Hello there, it's been a while. Things got crazy for a while... way too much to do justice but i'll sum up. I got a great job as a marketing designer in Midtown, which means that I'm here. For real. Until I decide I don't want to be anymore. If things go the way they've been, that won't be for a long, long time. New York is really really home now. I've built myself a room/treehouse to live in and Dave has too. Dave has a job too now, working at a kickass children's bookstore called Books of Wonder. Roommates have come and gone. Christina is in Germany renewing her visa but she'll be back in a week (!), and Marcus and Jason have moved in, both of whom are terrific. We have a great group of roommates right now and the camaraderie/creative energy in the loft is at an all-time high.
Roommate Jason has built a recording studio, which is AWESOME and will hopefully continue be a great source of impetus for creation. Etta Place (my roommates' band) is recording and hoping to have an EP out soon, ideally in time for some shows that are coming up this month.
Also on the music front, my "Songwriting October" project is in full swing. Some friends and I are working on a collaborative project where we try to write a song every day for each day in October. I'm about a day behind right now, but I've been pretty good about it so far and I'm really happy both with the output itself and the improvement I'm seeing in both musicianship (recording forces you to take a tough and often unflattering look at yourself) and concrete skills (using the recording software, etc.) Plus, it's awesome to see what other people are working on too. If you haven't already, check out the blog.
I've got a great feeling about October. So far so good, and I'm already in the middle of what is undoubtedly the happiest and most creatively productive period I've ever experienced.
I'm hoping to blog more now now that I have a computer again. (In darker times around July our apartment was broken into and my computer was stolen, along with Christina's laptop and camera.) More than anything, I wanted to break the now-awkward silence that had been building up as I got more and more stressed about how much had happened and how I would never be able to sum it all up, etc. etc. I gave up and now I feel better—probably some deeper wisdom at work there—and i'm ready to move on. I'm sure a smattering of some of the crazy that happened during the hiatus will leak out from time to time.
Anyway, we're back online. Talk to you soon.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Friday, July 9, 2010
The Night I Traveled Through Time
Roommate Julie had to go back to France last week because her visa only allows her to be here for three months at a time. The L wasn't running, but fortunately, Dan Trumble (college friend) came up to visit for the weekend from D.C. in his chariot of a vehicle, a 1996 Chevrolet Cavalier white convertible. I was designated driver for the evening and around 11 it fell upon Christina and I to take Julie to the airport.
We had Dan's phone for GPS but it became quickly apparent that it was more interested in the shortest route spatially as opposed to temporally. After our 40th or so turn down another seemingly random small neighborhood street in Brooklyn, I vowed that technology be damned; we would return home via the BQE.
This, as we shall see, was a fateful choice.
We arrived at JFK punctually. We helped Julie unload her bags and said our goodbyes. Though I've only known her for a month, I'm really going to miss Julie. She was often upset and unhappy in the early days (for some pretty understandable reasons) but as the month continued she continued to get happier and happier until she positively glowed by the end. We lingered saying goodbye until it couldn't be justified by "just one more cigarette" any longer and the attendant was getting antsy.
As Christina and I got into the car for the return journey, though, our situation became compromised immediately. The Cavalier was almost completely out of gas. It was supposed to be an errand sort of trip, so I only had three dollar bills and a driver's license in my pocket. Christina, German that she is, had nothing but Euros. I decided to try to get home on whatever we had left. I followed the signs for Brooklyn/Manhattan and hoped for the best.
Right at the transfer ramp from the Grand Central Parkway to the Long Island Expressway, though, the accelerator stopped being an accelerator. For those who haven't had the experience of running out of gas, it's pretty terrifying. THe car makes weird noises, the power steering locks up, and the pedal does nothing. It's even more terrifying in the middle of an expressway in our nation's largest city. I managed to coast the car halfway up the ramp and off to the side, fighting with the locked-up steering wheel; I put the hazards on and turned to Christina and we just started laughing.
Unfortunately, reality set in quickly. We only had three dollars, there wasn't a gas station in sight, and we were in a fairly dangerous spot, considering that we were on a blind turn and not entirely off the road. I called home to get our AAA number, but we found out shortly thereafter that AAA is legally prohibited from going on the LIE for some reason or another. The customer service rep apologized, there was a long, awkward pause, and then she hung up.
