't understand why anyone moves to Los Angeles--sure the weather's great, but it can be cold, you have to drive everywhere which really means sitting in traffic for hours and hours and hours, and the air is awful.
Tonight I'll see The Daptone Soul Review (Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley) at the Apollo, and Philip Glass Saturday at BAM. I'm extremely excited: Sharon Jones is the Queen.
I hope to participate briefly in the Eric Garner protests outside City Hall later on today. It's been suggested police wear cameras, to prevent incidents like the death of Michael Brown, or at least provide irrefutable video evidence--well, with Eric Garner there was video evidence. If, as is the case with Eric Garner, a video can't convince a grand jury there is probable cause to charge a police officer, what's the point of cameras? I've said it before: a racist, trigger happy country produces a racist, trigger-happy police force. It doesn't matter if the officer in question has apologized, claims he never meant to harm Eric Garner, says he's sorry and prays for Eric and his family. Eric Garner was a father of six. Six children will grow up without a father, will have this injustice hanging over their heads the rest of their lives. What a shame.
We can talk about racism, but what we really need to do is talk about racists, because they're out there, and they're the reason we don't see indictments when it comes to the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. It's a tragedy and a disgrace. I hope this is a watershed moment, when the sensible people step away from those with the words of inequity on their lips, the racists with hate seeping out of their pores.
RIP Eric Garner. I, like the court jester of our time, am lost for words.
Last night I went to flight attendant friend's holiday party in deep Queens. Deepest Queens, an area the look and feel of which makes it feel like it could be anywhere or anything. It's so abstract. Flight attendant friend and I met a few years ago on a flight from New York to my state of birth; I had a little shoulder-bag with me that I had stowed in one of the overhead bins. During those quiet moments before take-off, the flight attendants closing and inspecting the aforementioned bins, passengers settling in with a book, their anxieties, thoughts of wherever it is they have left and wherever it is they are to go, and the head flight attendant pulls out my shoulder-bag, a Colombian mochila, and, in a tone audible to the nearby fifteen or twenty passengers, says, with my bag held up, "Whose purse is this?" For once, my seatmate is a very attractive woman. What humiliation. Immediately with some awkwardness I stood up and claimed my bag, and told the flight attendant that "it's a shoulder-bag not a purse." Chuckling from the surrounding rows. "Looks like a purse to me!" she responded. Carly, my seatmate, doubled over in laughter. We struck up a conversation and discovered we were on our way to the same town, so I gave her a ride home from the airport. We've been friends ever since. She's a flight attendant with a major carrier, and the more of her friends I meet, the more I respect the carrier. The flight attendants are well-treated, a diverse and intelligent mix, multilingual, fun, and best of all, genuine. Be kind to your flight attendants, readers!
So last night I went to the fur-themed holiday party Carly threw at her apartment in Queens. Immense apartment, the only abode I've been that can hold a candle to Brooklyn's place in DC, so far, full of women and gay men dressed in fake fur of all kinds. Eventually I met a charming redhead who reminded me of another friend, also a redhead, a dancer, with similar facial features and a matching attitude. Incredible as it is, I was to discover the similarities between these two women run deeper: the two share the same first name. But the redhead of Carly's party came with a highly unusual maiden name: Kafka. It's a family legend Franz is a cousin once-or-twice-removed. Kafka comes from Phoenix, though she married a Brit, has a lovely baby daughter, and had been living in London until city life became too complicated. Before she married, first and last names were alliterative Ks. She shouldn't have ever changed it, I told her.
Kafka has appeared twice in my life in the last few weeks: what could it possibly mean?
I've been listening to Fela as I write, which reminds me: I finished Chimamanda Adichie's Americanah a few days ago. Ultimately I found the novel disappointing--thematically there are three distinct experiences Adichie explores, and the first and second are far and away the most interesting. As Adichie's protagonist reaches maturity, she loses depth--she becomes dull. The quality of the writing remains high, but the agony of it, the effort that went into it, all this changes--the texture, once beautifully and carefully sculpted, becomes smooth and indistinct. It seems as if Adichie ran out of steam at a certain point, and simply needed to finish the book, to put it behind her--this is understandable. I look forward to reading her next book, as I believe as a writer she does have the capacity to produce a masterpiece.
I've begun Wilkie Collins' Moonstone, which is a wonderful book and wonderful winter reading in particular, and has reminded me of the out-of-the-past idea of the "morally fallen," the disgraced woman (and occasionally man) of epochs long past. I was discussing Red Hook with my cousin, and I mentioned that I always think of Red Hook as the place where one should move after a disgraceful affair, a place to hide, to be alone, to reflect on the foreclosed life that might have been. She agreed, and knew someone who had done just so, only to become involved in another lurid affair, can you imagine? The Moonstone proves to be delightful, as I knew it would. The edition I have is cumbersome and unwieldy, and this summer I found a pint-sized copy of Conrad's Lord Jim, so I may carry that around in my coat pocket when I'm unable to lug around a large tome.
My friend Grace is in Los Angeles this week photographing and drawing bulbous nudes with tattoos, her favorite subject. Grace is a favorite, and may be the reason I obtain the position with Sony Pictures. She shrieks, she screams, she exposes as much tattooed flesh as possible whenever possible. I can't wait for her to move back to New York. I don't understand why anyone moves to Los Angeles--sure the weather's great, but it can be cold, you have to drive everywhere which really means sitting in traffic for hours and hours and hours, and the air is awful.
Tonight I'll see The Daptone Soul Review (Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley) at the Apollo, and Philip Glass Saturday at BAM. I'm extremely excited: Sharon Jones is the Queen.
I hope to participate briefly in the Eric Garner protests outside City Hall later on today. It's been suggested police wear cameras, to prevent incidents like the death of Michael Brown, or at least provide irrefutable video evidence--well, with Eric Garner there was video evidence. If, as is the case with Eric Garner, a video can't convince a grand jury there is probable cause to charge a police officer, what's the point of cameras? I've said it before: a racist, trigger happy country produces a racist, trigger-happy police force. It doesn't matter if the officer in question has apologized, claims he never meant to harm Eric Garner, says he's sorry and prays for Eric and his family. Eric Garner was a father of six. Six children will grow up without a father, will have this injustice hanging over their heads the rest of their lives. What a shame.
We can talk about racism, but what we really need to do is talk about racists, because they're out there, and they're the reason we don't see indictments when it comes to the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. It's a tragedy and a disgrace. I hope this is a watershed moment, when the sensible people step away from those with the words of inequity on their lips, the racists with hate seeping out of their pores.
RIP Eric Garner. I, like the court jester of our time, am lost for words.
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