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Lower Manhattan from the Promenade

Clark Street

Lionel at Grand Central

Pay close attention

For Woody Allen

Dawn

East River Park

Hipster at Sunrise

Skid$ Row

Tile, Grand Central 

Chrysler

Bank of America/Bryant Park

Friendship

Birdwatching underground

Finally took one of these

First album of 2014: a reevaluation. N'joy.

Loisa Does It

That's a bad pun on Easy Duz It, but I do have to tell about what Loisa did on New Years.

Brookyln (who doesn't believe this journal exists) and I spilled significant ink over how we would spend New Years. I knew it would be for the best to avoid New York--too many out-of-towners, and I don't play the nightlife game as I once did, but still refuse absolutely to spend any money for the privilege of standing on line in the cold, the nightmare of traffic and taxis on New Years, the nightmare of millions of people in Times Square (why?)--no thanks. We determined through indifference that DC would be the best place to spend New Years, and settled on an open bar with nice food and a heated rooftop with twelve or so friends.

Loisa came, of course, as did a friend of Brooklyn's from Philly, Charlie. Loisa doesn't get out much, and when a few weeks ago Brooklyn mentioned she plans to move to Seattle to live with her boyfriend, Loisa burst into tears. Brooklyn and I were shocked, and agreed that this inappropriate behavior had much more to do with Loisa's own loneliness and despair than real concern over Brooklyn departing DC. When Brooklyn told me she planned to move to Seattle, I thought it was wonderful, and I far prefer a lengthy ride in a plane than a lengthy ride on a bus. It will be sad to see less of Brooklyn, of course, but it will also be nice to have an excuse to visit Seattle. I very much want to see Olympic National Park, and have wanted to do so for many years.

On New Year's Eve, Loisa and Charlie began to chat independent of the rest of the group, an occurrence which Brooklyn and I noted. Later, after midnight, Loisa approached us and explained that yes, she was interested in Charlie, that Charlie had asked her if he could kiss her, but that she wasn't sure what to do, was it a good idea, would Brooklyn assure her that Charlie was a good person, a responsible person, a safe person? Yes, Brooklyn could attest to Charlie's good character, and did, but Loisa remained uncertain. The bar closed around two, and Brooklyn, another friend, and I felt it was time to move on to a more crunk venue. We were twenty minutes away, on foot, and it was warm and dry. Brooklyn checked Uber, which had an 8x surge charge. "We should really walk," I said. Brooklyn reaches a stage of intoxication and becomes unreasonable and stubborn, and the more I suggested we walk the more determined she became to order an Uber, I'm sure. Eventually she insisted we take an Uber, and ordered it. This was convenient, because it enabled us to abandon Loisa and Charlie together, which we did. We felt good about it--as friends, we had done right by Loisa, this would be good for her.

The Uber, a ten minute ride at most, was $47. The reward of the stubborn!

The rest of the night was amusing if uneventful. We slept late New Years Day, and met for brunch around two. Loisa appeared, in high spirits, but looking rough. Loisa lives in a lovely home on Capitol Hill. Two floors of a beautiful old DC-style brownstone are hers, with a couple in the garden apartment below. Charlie and Loisa had returned to her apartment around two the night before. Loisa made Charlie promise he didn't have an STD: "Brooklyn is a very close friend of mine and if I catch anything she will do something terrible to you." Brooklyn, as you can imagine, reacted to this with a low shudder.

Loisa and Charlie hear a crash around 5:30 in the morning as well as the sound of rushing water; Loisa believes there is a storm and a tree has fallen on the house (this has occurred twice in the past). But when she looks out into the street, it's not raining. She runs downstairs, and in the living room an enormous piece of the plaster ceiling has fallen, narrowly missing Loisa's beloved guinea pigs, Tom and Jerry.

Sidenote: Loisa has flown with Tom and Jerry. The first time she did this, she had her veterinarian type up and sign a letter stating that these were Loisa's "anxiety animals," and that the guinea pigs must accompany her at all times. Loisa walked through airport security clutching Tom and Jerry. When she arrived at the gate, she walked up to the counter and alerted the flight attendant on duty she would be flying with Tom and Jerry, thinking this was the responsible thing to do. The flight attendant balked, and told Loisa there was no protocol for flying with such animals, and that she would have to speak with her supervisor. Loisa produced the veterinarian's letter, which according to the flight attendant, was useless--Loisa would need a letter from her therapist that stated she was mentally unstable. Loisa burst into tears, clutched Tom and Jerry, and cried, "I am mentally unstable!" Loisa was able to board the flight, and has't had issues flying with Tom and Jerry since.

In the still of the night, Charlie, running around naked, grabs some towels, and both Loisa and Charlie frantically attempt to mop up the mess and assess the damage. Loisa immediately calls a plumber, but it's the crack of dawn on New Years--no one is available. She calls her landlord, a management company--nothing. The downstairs neighbors are nowhere to be found--they're on vacation. Charlie manages to shut off the water, Loisa turns up the heat and turns on some fans, and the two of them spend the next few hours cleaning.

Loisa was in high spirits at brunch. Brooklyn and I made the right decision: Loisa seemed entirely unconcerned with the calamity of the night before. She was pleasant, fun, and alert. If Loisa and Charlie ever end up together, they'll have one hell of a "how we met" story.  