I called Dan to let him know what was going on, and he mentioned that there was an empty gas container in the back of the car. This turned out to be a lifesaver. After a quick strategy session, we decided that Christina would watch the car and draw in her sketchbook while I went to forage for gasoline, three dollars and a gas can in hand.
I jogged down the embankment and hacked my way through a bramble to find myself in the midst of a large, creepy park. A footbridge over the highway to my left looked promising, so I took it up over the 8-odd lanes of traffic and saw that the park continued as far as I could see on the other side of the bridge as well—this place was huge. Creepy, 15-story towers rose from the trees of the park, looking like some kind of science-fiction sentry towers. As I walked deeper in the park, I came across the eerie ruins of something that was somewhere between the framework of a circus tent and a massive turbine engine. Sketchy looking teenage ruffians darted through the darkness on BMX bikes and the humid darkness vibrated with the progressively dwindling sound of traffic. What the hell was this place, anyway?
And then, I turned a corner, and there it was before me: A giant stainless steel ten-story globe. I realized in an instant flashback to History of Design junior year exactly where I was: the ruins of the 1939/1964 World's Fair.
***
A brief digression: I am obsessed with the World's Fair, particularly the 1939 World's Fair. I love the innocence of 1939's assumptions about our future. In the end, what they thought that we would be like tells us far more about them than it does about us. There's also something noble about the celebration of human achievement that the World Fair seeks to achieve. It is an era trying to depict itself at its best. The more television-friendly Olympics have largely replaces the fairs as our global events, which I think is a shame due to the Olympics' narrow focus on one dimension of our experience. The World's Fair is impossible to think of as anything but faintly quaint, a time of deeper pride and optimism that is a distant memory to the current zeitgeist.
I really can't think of anywhere I would have rather stumbled on in so happenstance a manner. Especially filtered through the melancholy of abandonment, the old grounds had a poetry tinged with sadness that I haven't felt since I stood before the Parthenon. As I walked through the empty reflection pool, past the foundations of buildings that once showed "What the Future Would Be Like," I felt that same sense I felt on the roof of our building: existing as part of a place and time that is much, much bigger than you, floating on a sort of colossal tide. There's something about seeing garbage everywhere and people peeing on trees in the darkness of a place that once was lit in celebration of everything we can achieve. It's not really sadness or anger so much as an experience of our own mortality; greatness and hope passing away and taking new form in other places and other times.
***
Sure enough, there was a gas station on the other side of the old grounds. I bought exactly three dollars of gasoline, which filled the canister to the brim and made the long walk back to the car. Christina was in good spirits and handled the whole thing in noble fashion. I poured the gas into the tank and the car started. Instantly, the ordeal transformed from annoyance to hilarity tinged with the barest bit of epic. Christina and I looked at each other and laughed for a full two minutes.
Dan's car, chariot that it is, has a finicky trunk, forcing us to resort to duct-taping it shut. We got everything together and took off. We stopped at the nearest gas station to fill the car up as much as we could with whatever change we could find in the car, which wound up being about another $2.50.
After our long ordeal, Christina and I saw fit to take a joyride down the BQE in the beautiful night with the top down and exposed to the stars. The radio cooperated—Moondance, In the Air Tonight, Riders on the Storm, People are Strange, and finally, the dramatic climax of Pink Floyd's "Hey You" as we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan and then turned around to come home. It was the night before the 4th of July and Brooklyn had already begun to celebrate. As we wound through the highrises and brownstones on the BQE the sky lit up with the reds and greens of fireworks celebrating our triumph over what really should have been a pretty miserable evening.
***
Of course, it wouldn't be me telling the story if I didn't wring some kind of lesson from it, so here goes.
It's exactly for this sort of night that I came to New York. If I had been in Chicago, I probably would have known exactly where I was and would have had four people to call within a half an hour of where I was. I am comfortable there, and crisis resolution is easy because there's really no such thing as a crisis.
This entire episode illustrated to me that there are some adventures that can really only happen when you're in unfamiliar territory. It's somehow reassuring to me to know that even in a world of Google maps and iPhones you can still wind up off the grid, forced to make your own way. Here, in New York, at the margins of my own experience, in the ruins of the hopes of a forgotten past, adventure lives on.
We had Dan's phone for GPS but it became quickly apparent that it was more interested in the shortest route spatially as opposed to temporally. After our 40th or so turn down another seemingly random small neighborhood street in Brooklyn, I vowed that technology be damned; we would return home via the BQE.
This, as we shall see, was a fateful choice.
