Downtime in Brooklyn

I ran into a guy I knew from CCAC in the transfer tunnel at 42nd Street months ago. He used to have gorgeous skin, exuding summers spent on vacation in Europe- or at least, that's what I imagined. Well-bred but not annoying about it. He looked much beaten and ashen. Is that what New York does to you? Make you look more tired? Or is it just getting older?

Then last week, he called to invite me to some art studio opening out past Williamsburg. E would be there. Who I haven't seen in... at least five years. The party was a blast. There was ping-pong. There were beautiful spunky art people hanging out in folding chairs on the rooftop of the warehouse under stormy skies. I picked up some cheap straw hat from the roof, and while talking to a photographer named Jason, it blew away in the wind- probably to hit some little kid at lethal speeds in Long Island somewhere. Everyone was friendly. The art in the studios was solid. J is famous now, selling in Chelsea- it made me both nostalgic and mildly uncomfortable to be reminded of a different time in my life.

I got home way too late, way too drunk for the middle of the work-week. This has been a recurring problem since moving here. I have more than once woken up in the Bronx after missing my stop on the A train. Then, walking through Harlem at three a.m., one learns of why there are MOUNDS of garbage strewn EVERYWHERE in the mornings. Harlem comes to life at night. There are hundreds of people networking on stoops, people shooting up next to the community garden, women who don't just happen to be standing under the hair-braiding awnings and in front of the VIM. They stand with purpose, you know what I mean.

The night after the studio-opening, there was a free Yo La Tengo concert in Prospect Park. The more I think about it, the more remarkable it was. Yo La Tengo was performing their movie-score for the short mostly underwater documentaries by French science-filmmaker, Jean Painleve. If you ever have a chance to see his documentaries, GO. SEE THEM. They are ethereal, surreal, humorous, and... gorgeous. Did you know that mollusks are bisexual and polygamous? Or that octopi mate by the male inserting one of his arms (the third one to the right of his respiratory ventricle) into the female's respiratory intake hole? There was a wonderful segment on the crystallization of solids, accompanied by some serious noise. Ahhhhh... so good.


Sooz agreed.