“The city was endless” and other thoughts on minds in motion, raves and book bans, Slip Up[ing] and coming apart, on a Sunday at Nowadays.
“Losing my mind sounds so pessimistic. I prefer the term winning my insanity,” thats what Dane Cook said.
We all have our moments. I certainly do, reading and living, “winning my [own] insanity” making my way through the passages of 2666, by Roberto Bolaño, his final novel, a view of the US from Cuidad Juárez. “Madness is really contagious,” says the author. “And friends are a blessing, especially when you are on your own,” (p. 177). Slowly each character in the five adjacent novellas that comprise the book become lost in a mystery, one that supersedes all others, as they navigate their days in a border town, modelled after Jarez, full of factories and sweat shops, where we used to travel as kids, years and years ago. “The city, like all cities, was endless,” says the author in part one. “To the north, they saw a fence that separated the United States from Mexico and they gazed past it at the Arizona desert…” (p. 129). In between, we watched and played, not sure what the border really meant. Something dark was lurking there. “No one pays attention to the murders, but the secret of the world is hidden in them,” the authors concludes part three (p. 348). The secret of the world. Its the mystery of violence that fills every city, that propells wars, bodies as collateral damage, minds trying to hold on.
The mystery is out there, at all times, in that space between this world and the other side. I felt it reading 2666 and the other works arriving at my door, the Seaweed Rising, Robs new novel, and walking through the city, teaching, dancing, looking about.
“I see my past lives in those waters…” writes Rob Muson Smith. “A kaleidoscope of mistakes, half beginnings, false starts. The sea has always been a projection of ourselves.”
On Friday, we dropped by the Soho Playhouse, for Split Lip, where, according to Gendermess, “Ginava, diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, grapples with maintaining control as dominant alters vie for supremacy over their body… and mouth. Split Lip takes audiences on a journey through the exploration of trauma and its impact on mental health, presented through the unique medium of spoken word lip-syncing. 🏆International Fringe Encore Series 2024 - Official Selection 🏆Jan 30th - Feb 11th.”
Watching the voices flying, this way and that, moving across the stage, sanity feels precarious. Rob Magnuson Smith makes the same point in Seaweeds, his novel about individual subjectivities and a web of life, full of mysteries, ever interwoven. Is the seaweed in charge or are we, he wonders. Is it all wonderfully random or by intelligent design? What of the fabulous unknown, I wonder reading through it Friday night after the play, reading the confessions, passages revealing the inner workings of the mind of an old friend.
Saturday, off to Mom’s. I show her the paper with news about the war. We talk about the world wondering if we are doing better and reflected on faith. She referred to the Gospel of John "i am am the vine, you are the branches...." And we look at more slides from her November 1980 tour of China. She's forever grateful for those who offerred her kindness, looking out for her, showing her bits and pieces of their worlds, during a lifetime of travel and gardening, teaching and learning.
Cousin Mike dropped by greeting Bear and Caroline and Nigel and Shannon and Nico, duking it out on a quiet evening.
And I rode out to a book reading, where Greg talked about Libertry Road in Bed Stuy. Up over the Williamsberg bridge I rode West, back to the city, to Julius, “the city's oldest gay bar.”
There, Eric Sawyer greeted friends on a glorious night out celebrating one of the heroes. “Happy birthday Eric.... thanks for keeping us all together friend. Glad you are still here,” I told him. Looking about, we acknowledged Spencer and and Steven so many who would have, should have been here, but who are not, those who’ve lived with HIV for all these years, those who shuffled off years before. And I thought of Keith, who would have been here. And Louis, who we saw the week before who is still here, watching him on Charlie Rose in 1993, talking about his struggle, all of our struggles.
And talked about the friends who couldnt make it, the friends who are not stable. And greeted Ivy and Brandon and Jennifer and Eustacia and Anne Christine, friends in a tribe, looking out for each other.
“Happy birthday Eric Sawyer, “ wrote Ivy Arce. “ was wonderful to see that you were truly surprised. Congrats to the host team Jason Jason Rosenberg, Rob, Tomasso, and Glenn who made this happened. It was joyous to celebrate our beloved Eric. Community, lovers, friends and family were present. 70 looks hot, healthy, joyful and loved.”
Riding home, I tried to imagine stability, in bretween the chaos of it all, before arriving home in the middle of the night, reading into the morning.
Sunday, rode out through the afternoon light, to Ridgewood, where we danced all day, with the teadancers at Nowadays, for their nonstop party.