We arrived at JFK punctually. We helped Julie unload her bags and said our goodbyes. Though I've only known her for a month, I'm really going to miss Julie. She was often upset and unhappy in the early days (for some pretty understandable reasons) but as the month continued she continued to get happier and happier until she positively glowed by the end. We lingered saying goodbye until it couldn't be justified by "just one more cigarette" any longer and the attendant was getting antsy.
As Christina and I got into the car for the return journey, though, our situation became compromised immediately. The Cavalier was almost completely out of gas. It was supposed to be an errand sort of trip, so I only had three dollar bills and a driver's license in my pocket. Christina, German that she is, had nothing but Euros. I decided to try to get home on whatever we had left. I followed the signs for Brooklyn/Manhattan and hoped for the best.
Right at the transfer ramp from the Grand Central Parkway to the Long Island Expressway, though, the accelerator stopped being an accelerator. For those who haven't had the experience of running out of gas, it's pretty terrifying. THe car makes weird noises, the power steering locks up, and the pedal does nothing. It's even more terrifying in the middle of an expressway in our nation's largest city. I managed to coast the car halfway up the ramp and off to the side, fighting with the locked-up steering wheel; I put the hazards on and turned to Christina and we just started laughing.
Unfortunately, reality set in quickly. We only had three dollars, there wasn't a gas station in sight, and we were in a fairly dangerous spot, considering that we were on a blind turn and not entirely off the road. I called home to get our AAA number, but we found out shortly thereafter that AAA is legally prohibited from going on the LIE for some reason or another. The customer service rep apologized, there was a long, awkward pause, and then she hung up.
I called Dan to let him know what was going on, and he mentioned that there was an empty gas container in the back of the car. This turned out to be a lifesaver. After a quick strategy session, we decided that Christina would watch the car and draw in her sketchbook while I went to forage for gasoline, three dollars and a gas can in hand.
I jogged down the embankment and hacked my way through a bramble to find myself in the midst of a large, creepy park. A footbridge over the highway to my left looked promising, so I took it up over the 8-odd lanes of traffic and saw that the park continued as far as I could see on the other side of the bridge as well—this place was huge. Creepy, 15-story towers rose from the trees of the park, looking like some kind of science-fiction sentry towers. As I walked deeper in the park, I came across the eerie ruins of something that was somewhere between the framework of a circus tent and a massive turbine engine. Sketchy looking teenage ruffians darted through the darkness on BMX bikes and the humid darkness vibrated with the progressively dwindling sound of traffic. What the hell was this place, anyway?
And then, I turned a corner, and there it was before me: A giant stainless steel ten-story globe. I realized in an instant flashback to History of Design junior year exactly where I was: the ruins of the 1939/1964 World's Fair.
***
A brief digression: I am obsessed with the World's Fair, particularly the 1939 World's Fair. I love the innocence of 1939's assumptions about our future. In the end, what they thought that we would be like tells us far more about them than it does about us. There's also something noble about the celebration of human achievement that the World Fair seeks to achieve. It is an era trying to depict itself at its best. The more television-friendly Olympics have largely replaces the fairs as our global events, which I think is a shame due to the Olympics' narrow focus on one dimension of our experience. The World's Fair is impossible to think of as anything but faintly quaint, a time of deeper pride and optimism that is a distant memory to the current zeitgeist.
I really can't think of anywhere I would have rather stumbled on in so happenstance a manner. Especially filtered through the melancholy of abandonment, the old grounds had a poetry tinged with sadness that I haven't felt since I stood before the Parthenon. As I walked through the empty reflection pool, past the foundations of buildings that once showed "What the Future Would Be Like," I felt that same sense I felt on the roof of our building: existing as part of a place and time that is much, much bigger than you, floating on a sort of colossal tide. There's something about seeing garbage everywhere and people peeing on trees in the darkness of a place that once was lit in celebration of everything we can achieve. It's not really sadness or anger so much as an experience of our own mortality; greatness and hope passing away and taking new form in other places and other times.
***
Sure enough, there was a gas station on the other side of the old grounds. I bought exactly three dollars of gasoline, which filled the canister to the brim and made the long walk back to the car. Christina was in good spirits and handled the whole thing in noble fashion. I poured the gas into the tank and the car started. Instantly, the ordeal transformed from annoyance to hilarity tinged with the barest bit of epic. Christina and I looked at each other and laughed for a full two minutes.
