Notebook

After a week of schlepping and haggling, C. and I emptied our flat, loaded our belongings, and pointed a rental truck west. As we bounced along the George Washington Bridge, I had the freefalling sensation of being ejected from the city, of being spat out of a whirlwind. There are no tolls to enter New Jersey, and there’s a proverb here: it costs money to get into New York City, but it’s always free to leave.

Not Waving & Romance – Say Goodbye

Restoration of Bliss | Ecstatic, 2021 | Bandcamp

Two days left in New York City. Highs in the fifties and the sun went down at 4:29pm—one more minute of daylight. Tonight the moon is waxing. These days I spend most of my time frowning at objects once happily forgotten in the shadows beneath my bed or the back of my closet. Now I’m dragging them squinting into the light, and they seem to shiver in my hand, awaiting judgment. An ill-fitting sweater. A box of cables for god only knows. My mother’s grade-school report card (straight A’s except for gym).

Walking around the city, I passed long lines for COVD-testing. They wrapped around the corner and all the way down the block. Then I went for my last run through Central Park. I’ll miss the cinematography of the experience, the hyper-mediated sensation of running through a location defined by the movies. But I’m also looking forward to running through dull terrain where people aren’t taking pictures or getting married and my thoughts are mine alone. I’m craving the boring sublime.

At the coffeeshop, I listened to two men discuss investing in ammonia, how the price had tripled, and they’re going to be so rich by the end of the pandemic. I wanted to tell them nothing ever ends; it just piles up. The proof is under my bed and in the back of my closet.

The KVB – Endless

Minus One | Sans Issue, 2013 | Bandcamp

Four days left in New York City. Sunset: 4:28pm with highs around 50, and the weather has been distressingly warm while we put our things into boxes. 

Last night I finished Jonathan Franzen’s Crossroads, and even as I turned the final page, I was amazed I was reading it at all. Franzen has become an unfashionable writer for reasons I no longer remember. My opinion of him is nonexistent; I’ve only read him in bits and pieces. He writes realistic novels that mirror our world, whereas I prefer fiction that takes me somewhere new. But late one night, I came across a series of reviews in which the fashionable critics seemed to be writing with gritted teeth: yes, Franzen is pompous and says punchable things, but his new book is very very good.

And so, in a reckless post-midnight mood, I decided I should read something that inspired such begrudging praise. I pressed the pre-order button and forgot all about it until, three weeks later, a six-hundred-page slab appeared, and I wondered why on earth I ordered up a saga about a Midwestern minister’s family in 1973. Crossroads sat on my table for several weeks, taunting me for making impulsive purchases. Finally, I cracked it open to confirm my poor decision and that I could gift it to someone else. Then I was on page 100.

The writer Elisa Gabbert posted, “Still reading a little Franzen every night the way people used to read the Bible.” This captures the appeal of Crossroads perfectly. Reading it became liturgical. Each day I found myself looking forward to bedtime, when I could spend an hour or two with this broken yet hopeful family, each member lost in their private dramas and desires. There’s no flash or flourish in Franzen’s writing, just clean sentence after clean sentence that conjures a cozy, richly detailed world of people falling in and out of faith—and sanity. A fair chunk of it takes place just before Christmas, back when it used to snow, so it’s an ideal holiday read.

Sunset: 4:27pm. Last night I watched C. paint, and she moved so quick and loose, belonging entirely to the moment as she swirled her ink across a massive canvas. Meanwhile, I was hunched over my notebook like a troll, frowning over the placement of a comma and wondering whether I had anything to say, any words to offer, and if I did, worrying I might be misunderstood.

Is it possible to write the way she paints? How can I become less stilted on the page and maybe really let loose and get wild? Perhaps this journal could degrade into abstract bursts and garbled impressions, which does feel like the headspace of being alive in the 2020s. But oh god, I do not want to start writing poetry.

One week left in New York, and all I want is a decent snowstorm so I can listen to The Coldest Season while walking through the city one last time.

Echospace – Aequinoxium

The Coldest Season | Modern Love, 2008 | More

New York City. Sunset: 4:27pm. Cloudy skies and drizzle with temperatures in the thirties. Russia might invade Ukraine. The latest variant of the virus is spreading quickly, but its effects might not be too severe. There’s a shortage of cream cheese. More and more, the news sounds like the muttering of a madman, without any frame of reference or sense of plot. Last night a man set the Christmas tree at Fox News on fire, and now they’ll be howling about the war on Christmas until the end of time. Yesterday a Chinese rover spotted a cube on the moon, and it’s inching towards it for a closer look.

