Dream Logic
Collected Agenda #30
WHAT I DID
Sunday, January 26
Lying under red light at Ruby's apartment. The light here is all good - hanging infrared wires, silver orbs, all the lights seem incandescent.
It's warmer today - walking through Little Italy there's a man on the fire escape looking down on the street with his dog, a big golden retriever, I like looking into other peoples lives like this.
Earlier, lying on the couch in my own apartment, looking in our neighbors windows and at first it's absentminded but then I start to be intrigued. David says stop staring, they can see you staring, but I don't think they can. They can see me, sure, but the distinction between simply looking out the window or looking at them; impossible. You can't perceive eye movements from even a slight distance and anyways, if they see me looking at them, they admit they were looking at me, the gaze goes two ways, and so on...
The last conference in El Salvador was all about Light, they told me on the phone on Friday. This year, it will be all about Earth.
Ruby orders magnesium, orange juice, she swooshes coconut oil. These are good remedies. I take Advil, very rarely Adderall these days but still sometimes. I should be taking aspirin instead - this is what everyone says online, and what some people say in real life, too.
I'm reading St Augustine's Confessions - mostly reading it for school, although I've been invited to discuss it on a Podcast as well. My track record with Podcasts is bleak, scary, and abysmal. My track record with Catholicism is - I never really went through that phase. I struggle to separate vanity from philosophy and prayer. I'm drawn to this part of Confessions most, things like "there is no pleasure in eating or drinking unless it is preceded by the discomfort of hunger and thirst.” Things like "Drunkards eat salty things to make their throats dry and painful, so that they may enjoy the pleasure of quenching their thirst.”
Drawn to these, of course, because they elicit reflection on my own actions in the most vain and superficial sense of it all. Simone Weil Food Diary. Aliens and Anorexia. Like Grimes has been tweeting things like she found God to quit vaping. Hypnotize me instead, perhaps - it seems vulgar to attempt contemplation, and to end up here.
Ruby and I walk to Flower Power in the East Village for; Wild Oat bromus ramosus (green). It does things like; “work as an expression of inner calling, manifestation of one’s true goals and values, work experiences motivated by a clear life purpose and conviction.”
We go to Bar Oliver for vermouth tonic. Ruby makes me steak. David calls. Ruby and I watch Mulholland Drive - the first time for me. Only eleven pm and I usually sleep late, much later, but this red light casts a different glow. I'm closer to the ground in my friend’s apartment, no planes overhead and melting ice.
I get homesick easily. In hours, really. But then, you can always go back.
Monday, January 27
Perhaps you theme your days. On Health, you say. L-theanine with my coffee. Not really, but I’ll plan for this down the line. Bar Oliver is all lit up in piercing morning sun. I walk outside early this morning. Chinatown fruit market coming alive so quickly.
There was a cemetery outside the window where I slept last night. I kept on looking out and seeing icy branches overhead that framed the building like a second roof, the cemetery like a courtyard. It scared me once, I screamed once in my sleep, but I woke up other times too, and it wasn't too bad then. Mostly, the sky outside just looked all pale blue and clear, the same pale blue all night in my memory, although this doesn't make sense in a logical way, what with the night passing and the becoming dark and the me being asleep for it all. Dream Logic. A recollection of slippery silvery vines forming an outline of a roof over a gravestone. You wake up, and there is no roof, the trees were never shaped like that at all.
Tahini chocolate cookie because Ruby told me sugar is actually ok. Whole milk cappuccino and I'm adding honey instead of Splenda. Enough is enough. I'm not going to crash out, but days are different now that my hours don't float on and on in pacing and typing that becomes like a trance. I felt like I was floating yesterday. Not today. That's probably ok.
Tuesday, January 28
Tea with Madelyn Grace and then hot apple cider and Jameson whiskey at Cafe Reggio last night. David and his friends came by and acted abrasive. I was annoyed, but then I wasn’t.
I walked the Williamsburg Bridge this morning - all the way from The West Village to Brooklyn. Delancey street was crazy at that hour, but everything after that was nice. I’d never done this before - walk the bridge, I mean - and it went on for so much longer than I expected. At first it was all windy and it made me scared, how once you got on the bridge you really couldn’t get off, how in the center the only exit was to finish the walk or perhaps to blow over, and I was the only one there, people were biking by so fast but no one else was walking, so then I started to run, and so then it got all warm, the water in the Hudson looked nice and wild and churning and distant from up here.
The thing is, this winter was mostly a practice in what I’m recalling like a meditation now, with even the slight perspective - now that it’s late January, that is. Everything was present, so hyper present, and all I did was walk and think and walk and walk and walk and write down what I was thinking about and sometimes I yelled a lot, and I know it’s still the depth of winter, but this time starts to feel like it is passing. I freaked out last week, I thought about what if I couldn’t keep my days like that, but my days still hold all of this, only now, they hold more too.