Dan's car, chariot that it is, has a finicky trunk, forcing us to resort to duct-taping it shut. We got everything together and took off. We stopped at the nearest gas station to fill the car up as much as we could with whatever change we could find in the car, which wound up being about another $2.50.
After our long ordeal, Christina and I saw fit to take a joyride down the BQE in the beautiful night with the top down and exposed to the stars. The radio cooperated—Moondance, In the Air Tonight, Riders on the Storm, People are Strange, and finally, the dramatic climax of Pink Floyd's "Hey You" as we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan and then turned around to come home. It was the night before the 4th of July and Brooklyn had already begun to celebrate. As we wound through the highrises and brownstones on the BQE the sky lit up with the reds and greens of fireworks celebrating our triumph over what really should have been a pretty miserable evening.
***
Of course, it wouldn't be me telling the story if I didn't wring some kind of lesson from it, so here goes.
It's exactly for this sort of night that I came to New York. If I had been in Chicago, I probably would have known exactly where I was and would have had four people to call within a half an hour of where I was. I am comfortable there, and crisis resolution is easy because there's really no such thing as a crisis.
This entire episode illustrated to me that there are some adventures that can really only happen when you're in unfamiliar territory. It's somehow reassuring to me to know that even in a world of Google maps and iPhones you can still wind up off the grid, forced to make your own way. Here, in New York, at the margins of my own experience, in the ruins of the hopes of a forgotten past, adventure lives on.
But oh, that magic feeling—nowhere to go
Out of college, money spent
See no future, pay no rent
All the money's gone, nowhere to go
Any jobber got the sack
Monday morning, turning back
Yellow lorry slow, nowhere to go
But oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go
Oh, that magic feeling
Nowhere to go
Nowhere to go.
The Beatles, "You Never Give Me Your Money"
Well, it's been a while, but I'm back. A whole lot has happened since last time. I took on an unpaid internship at web advertising office in Midtown to build my portfolio and maybe hopefully get a job, the money-producing variety of which has as of yet not been forthcoming. Roommates are shuffling in and out, and college friends Dave and Carolyn will be moving into McKibbin shortly—hopefully within the week. Christina, our new(ish, she's been here almost a month now) roommate from Germany is quickly becoming a good friend. Kimmie, another new roommate, moved in from California about a week ago. Julie had to go back to France. It looks like 3 other roommates are moving out soon as well, though they haven't been around much anyway. When the dust settles we'll probably be at 12: Elisia, Christina, Whitleigh, Pat, Eric, Scott, Kimmie, Jesse, Jon (maybe), Carolyn, Dave, and myself. I've mentioned this before, but it's still hard to remember that we effectively just got here. I haven't known anyone here (excepting Dave and Carolyn) for more than 40 days, which seems impossible.
I'm feeling much better after a pretty down couple of weeks. First of all, it's been brutally hot. McKibbin doesn't have air conditioning (neither does most of Bushwick, for that matter) so even just sitting there you feel the sweat actively pushing through your skin. Everything and everyone smells bad and the air has a gooey humidity that seems not only oppressive but almost... immoral. Even at night, temperatures stay in the high 80's, and there's no relief. Second of all, I have surprised myself with the ferocity with which I've been missing home and my family. Though the grass is often greener, I suppose, the poetic starving-artist glamour of eating pasta for the fourth night in a row in an apartment where you could probably set the water to boiling just by putting it in front of the window for a few minutes. Suddenly the comfortable-in-every-aspect nature of suburban living that usually arouses such existential terror in me seems downright reasonable in comparison. It's funny to realize that what I wanted to leave behind to come to Bushwick is exactly what so many people here are trying to get to: a lawn, a car, three solid meals a day. Not having a paying job also blankets everything with a thin film of stress and I spend just about every waking moment thinking about money.
But oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go.
I'm coming to terms with the fact that this might not have been a good plan, which is, interestingly, incredibly liberating. Part of the point is the struggle, in the end. I knew it wasn't going to be easy, and that's what I wanted. Poetry of the situation can't feed your body, but it can help you hang in there until you can manage that for yourself. Such is the beauty of a sense of adventure: when the plan is bad on purpose, you succeed win or lose.
See no future, pay no rent
All the money's gone, nowhere to go
Any jobber got the sack
Monday morning, turning back
Yellow lorry slow, nowhere to go
But oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go
Oh, that magic feeling
Nowhere to go
Nowhere to go.