“Christ, I love Judge Judy,” said my cab driver. The judge was streaming on the dashboard, and I hadn’t seen the show before, but soon I was entirely absorbed in the proceedings while we inched across 23rd Street in the December gloom. I almost kept the meter running to find out if the defendants would need to return their landlord’s washer and dryer.

The driver was a thick man with a buzzcut, and he told me he’d been invited to appear on Judge Judy’s show when he sued his ex-girlfriend for the engagement ring he’d given her. “But we got back together,” he said. He told me all kinds of things. His father and grandfather were both drivers who made a good living, not like today with Uber and Lyft and algorithms. “My old man knew five different routes to every destination in the city,” he said, “but I don’t know how to get anywhere without using GPS.”

And somewhere high above us, that Chinese rover was navigating towards that cube. It will take two months to reach it, and it’ll probably just be an oddly shaped boulder. But what if it’s not? We’re exhausted down here, and thinking about something otherworldly would be nice.

Windy & Carl – The Same Moon and Stars

Songs for the Brokenhearted | Kranky, 2008 | Bandcamp

Sunset at 4:28pm with clear skies and lows in the thirties. Last night I was sitting in a church basement when someone’s phone began to chime with notifications. Then a voice behind me said, “Omicron is here.” A chair squeaked. Somebody shrugged. Conversation resumed.

This afternoon I encountered an exciting holiday scene. A man carrying a Christmas tree pounded on the windshield of a Cadillac Escalade that nearly hit him in the crosswalk. “You wanna be an asshole?” he yelled. “Let’s see what kind of asshole you are.” The driver got out, and the two assholes circled each other, making threatening noises in the middle of First Avenue, one with a Christmas tree drooped over his shoulder. For all I know, they could still be out there, shaking their fists and calling each names. I wonder what that man will think about tonight while he decorates his tree.

But humanity isn’t completely hopeless. Wolfgang Voigt released a new installment of his Gas project today, and it’s as stately and monolithic as expected: an unshakable kick drum chugs through the murk of strings, frosty reverb, and smudged choral voices. Winter music of the highest order.

Gas – Der Lange Marsch 10

Der Lange Marsch | Kompakt, 2021 | Bandcamp

Sunset at 4:28pm, and a new supermoon is on its way. In two weeks, C. and I will load up a truck, stash our stuff in a storage unit, and wander for a while. We’ll log some time in Ohio before spending a few months in London for a residency. Then we’ll finally move to the desert and get weird and develop theories.

How do you say goodbye to New York? I feel pressure to aestheticize my departure. Ever since Joan Didion published Goodbye to All That in ’67, there’s been a rich and irritating tradition of people romanticizing and rationalizing their decision to pull up stakes from the center of the universe. They moan about the hassle and cost. They complain about the subways, trash, and crowds. But that’s the point of this city. Living in New York means living in a drawer and knowing it will probably cost $100 each time you leave your apartment.

Saving money is one reason why C. and I want to move. We want more space. More concentration. But more interestingly, there seems to be a new balancing of the scales as New York continues its grim march towards becoming a giant Chase Bank + CVS where entertainment is streaming, and everything is delivered within hours. You don’t need to leave your apartment anymore. For some mysterious reason, Manhattan has been building luxury shopping malls while the suburbs are manufacturing downtowns with sixth-wave coffee and cheap food from all corners of the world. Soon the city and the sprawl will belong to the same monoculture.

Over the next two weeks, I’ll look at the city more closely, hoping to etch its jangle and hum into a well-worn memory. I’ve done it before. This is the third time C. and I will leave New York. It might draw us back someday. Maybe the only way to say goodbye is not to say anything at all.

Vatican Shadow – Manhattan Is A Haunted City

Church of All Hallow’s Eve | Hospital Productions, 2019 | Bandcamp

Sunset: 4:29pm. Cloudy skies and temperatures holding steady in the forties. The United States detected its first case of the Omicron variant today. Christ, the cadence of that sentence is dystopian. Omicron. Like some sinister corporate project that serves as the centerpiece of a lazy 1990s thriller, back when the prospect of an interconnected virtual world still felt like a productive fantasy.

But the planet keeps turning while we go through motions that were once alarming but are now familiar. Finger-pointing and flight restrictions. An outsized concern about stock market performance. Frightening diagrams of mutated spike proteins. All soundtracked by the usual chorus of outragers, grifters, and opinion-mongers. Maybe it’s becoming too familiar, this absurd culture we’ve made.

There’s nothing sane to do except remain vigilant and uncertain. And that’s the hardest thing, isn’t it? Remaining uncertain until the shape of a thing becomes clear.