At the gym, I write about how it is ok to just do things like - go for a walk, go to work, lie by the window with David, go to the gym, write a story, and these days can be good and even better than the other ones, the ones that snap you into fierce exteriority. After the gym, Cassidy texts me. “Are you at KGB?,” and I’m not, but I think, well, I would go. Augustine says - “Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.” Etc etc etc. I feel better when almost all my time is spent with people, and I think my mind is better like this, too.
At KGB, I am dressed all in Pilates and Going-For-A-Jog type clothing. At KGB, Matthew is telling a girl about how Blade Runner the movie is based on a very antisemitic book. I've heard him tell this story before, and the gist varies each time, but there are a few lines that consistently resurface. I zone out after I hear the first line that I am sure I have heard before. When I zone back in, he's talking about religion more generally.
"Really?," the girl he's with is saying.
"Yes, YES," Matthew is saying
“I looked up the history of the Blade Runner movie, and it said it was made around World War II," the girl is saying.
“No, not at all," Matthew says
“Oh,” the girl says
“How did you like the rape scene?" Matthew asks
“What rape scene?" the girl says
“Oh that's good," Matthew says.
There is new art on the wall of KGB. A rendition of Vermeer’s Girl With Pearl Earring, except in this case, the girl is a dog.
“Do you like the new art?,” David asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“I don’t,” David says.
I am picking at the wax on the candle, because everyone is talking and because I don’t have much to say.
“Stop playing with fire,” the bartender tells me. “Act like you are at your mothers house.” Except - I mishear her. I think she says you aren’t at your mothers house, because she is right, I am not, but if I was; I would play with the flames as much as I liked.
Wednesday, January 29
I would like to put away this phone, I think. Warmer, today. They’ve left the windows open at the coffee shop. I told you it was starting to feel like spring. I told you it would be all spring-like in the depth of winter, soon. Sunlight filtering, filtering, filtering, through the roof at home. The roof and the windows. It’s all one and the same. It’s a new moon tonight. Lunar New Year tonight.
You put your head under the covers and filter out the sun. You like it because it is warm but also - the blue light of your phone can absorb your entire vision at any hour, here, in this makeshift tent. I am not of the Escape The Internet train of thought. It’s designed to addict you but then, well, having some fucking discipline. On my phone, I see people saying things like - “there is no ‘on your phone’, just another layer of constant consciousness”. And in real life I think things like - you should separate it if you can, you should know real life if you can but, to leave it all behind - impossible, because it will always be right there, and you could still do things like walk down the street and understand the street as purely physical but then, look around you, look at the other people, look at the surroundings they are absorbing and none of them are real, none of them are there, and so you can’t just stand on this street and get it, understand it, all offline.
I don’t really want to get it anymore. My mornings could be real, they could be with just a little discipline and a touch of joie de vivre. They aren’t real, really, because I’m making makeshift Blue Light tents to filter out the sunlight, but then, I’m working on this. Blue, blue, blue sky today. Doomers previews, tonight. Biohacker meetup tonight. Bryan Johnson in Interview Magazine tonight. I like to do things like drink six teas with six Splenda each, and then I like to act very harsh with myself and others regarding the principles of a life well lived.
Year of the snake. What do you think about that...?
All this talk about discipline, and my afternoon is all drop off a few Depop packages and refresh, refresh, refresh the stats on a piece that I didn’t even write. There’s a hazy little run in the afternoon. There’s some bad news, or, news that is more irritating, really.
Ruby spreads the word: "do not take my advice about eating lots of honey," she says.
Ok. Ok, it's all protein now, then.
David takes me to a strange party tonight. An interloper arrives, and he is chased out at sword point. It is insane how quickly the tides turn. You said the things that you didn’t mean, again. It wasn't supposed to happen like this, but then, it never is. You wrote today, earlier, about how - things were good, better, but you didn't want to get too cocky because remember what you were capable of really not too long ago, it was only a few weeks back, but it felt so distant. And then, tonight, again...
Thursday, January 30
And then it's ok. Well, it's not, but it can be. You’ve been taking for granted that it will be ok, if it has to be ok. That if you care about something so, so, so deeply then it cannot possibly be destroyed, but it could, you are capable of this. It feels foreign sometimes, this force, this capacity for destruction, like it can’t belong to you, but it does, it’s no one else’s. It becomes simple, then. You can’t just say I crossed my fingers, you can’t just say I take it back. And so, no more.
I'm working the door at Tense tonight, which is my favorite - both TENSE, and working doors, that is. It’s a beautiful night, and this, after everything, is a relief. Christian Lorentzen reads emails with Gary Indiana.
“I now believe you can tell if the writer is part of a writing program, by looking at their teeth,” Gary told Christian.
"Why does everybody love Downton Abbey?" Gary asked Christian, in another email. "Well, what's not to love? The series construction is so glibly subscribed that you know what will happen before the writers do."
In another, he lamented the logistical problems surrounding his writings on Cuba - the travel ban, his lover there, etc etc etc. It's a good format for a reading - the emails thing. Correspondences brought to life. Not quite a diary, but close, more intimate, often, because one isn't writing into the void of one's own neurosis in a correspondence. Madelyn writes me an email, after. I am working on my own correspondence back, still. Mania delays the process. It's good to have a long form conversation to return to. I hope this email finds you well. This email finds me almost incapacitated, but I won't be, soon.