The Beatles, "You Never Give Me Your Money"
Well, it's been a while, but I'm back. A whole lot has happened since last time. I took on an unpaid internship at web advertising office in Midtown to build my portfolio and maybe hopefully get a job, the money-producing variety of which has as of yet not been forthcoming. Roommates are shuffling in and out, and college friends Dave and Carolyn will be moving into McKibbin shortly—hopefully within the week. Christina, our new(ish, she's been here almost a month now) roommate from Germany is quickly becoming a good friend. Kimmie, another new roommate, moved in from California about a week ago. Julie had to go back to France. It looks like 3 other roommates are moving out soon as well, though they haven't been around much anyway. When the dust settles we'll probably be at 12: Elisia, Christina, Whitleigh, Pat, Eric, Scott, Kimmie, Jesse, Jon (maybe), Carolyn, Dave, and myself. I've mentioned this before, but it's still hard to remember that we effectively just got here. I haven't known anyone here (excepting Dave and Carolyn) for more than 40 days, which seems impossible.
I'm feeling much better after a pretty down couple of weeks. First of all, it's been brutally hot. McKibbin doesn't have air conditioning (neither does most of Bushwick, for that matter) so even just sitting there you feel the sweat actively pushing through your skin. Everything and everyone smells bad and the air has a gooey humidity that seems not only oppressive but almost... immoral. Even at night, temperatures stay in the high 80's, and there's no relief. Second of all, I have surprised myself with the ferocity with which I've been missing home and my family. Though the grass is often greener, I suppose, the poetic starving-artist glamour of eating pasta for the fourth night in a row in an apartment where you could probably set the water to boiling just by putting it in front of the window for a few minutes. Suddenly the comfortable-in-every-aspect nature of suburban living that usually arouses such existential terror in me seems downright reasonable in comparison. It's funny to realize that what I wanted to leave behind to come to Bushwick is exactly what so many people here are trying to get to: a lawn, a car, three solid meals a day. Not having a paying job also blankets everything with a thin film of stress and I spend just about every waking moment thinking about money.
But oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go.
I'm coming to terms with the fact that this might not have been a good plan, which is, interestingly, incredibly liberating. Part of the point is the struggle, in the end. I knew it wasn't going to be easy, and that's what I wanted. Poetry of the situation can't feed your body, but it can help you hang in there until you can manage that for yourself. Such is the beauty of a sense of adventure: when the plan is bad on purpose, you succeed win or lose.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Inner City Pressure
Inner city life.
Inner city pressure.
The concrete world is starting to get ya.
The city is alive, the city is expanding.
Living in the city can be demanding.
You pawned everything, everything you owned.
Your tooth brush jar and a camera phone.
You don't know where you're going.
You cross the street, you don't know why you did.
You walk back across the street.
You don't measure up to the expectation.
When you're unemployed, there's no vacation.
No one cares, no one sympathizes.
You just stay home and play synthesizers.
Flight of the Conchords, "Inner City Pressure"
Well, almost two weeks in now. There's been a lot going on. Dave is here (hooray!) and Meaghan decided to move out in July, which means that the mid-to-long term apartment search now begins in earnest. I'm settling in at McKibbin too, though, and if things don't work out otherwise I would be quite happy to stay there through July. Still no luck on the job front, but I've got a job application in as a sign designer at Whole Foods that I feel good about. I need to find something soon, though. Sending out so many applications with no response amplifies my own tendency to self-criticize. This is by and large a good thing; it drives and motivates me. All the same, it can be draining as well, and it would really help my state of mind to get some good news soon.
I took the weekend off in Connecticut with Susanna. I enjoyed being cooked for again and a temporary escape from the urban claustrophobia that can set in here. I love the stimulation of the constant visual assault of Manhattan and the chaos of McKibbin and Bushwick, but it was nice to see a lot of trees together in one place again. Susanna's mother is a wonderful person as well, and it was good to remember what family is like after total immersion in separation thereof.
It was a stressful weekend in some ways too, though; being a guest demands a certain amount of performance. One of the better feelings I've felt in New York so far was coming back to McKibbin and feeling a sense of relief at being home. Eric did a nice job cleaning the place up and reorganizing while I was gone and I was glad to return, especially since I came back to a nicer place than the one I left.
One of the things I like about myself is how instantly I adapt to new environments. This has only been my life for twelve days, which feels impossible. It was strange to have Dave, Meaghan, and Carolyn here for the weekend because it reminded me that this is still all brand new.