“Our first Nonstop of the month serves up a potent mix of DJ talent from across the country alongside an international guest that we’ve been eager to involve for a long time. Between the eclectic, sexy stylings of Sterling Juan Diaz and the thunderous, power techno of Juana, we’ve got two of the most thrilling DJs in the city in control through Saturday night. Between them we’re in the hands of renowned deep digger and purveyor of many unearthed, genre-bending gems - Quest. Detroit legend DJ Bone will tear it up as the sun rises and from there it’s house music royalty with Nowadays resident JADALAREIGN and the rapidly rising Alexis Curshé turning things out through the afternoon. The party culminates with the iconic, always uplifting Soul Summit who’ll make their first residency appearance of the year.”
And my mind trailed to the discos in Berlin, where I spent my Sundays last winter, dancing in the panorama bar, back to here, taking it all in with everyone, cute people, those with groups, those who were high, with bulging eyeballs, those shaking, others by themselves, in their lovely outfits, greeting one another, bathrooms full of bodies, dance floor full of colors. I appreciate them - the pleasure seekers, the by themselves dancers, the party people - being there, still alive, building pleasure communities one dance hall at a time.
A whole world, as McKenzie wrote in Raving, “On a good night, everything at a good rave comes together with just the right tension of invention and intention…. I want to be animate andanimated on the floor. A node in a rippling field of fleshy instances that tipple around the pulsing air.”
Blurbing about it, Simon Reynolds writes, “With loving precision, McKenzie Wark’s eyes and ears pay attention to the innumerable tiny interactions, gestures, and rites that make up the all-night drug-and-dance party….understands the rave as a construction site for transitory kinship structures—a pocket in timespace that is a haven for fugitives from consensus banality—a miniature home world for the aliens already on this planet. Ravers occupy the city’s abandoned places and turn them into zones of abandon, where identities dissolve, where you can lose yourself and find yourself.”
Repeat, “where you can lose yourself and find yourself.” And we navigate it all. We escape and arrive, or we try to escape and arrive, but that doesn’t always work. On a bad day, it comes apart and we can’t pull the pieces together. There are times when we are not granted access, or we can’t get there. We can’t free ourselves for an afternoon, or the door person at Berghain sneers instead of winking and we are left on our own. Or our friends don’t get it or they can’t make it. Or we don’t have the cash or the free time or the wherewithal or the luck. Or our friends are not up for it. But sometimes we do. And its all of these things.
Later that night, I read about Seaweeds and the mystery of the killings in 2666 and wonderred if we were making any progress.
And thought about the Times article on detransitioning and book bans as culture wars, that AC told me about on Saturday night, recalling the memorials to book burning in Berlin, as they ban more and more books in the US. The activists in Germany protest the fascists, who are proposing mass deportations, and the US left targets the administration that beat one back.
“Activists say they are protecting children from sexually explicit material and exploitation, while conservative politicians seek to harden the bans into policy. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s 900-page ideological blueprint for a potential second Trump administration, declares in its opening pages that “pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children,” should be stripped of First Amendment protection and outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders,” the document says. The battles are being waged in places like Clinton, Tenn…” And across the country.
And Rev Billy wrote about Comeback Time for the City:
“There was a time when New York called out to the world, “The Future is here! Here we go!” But now the profit-taking carbon of Jamie Dimon tells our children, “I am using your future as my ATM.”
There was a New York that could shout, “I am not a bit tamed. I am untranslatable. I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.” But our gathering in the New York parks is limited to 22 individuals and our bull-horns must be turned over as the police surround our protest.
There was a city represented by a 22 story-high “mighty woman with a torch,” who said, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free … Send these, the homeless . . . to me.”
Donald Trump has urged a re-write of Emma Lazarus’ poem. It is an obstacle to his wealthy market, which is fear. Fear of the future, which is the killing of our city.
Now we have a wave of migrants walking among us and, to their surprise, they are not being welcomed in New York. They look back and Lady Liberty is still there, but our newest New Yorkers are forced into the freezing air. Many of these migrants have not experienced a winter before, even of our Chase/Citi/BlackRock adjusted climate change variety.
Is it 9/11 that made us officially afraid? This wave of new neighbors is far less in number than Irish, Jewish, and Italian immigrants of the 19th and 20th centuries. And we are far richer as a city, better able to accommodate our guests. In fact, what is the square footage of empty space available since the virus?
It does seem daunting to recover our courage and introduce the future to the world again, let alone to ourselves. These new New Yorkers who are treated like criminals are our new leaders, just as the huddled masses of the past, staring up at the Lady from the decks of long-ago ships, were.
Hundreds of East Village neighbors have spent time with the asylum seekers from Sudan and Venezuela and Haiti and Senegal. We are finding these people powerful and gracious. They have come thousands of miles and god knows the tragedies they have endured--they hesitate to describe what has happened.
Their clear strength is our gift. They have suffered many 9/11’s, often at the hands of our international economy and the climate that we have poisoned. It’s time for New York to return to form by protecting these special world citizens, as all of us yearn to breathe free.”
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