Beckett's reading is full of empathy and wit as always. He's lamenting the narcissism of our times in his introductory speech, and his own gut impulses and the stories that follow give him the proper wherewithal to do so.
I see Sean Lynch and others outside. Sean writes something nice on the evening. I see Doomers the next day - the dream logic of my thoughts following this production requiring another letter altogether
WHAT YOU SHOULD DO
Tuesday, February 4
From 7pm at Heaven Can't Wait — Cynosure presents the first of a two night fundraiser for Los Angeles, featuring Alex Arthur, Precious Human, Truman Flyer, and more.
From 7pm at Honey’s — Discount Guillotine celebrates their Issue #1 release show, featuring Annie Lou Martin, Yuyi Chen, Canon Mg Lake, Lillian Mottern, and Ebs Sanders.
From 7pm - 10pm — Crochet & Liquor club returns to Time Again. “Bring your own craft.”
From 11pm - 3am — Kiki Kramer hosts at Paul’s Cocktail Lounge
Wednesday, February 5
From 6:30 - 8:30pm at 537 Broadway — The Emily Harvey Foundation presents Abscissa #2, featuring readings and performances by Liara Roux + Peter Colombo, Max Levin, Muyassar Kurdi, and many more.
From 7:30 - 9pm at Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — Quartet opens!- “friendship, lust and lies.”
From 7:30pm at Solas Bar — Riley Mac and Montana James Thomas present the launch of My Gaping Masshole by Madison Murray. Readings by Coco Gordon Moore, Alissa Bennett, Elizabeth Ellen, and Greta Doyle. Hosted by Dirty Magazine and Neoliberal Hell. As someone from a weird town in Massachusetts, I'm excited about this one.
Thursday, February 6
From 6pm - 8pm at Ethan Cohen Gallery — “Goodbye Horses” opens, curated by Lara Brigit Kamhi and Isaac Aden. - “What’s the next big thing in painting?”
From 7pm at Pianos — Uncensored New York and Angel Landing host Club Della Morte - an evening of audio/visual relaxation, followed by performance and live sounds.
From 7:30pm at KGB — Elizabeth Ellen (of Hobart) will be in conversation with Anika Jade Levy (of Forever).
From 7pm at HEART — Blade Study x Heart present Panopticon II. Performances by Zarina Nares, Dasychira, Emmett Palaima, and Ben Shirken
From 7pm at 9 Monroe St — NYFW meets Valentines Special with Baby Vday Zine release launch and reading. Readings by Lucy Hart, Matt Weinberger, Maddie Vasquez, and more.
From 7:30pm - 9pm — Doomers returns to Tribeca. My full review is forthcoming, but I really liked this play, albeit in a deeply unsettling sort of way.
From 11pm - late at Nightclub 101 (new spot where The Pyramid Club used to be) — Drink.More.Water. presents their official fashion week after party, featuring Suzy Sheer, xJermsx, Dese Escobar, Megsuperstarprincess, and Young Warhol.
Friday, February 7
From 7pm - 10pm at 183 Lorraine St — Sweet Lorraine Gallery presents “Corybantes” featuring the works of Rainy Lerhman, Megan Suttles, and Caroline Falby.
From 7pm at TJ Byrnes — Pop Gun celebrates the launch of their inaugural zine; The 60s. Reading and performances by Adriana Furlong, Qingyuan Deng, Tess Manhattan, Gunner Dongieux, and more.
From 7pm in Bushwick (RSVP for location) — Confessions NYC presents Furt Party, with Burt Bronx and Frank Hassle. - “Q&A with Frank & Burt plus parody song performance and Dance Party.”
Saturday, February 8
From 6pm - 8pm at Jeffrey Deitch — Kim Hastreiter presents a group show titled “My Amazing Friends” - ft works by many incredible artists and friends.
From 7pm - 9pm at POWERHOUSE Arena — The End celebrates the launch of Issue 4: Parents and Children. Featuring August Lamm, Calvin Atwood, Amanda Larson, and more.
From 7:30pm at The Francis Kite Club — Johnny St. Grace is live with Broom, OSB, and other performances - “the infernal beckons, an evening of sound and fury.”
From 10pm - late at Home Sweet Home — Get a Room returns, with sounds by Smthng Fun and The Analysts. Hosted by Leg5, Elsb3th, Kevsfiles, and Charlie Byrd.
From 10pm - 4am at Le Bain — NY Alt celebrates fashion week, too. Matt Weinberger and Orson present The NY Fashion Alt Gala, hosted by a plethora of cool brands, designers, and labels including Drink More Water, and Feels Good To Do Things.
Sunday, February 9
From 2pm - 5pm at HEART — Maya Man can help you make a website for your valentine <3
From 9pm at Bowery Electric — Elena Velez hosts her first ever public NYFW after party in collaboration with Don't Be Greedy.