Inner city pressure.
The concrete world is starting to get ya.
The city is alive, the city is expanding.
Living in the city can be demanding.
You pawned everything, everything you owned.
Your tooth brush jar and a camera phone.
You don't know where you're going.
You cross the street, you don't know why you did.
You walk back across the street.
You don't measure up to the expectation.
When you're unemployed, there's no vacation.
No one cares, no one sympathizes.
You just stay home and play synthesizers.
Flight of the Conchords, "Inner City Pressure"
Well, almost two weeks in now. There's been a lot going on. Dave is here (hooray!) and Meaghan decided to move out in July, which means that the mid-to-long term apartment search now begins in earnest. I'm settling in at McKibbin too, though, and if things don't work out otherwise I would be quite happy to stay there through July. Still no luck on the job front, but I've got a job application in as a sign designer at Whole Foods that I feel good about. I need to find something soon, though. Sending out so many applications with no response amplifies my own tendency to self-criticize. This is by and large a good thing; it drives and motivates me. All the same, it can be draining as well, and it would really help my state of mind to get some good news soon.
I took the weekend off in Connecticut with Susanna. I enjoyed being cooked for again and a temporary escape from the urban claustrophobia that can set in here. I love the stimulation of the constant visual assault of Manhattan and the chaos of McKibbin and Bushwick, but it was nice to see a lot of trees together in one place again. Susanna's mother is a wonderful person as well, and it was good to remember what family is like after total immersion in separation thereof.
It was a stressful weekend in some ways too, though; being a guest demands a certain amount of performance. One of the better feelings I've felt in New York so far was coming back to McKibbin and feeling a sense of relief at being home. Eric did a nice job cleaning the place up and reorganizing while I was gone and I was glad to return, especially since I came back to a nicer place than the one I left.
One of the things I like about myself is how instantly I adapt to new environments. This has only been my life for twelve days, which feels impossible. It was strange to have Dave, Meaghan, and Carolyn here for the weekend because it reminded me that this is still all brand new.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Pilgrimages
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages),
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.
-Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
A few thoughts on pilgrimages, in the wake of a holy journey to IKEA by train and tram.
I need sheets for the air mattress and a pillow; sleeping in a sleeping bag with my head on a pile of clothes has lost its charm. My grasp of Brooklyn geography is limited at best (though steadily expanding). The only vendor I know of of such things is the Manhattan K-Mart in the Astor Place Subway where I bought the tent and air mattress in the first place.
But lo! After finding common ground with new friend and fashion designer Ashley over Dieter Rams and the Bauhaus, Ashley mentions that she needs to run out to IKEA.
Sweet Jesus.
Sorry, K-Mart. You're no competitor for the high cathedral of affordable modern design. Even if it is just bedsheets.
I meet up with Ashley in Brooklyn Heights the following day after running the gauntlet of subway closures (2,3 and C not running, A only running in one direction and not making all stops, G spotty). We take a walk down to Borough Hall to catch the free shuttle that IKEA runs and stand in line dutifully with our fellow pilgrims. The Brooklyn IKEA, guarding the water's edge, also runs a water taxi to Manhattan. Aesthetes city-wide flock to its cavernous warehouse bearing little more than their hopes, dreams, and credit cards and leave with the finest in Swedish-engineered modular furniture to bring the cult of beauty into the slouching world one primary-colored end table at a time.
There is a mechanical bustle of pure efficiency. People circle through the cafeteria lines with clockwork hum. Ideal homes are presented every 20 feet. Every product on the showroom floor has a number corresponding to a berth in the neat aisles a floor below. Everything is consistently designed, from directional signs to lampshades to throw rugs to bookshelves to batteries to stuffed animals to even, yes, bedsheets. IKEA is what a universe brought about by Intelligent Design might actually look like.
Which, I think, it why it takes on the element of religion for me. IKEA creates a universe within its walls that is idealized and sells that ideal to everyone who walks through its doors. It's not about trendy furniture or paper globe lights, really. It's about stepping into a store for an hour and imagining a more beautiful world of peace and harmony.
One may not live in this IKEAn world of beauty forever, though. (Seriously. They'll kick you out by 8:45, the beckoning bedroom displays notwithstanding.) Now we must take what we have seen and felt and known and make the world a better place.
