WHAT I DID
Monday, November 17
After the summer passed and I started fresh one million billion times and nothing really happened all autumn which is always how it kind of goes this time of year, I realized I’d been trying to be a bit too ethereal about it. There were certain ways I actually spent my days, after all. One tried to become more private, and instead, one started to simply become a bit obtuse.
On Saturday, Lily invited me to the Philharmonic with friends, for example. Composed and conducted by John Adams to create “jazz-inflected take on film noir’s gritty sound world” as well as “a tribute to the Northern California coastline.” This was nice, because everything I’d been imagining for months now was all misty shores and temperate gray climates and so it was nice to hear the music and imagine kind of floating in that. Sat there kind of ignorant about it all, but liking the ideas that form in one’s subconscious in conjunction to classical music and the high ceilings and fancy rooms and watching the conductor move like a marionette. That was like drugs, Lily said, after. Phillip Glass was seated a few seats over the last time we were here, my new friends said, before. It was not quite midtown in Winter but Lincoln Center was still starting to glow, what with the horses and the Christmas trees and an older demographic of opera and film and philharmonic-goers all dressed up. Negronis in sippy-cups and vodka at the Russian Tea Room, and Lily’s artist boss had dressed her for the occasion and so she looked kind of sparkling in a long green skirt and a wool coat with a shoulder-hook for her purse. You look like a martini, I told Lily. I wore tights from the Internet and a dress from my ex-roomate and a falling-apart-purse from my ex-boyfriend and black shoes from my mother. You look like a whiteclaw, Lily told me, but she said it very kindly and so I didn’t take offense. After, our new friends showed us the lines in the road where the horse manure and hay had become indented to permanence, and they showed us a fountain where once an old woman was seen wrangling snakes, and they showed us an apple store they’d robbed, and they assisted the blind.
We followed the blind man onto the subway and then later I was at downtown bars where it’s the same thing over and over again. Matt and Matt perched in the corridor by the bathroom. Ran into a friend fresh off of working a Palantir-Party. It could have been so good in theory, she explained. They’d rented out multiple bars and catered Carbone and a martini tower, after all. But the dry ice was kind of glitching and San Francisco people all wear aura rings even on nights-out and on the bright side, they left behind thousands and thousands of dollars in parmesan cheese.
What else? Two dresses arrived in the night from resale Cinq de Sept and Gil Rodriguez and I laid them out on my perfectly made bed all black and christmas white. I wrote a small review about a book about a girl who idolizes the apocalypse because she does not desire to get old. I was paralyzed, for a while, which come to think of it, was what stirred all that talk about momentum. For breakfast, I am served a rotten egg at the gym on Prince Street. It emerges in a plastic cup and it is sheened in dark brown sludge. This egg is rotten, I cautiously tell the man who is working behind the counter. Oh, the man says, and then he opens his palms like he hopes for me to place the plastic box and rotting egg in them. We both seem unsure of what to do. Oh I’m sorry, he says. It’s ok, I say. And then he hands me a barbell bar in response. Like we are doing barter and trade.
Cassandra tells me a story about one of her favorite days of her life. We were all on the peninsula for the week, by the ocean, in the room with the big wooden bed and the canopy curtains and the patchwork quilts. We let Cassandra and Celia in around mid afternoon, and we were all watching the boats float by on the window.
And I was doing a rubix cube, Cassandra says. And you were getting so mad.
And the day went on forever, I tell Cassandra
Not forever, Cassandra says. I do remember writing down everything everyone said, though.
Now, everything hovering hovering hovering. New Moon, tomorrow. Grab all that crisp and frozen air that’s hovering so thin it could snap, and maybe it will. November snaps in half and all the other omens and things-that-could-happen come spilling out. All because of the New Moon. All because of the artificial intelligence apocalypse. All because I’m reading the book that Alice Bailey’s demon wrote. Not to get too new age about it...
WHAT YOU SHOULD DO
Wednesday, November 26
From 7:00 - 9:00pm at The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research — Hillsdale opened yesterday, and there’s another performance tonight! A play written by Roman D’Ambrosio and directed by Rabiah Rowther. “During homecoming weekend at the infamous conservative Hillsdale College, former fraternity brothers, and the women they love, reunite. As the weekend unfolds and the drinking increases, the alumni question their relationship with each other and the promises they were told. | This is a very unique play that I’m excited about. Definitely worth seeing. tickets here (additional performances Nov 28
From 10pm - 3am at Jean’s — Alex Arthur hosts A Very Pussycat Thanksgiving. Celebrate Thanksgiving Eve with an open bar from 11-12pm + DJ Rex Detiger. Sa
Thursday, November 27
I’m a creature of habit so I’m basically always going to recommend the same spots, but if you’re in the city for Thanksgiving – The Marlton would of course be a cozy place for a meal, as would Knickerbocker Bar and Grill. Both are serving Thanksgiving Dinner.
Friday, November 28
LE HEIST FRANÇAIS is at Film Forum - “a two-week, 12-film festival of Gallic crime pictures.” Tonight; at 1:00pm - Le Bonne Année (Claude LeLouch, 1973) 5:30pm - The Sicilian Clan (Henri Verneuil, 1969), at 8:00pm - Rififi (Jules Dassin, 1955).
From 7pm at Stories — Triptych Reading returns with Tess Pollok, Charents Apkarian, and Coco Gordon-Moore. | RSVP here
LONDON; From 8pm - 10pm — Soho Reading Series presents the launch of The Kingdom by Yoel Noorali. Readings from Yoel Noorali, Ella Frears, Ben Pester, Joe Dunthorne, Harry Tanner, Christian Lorentzen.
LONDON: From 10pm - 3am — It’s Lost Night - “lost is occupying the historic saville theatre in soho for two months of underground parties in soho.”
Saturday, November 29
A good day of screenings at Metrograph — From 2:30pm - That Day, On The Beach (Edward Yang, 1983); from 8pm Twentynine Palms Bruno Dumont, 2003); from t 10:30pm; Mirror (Tarkovsky, 1975),
From 10pm at Baby’s All Right — It’s Baby Dance #013 - ft Le Keep and Catie Lausten live, DJs Donna Francesca, Sid Simons, and Sadie. Hosted by Lily Myrick, Alex Arthur, Callie Reiff, and London Yuji.