Tonight I remember my father. He was the tidiest man I knew. Every surface in his apartment gleamed. Everything in his refrigerator was lined up: armies of little water bottles, perfectly squared stacks of cheese. He carefully folded his bags of potato chips like an origami project, and he would cut down the plastic trays of cookies with each serving. These rituals became more pronounced as his lungs declined, and only later did I realize this was his way of controlling the few things he could.

Meanwhile, I blunder through life like a child, always patting down my pockets in search of a pen, never knowing where I’ve put anything.

Ensemble Economique – We Come Spinning Out of Control

Fever Logic | Not Not Fun, 2013 | Bandcamp

Sunset: 4:35pm. A bright springlike day with a high of 70 degrees and lows in the fifties. Tonight the moon is full. This morning I flipped open my beaten copy of Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind because I needed what it advertised. Some zen. Some peace of mind. Some enthusiasm for this exhausted world. My finger landed on a heavy-duty sentence I’ve been considering all day: “When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.”

Suzuki emphasizes the importance of doing rather than thinking because ruminating leaves a trace. I like this image of traces, of thoughts that can tint and even stain. And my head is shellacked with so much babble and gunk. I can feel it in my nerves. Maybe even my soul, although I’m not yet sure if I believe in such a thing. Perhaps I must. Otherwise, what is the Darwinian function of all this head noise?

I’ve also started reading John Yorke’s Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey into Story to improve my understanding of how stories work. I wish I’d read something like this sooner. It’s both humbling and reassuring to see all of my tangled plots and narrative cul-de-sacs crisply addressed thousands of years ago by Terence, Horace, and Aristotle. 

And returning to the bonfire, I love the doom-metal energy of this line from Shakespeare’s Richard II: “Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings.”

I was running the other night, heaving and hauling myself across 85th Street, when something clicked. I’d been ruminating about the novel I’ve been writing and rewriting for an embarrassing number of years. With each draft, my story got a little better, but something still wasn’t working. When I finally screwed up the courage to let someone read it, she confirmed what I knew: the main character was boring. He didn’t know what he wanted or what he believed. Of course he was boring: the main character was me—or some elderly, nostalgic avatar of myself.

So I went for a run because I didn’t want to start smoking again, and I was gasping and sweating and hating myself because I write so slowly while everyone else seemed to be cranking out new books every few days. I wanted so badly to finish this novel this year. Instead, I was once again dreading the chore of taking yet another stab at improving the main character’s wants, needs, and flaws. Then a thought landed in my head that literally stopped me in my tracks on the corner of Third Avenue: Get rid of that guy. He’s dead weight, so ditch him. Replace him with the lady who’s been lurking at the margins of the story, the embittered Olympic diver whose devotion to a strange ritual accidentally maimed her neighbors and sent her daughter running into the night. She has flaws and wants.

Everything started clicking into place, and I haven’t been this excited about writing in a long time. It was liberating to realize the world I wanted to build would become much more interesting if I removed myself from the equation.

And yet. Here’s the reason I mention any of this: I resisted this idea for two solid weeks because the thought of undoing all that work and deleting all those words was too much for my pride to bear. My ego revolted. Look how much time you’ve spent on this! It’s good enough! But I know this story can be better, and that idea on 85th and Third Avenue was a rare gift, one of those moments of illumination that happens every five or six years, if I’m lucky. And who am I to turn my back on such a thing?

MMMD – Egoismo

Pèkisyon Funebri | Antifrost, 2016 | Bandcamp

An all-time favorite: slow-motion strings and liturgical drones from Athens, Greece.

There was a flurry of thunderstorm warnings and a tornado watch on this November afternoon. Then the sky turned black and exploded with summer rain. Everything feels out of season these days, slightly out of step. I keep waiting to click into a groove and return to some familiar rhythm, but this might be a fantasy.

It’s Saturday night, and a familiar melody started looping in the background of my usual head noise, something sleazy and a little menacing. It took some work to track it down, and it was worth the effort: Kit Clayton’s “Belt Frictional Problem,” a luxuriant synthesizer workout from the overlooked Too Many Clowns, Not Enough Jokers compilation released over twenty years ago. This piece of Detroit vinyl had everything: a glitchy clown graphic on the label, lock grooves, and tracks that played inside out. This is the sound of late-night Michigan radio, of mysterious transmissions that felt like they were pushing us towards a better future: streamlined and anonymous, faceless and collective. This is the nostalgic music of my youth.

Kit Clayton – Belt Frictional Problem

Too Many Clowns, Not Enough Jokers | Throw/Twilight 76, 1999