This is the value of a pilgrimage in general, whether to IKEA or Brooklyn or Canterbury. There's always value in exploring the aesthetic possibilities of a more beautiful world.
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages),
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.
-Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
A few thoughts on pilgrimages, in the wake of a holy journey to IKEA by train and tram.
I need sheets for the air mattress and a pillow; sleeping in a sleeping bag with my head on a pile of clothes has lost its charm. My grasp of Brooklyn geography is limited at best (though steadily expanding). The only vendor I know of of such things is the Manhattan K-Mart in the Astor Place Subway where I bought the tent and air mattress in the first place.
But lo! After finding common ground with new friend and fashion designer Ashley over Dieter Rams and the Bauhaus, Ashley mentions that she needs to run out to IKEA.
Sweet Jesus.
Sorry, K-Mart. You're no competitor for the high cathedral of affordable modern design. Even if it is just bedsheets.
I meet up with Ashley in Brooklyn Heights the following day after running the gauntlet of subway closures (2,3 and C not running, A only running in one direction and not making all stops, G spotty). We take a walk down to Borough Hall to catch the free shuttle that IKEA runs and stand in line dutifully with our fellow pilgrims. The Brooklyn IKEA, guarding the water's edge, also runs a water taxi to Manhattan. Aesthetes city-wide flock to its cavernous warehouse bearing little more than their hopes, dreams, and credit cards and leave with the finest in Swedish-engineered modular furniture to bring the cult of beauty into the slouching world one primary-colored end table at a time.
There is a mechanical bustle of pure efficiency. People circle through the cafeteria lines with clockwork hum. Ideal homes are presented every 20 feet. Every product on the showroom floor has a number corresponding to a berth in the neat aisles a floor below. Everything is consistently designed, from directional signs to lampshades to throw rugs to bookshelves to batteries to stuffed animals to even, yes, bedsheets. IKEA is what a universe brought about by Intelligent Design might actually look like.
Which, I think, it why it takes on the element of religion for me. IKEA creates a universe within its walls that is idealized and sells that ideal to everyone who walks through its doors. It's not about trendy furniture or paper globe lights, really. It's about stepping into a store for an hour and imagining a more beautiful world of peace and harmony.
One may not live in this IKEAn world of beauty forever, though. (Seriously. They'll kick you out by 8:45, the beckoning bedroom displays notwithstanding.) Now we must take what we have seen and felt and known and make the world a better place.
This is the value of a pilgrimage in general, whether to IKEA or Brooklyn or Canterbury. There's always value in exploring the aesthetic possibilities of a more beautiful world.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Greetings from the Moon
There's probably a struggle in the soul of every person my age between adventure and safety, danger and comfort, the unknown and the comfortable, abroad and at home. Exactly how you think about the poles of the dichotomy really depends on the names you give to them.
To all the places and people I love: I miss you. Even as I make a new place to come home to here, I haven't forgotten where I came from.
To all the places and people I love: I miss you. Even as I make a new place to come home to here, I haven't forgotten where I came from.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Rooftop
Last night, Susanna came over to McKibbin to practice music, and when things got too loud in the common area, we scaled the grimy stairwell to the roof. The roof is one of the best parts of McKibbin. You push the door out, feel the rush of warm summer air into the dark stairwell, and there you stand—six stories up, surrounded by the lights of Brooklyn and Manhattan pulsing through the heat. The Empire State building, the skyscrapers of the financial district, and the warm glow of downtown New York are background to the tower apartments and cascading sprawl of Brooklyn. Sounds of tires, horns, and distant sirens rise and fall in slow, even breaths. The city is massive, and it teems from every pore, every nook and cranny.
There a sharp hiss and upward arc of magnesium spark as someone on the roof next door lights a firework. It bursts overhead with a hollow thud and casts a red glow with its branching arms. For the first time since Greece, I am once more wrapped in the bosom of a poetic universe. It's intimidating, unmanageably large, indifferent to me even as it revolves slowly around me. I am both lost and found, dissolving and absorbing.
You stand on stage and sing out into the city, to an audience of none.
There a sharp hiss and upward arc of magnesium spark as someone on the roof next door lights a firework. It bursts overhead with a hollow thud and casts a red glow with its branching arms. For the first time since Greece, I am once more wrapped in the bosom of a poetic universe. It's intimidating, unmanageably large, indifferent to me even as it revolves slowly around me. I am both lost and found, dissolving and absorbing.
You stand on stage and sing out into the city, to an audience of none.
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