Almost Home

Though I find it difficult to believe, the future has arrived. It's 2015, but when will it really feel as if we're living in the future?

Soul Food Kitchen and Fish Heaven, Bed Stuy

Beautiful LeDroit Park, DC

LeDroit Park

Connecticut Ave/William Howard Taft Bridge, DC

National Cathdral

Sinister, nebulous, opaque, inchoate?

Per my resolutions of 2014, I will begin to highlight links in dark-scarlet bold. 

Moby

Music, Late December Melancholy

If you haven't yet noticed, I conceal links in text. I should perhaps think up a better way to illuminate links--it's a resolution. I'll figure it out in 2015, just like everything else. 

Feels good to write on the new laptop--the MacBook Pro Retina, I'll have you know--feels good on the fingers, hands, wrists, and scrumptious on the eyes. 

I adore late life combacks, and I'm happy to see Hailu Mergia in the Post and hear him on the new album.

What's not to like about Derrick Lara, of The Tamlins, reggae's best-known back-ups (think Peter Tosh, Marcia Griffiths, Delroy Wilson), covering the young Michael Jackson?

Soon to be hip-as-fuck-if-it-already-isn't molam and luk thung: Saksiam Petchchompu & Pornsurapon Petchseethong. Funky. I hyped the first edition of this compilation back in 2009-10--take that hipster fucks. 

My Fela of the moment: Carry Me, I Want to Die; Shabazz; Young Fathers.  

Unusual and dope: Rita Indiana.

Tulipa Negra--Dance. 

The French are the most Hip.

I'm into the nu Prince album but can't find any tracks on youtube; I like Clouds. 

Mary and I got back together earlier this year; I found my parents beaucoup 1980s Sade vinyl.

Loneliness.

I visited Portland for the first time in 2014, a charming visit. 

Kitsch 

Sinkane: bout to blow up.  

Darling Neal at 23 in 1968. 

What I think of as perhaps my current favorite, from the album inspired by Ray Charles' Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music.

Excessive? I hope not. Enjoy. 

 

 

Back East

I'm back. I've been on vacation. I've been home.

I began a new series of stories last night. They are at present a series of anecdotes, told from the perspective of a friend, Holden, who has experienced psychosis and remains paranoid. In recent weeks he has become concerned about surreptitious and sinister white vans which appear in his driveway, and are perhaps of indifferent purpose. He feels under the eye of  six or seven Ethiopians. Once, at a party, I saw Holden throw contact lens solution into a bowl of punch, and turn, wild eyed, at the surrounding crowd: "That's LSD." Holden then, with some violence, jerked his head around on his neck, and spat at the revelers, growling, "I've contracted HIV." None of this was unusual, at the time, as five or six close friends had begun to manifest certain symptoms of serious mental disorders (we were all twenty, twenty-one). It was par for the course. 

A few days ago I obtained the following information: a dear old friend, Oriane, decided she'd had just enough, stepped out of her bed, and walked out of the nursing home--this is neither metaphor nor hyperbole. Oriane was born some years before 1920, the daughter of a well-known naturalist and photographer. Oriane and my grandfather were great friends and bitter friends, each lusting for the spotlight, each full of wit, levity, and tales to last long into the night. I saw Oriane over the summer, and I did believe it would be the last time we would meet--months earlier she had fallen and broken a few bones, and, in disbelief and rage (at ninety-something she lives alone, perfectly capable and competent) she threw herself onto her bed having resolved to die. She spoke to no one for twenty-four hours, when a well-meaning acquaintance dropped in to assure all was well, and discovered all was, unfortunately, not. Oriane spent the next six-eight months in a nursing home, confined to her bed. When I saw her in August, though frail, she remained quick and sharp. For whatever reason I was full of aphorisms that day, and, after my aunt noted this, I told Oriane I was hard at work on a dictionary of axioms, observations, adages, and general pith. "I hope only you find someone out there to read it," she replied. I am elated to hear she has recovered.

Sadly, another old friend did pass away this year. She was an artist, scholar, musician, hippie den mother, organic farmer, lover of the shaggy, and inspiration to many--an Obie who went on to take her MA in Classical Greek and Latin from the University of Chicago, who would host musicians, poets, civil rights activists, rabble rousers and reds for late night philosophizing, music-making, and merriment on her farm, and remember (and remark) with pride that the FBI kept an eye on the goings-on at her house. She moved to my hometown in 1984, in her sixties, where she became a central figure on the scene with her Dobro, her sketchbook ("subjects festooned around the room"), and her beautiful, bright presence. We both were on-air talent at the very same radio station, and as an impressionable adolescent I watched her cat Millicent when B left town on occasion. We watched Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, and I thank and think of B as one of many real-world saints who lighten the darkness for the rest of us. George Eliot says it best: 

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.   

Goobye, B. 

Goodbye, 2014. 

Look Homeward, Angel

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.

Goodluck in the Park, Chopin, and Enough is Enough

It's always Winter in America.

Santa Claus, Do You Ever Come to the Ghetto?

Goodluck, Central Park

Goodluck Again

Snow on the boardwalk, Brighton Beach

Mural, Ideal Glass, 2nd Street at Bowery/2nd Ave

Gwen, Margarita, Constance, and Mamie

Ms. Diallo

The Food We Serve Is As Good, As Music Of Chopin