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art deco

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art deco

Article

art deco is a recurring concept in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between November 19, 2024 and May 13, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “more instances of art deco”; “Everything is art deco here. The hotel is old, classic, and art deco”. It most often appears alongside Club Chess, Health Gossip, Jean’s.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: November 19, 2024
  • Last seen: May 13, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence
November 19, 2024 · Original source
Thursday, November 14 I take the Q to the end of the line today. It's something I've always wanted to do - take the train until the cars stop and I'm the last one left on board and a voice comes on and says please exit the train for cleaning, this is the last stop on this train, please exit the train so the train can be cleaned. I'm in Bay Ridge to shoot a music video today. To be an extra in a music video, that is. I'm exceptionally bad at acting. I'm bad enough that I am even bad as an extra. I'm not particularly bad at lying, but I am bad at having an expressive face. The neighborhood at the end of the Q is nice. I've been taken to other places in New York like this before. Places where you feel like you're by the seaside, where you're under the bridge, where the architecture is more brick, more limestone, more instances of art deco. The Hudson widens into the open ocean somewhere not too far from here and so of course the air feels different. It's strange, even if anticipated, to take the subway ninety minutes to a place where the air feels different, to walk down strange streets and into an unfamiliar gothic building, to open the door to a room where I have never been, and to find it filled with people I mostly already know. The past few years have given me many instances like this. This is something I am very grateful for. The music video is for DDM / Uncensored New York. It's a cool concept. It's cool to watch things come to life. The shoot is outside, and I am the coldest I have ever been. I'm still having fun. I'm thinking about things like how monks orient their consciousness and focus towards the cause of their suffering, and then I am trying to think only about the cold. I am not able to transcend myself, but even freezing, I don't wish I was elsewhere. In the afternoon, I sit in a warm car and I thaw my hands. I have miso soup, tea, and cheese sticks. There is still a chill in me even once inside, which is simultaneously unpleasant and cozy. I'd been wanting a day like this very badly. Friday, November 15 Beckett's Tense comes together with serendipity. There was a crisis with the headliners, Lucy Sante was sick. Beckett ran into Penny Arcade outside of Madame Matovu on 10th. Now, Penny is the headliner. The unsalvageable is always salvaged. The bar can serve real liquor tonight. There's a lot of people here and it's a different crowd than usual. Tense is back in Manhattan. Penny says she’s here because she wants to see what the new New York is doing. I give Beckett a hug at Sovereign House. I say hi to Chris and Adeline. Chris and Adeline are drawing big Tense bubble letters on the chalkboard. The seats are already mostly full. I climb to the top of a ladder and I sit up there. From up there, I have the best view in the house. Tense is not just a reading series, Tense is a show, and this distinction is important. There is a program, an order of events, a flow of new and old. The serendipity with Penny’s arrival lies in this - she seems to understand exactly what Beckett is doing, and while she didn’t write her piece specifically for TENSE (she describes it as “cultural criticism you can dance to”), it speaks with exaction to the spirit of things. Here are some things that Penny Arcade says: I’d rather put a stick in my eye than go somewhere where everyone is the same age. When I was young, if I went to a party and everyone was under thirty I thought... I'm at the wrong party.”
Inline links: DDM, Uncensored New York, Beckett's, Tense, Lucy Sante, Penny Arcade, Madame Matovu, Chris, Adeline
Panopticon-ing Everyone
May 13, 2025 · Original source
WHAT I DID Thursday, May 8 I've been panopticon-ing everyone here, and you have asked me to stop. Ok. I'm sorry I have already told about what happened on Wednesday. Not here. Imagine it's all fantasy. I mean it when I say that I am really not talking about myself. Being all confessional and then I feel kind of gross about it. Being kind of glib about the parts I thought were most sincere. I've been neglectful, most of all. Right now, I am most sorry about that. In the end, you'll be lying on a Japanese floor mattress and you'll be thinking about the parts that are still the same. Tonight, I went to the party that I usually avoid. I went home before the parts that come next. Another flight tomorrow, and I wish there wasn't more travel though, I am glad for where we are going. An old school hotel, Sue Wong beaded dress, borrowed shoes and sharing the different details of my life like oh it's been all grad school and true love and self surveillance - this part will be nice. My friend suggests at dinner - I don't have insomnia, I live in an environment of psychological torture sleep depravation. I could latch onto this. Psychological torture. My friend says - New York vs LA; you can find nuance in uglier things here and she cites me as the example of nuance as if I am something like resilient or tough. I have never been described as either of these things before, and I hope I haven't been plying myself in victimhood too heavily, because really - my circumstances are wonderful. It is a sweet description, though. I'm glad I'm not a fraud, at least. Lots of parties this week and those were nice while they lasted. You can't be indignant without clarity, which - I am working on having more of. I set up the summer so as to have the days stretching endlessly in front of me. This concerns me a bit. I will need to read for two hours every morning. There is a novel forming mostly beneath my writing here, and I will need to finish that. All at once it's like everyone has drawn the same conclusions about good and evil. Everyone was all like this is so good, and then everyone snapped at once and it was like: this is evil. I have briefly wondered where this change would map out cosmically, though, I have tried to be a mystic about it, and my basic impulses revolt. I was culling chapters from my Secret Diary a while back. Here, I was saying. Time stamp it in Google Docs and you know I meant this before I even knew I would need to show you it was true someday. None of it was really so long ago. So, I wonder, for example - what July will be like? I wonder about June. You could be a bartender or a DJ. Sounds like something someone who has lost their intuition would say. I'm talking in hypotheticals because I mean it when I say that I am not, really, talking about myself. Friday, May 9 Rebecca and I sat at Bar Belly in the rain for a while last night. Shannon made me cauliflower rice and avocado for lunch. I did circle around to my boyfriend's culty and evil type hang later in the night. There was chicken from the street, there. Rebecca will stay at our place while we're gone. She stayed at ours for a while last night. Everyone went to KGB, later, but I am being more regulated about it. Making pasta at nine am because I was up all night in spite of new efforts. Pouring rain and then we're driving towards Laguardia. In retrospect, I still do not think I was being dramatic about things, but it feels distant and small now. Short term memory maybe, or, the present is often quite extreme and so; wherever I am, it absorbs me. I like his brown leather bag, cufflinks, it's been to and fro this airport all spring which serves to dividend the chaos a bit. Anyways, everything is fine. I have a life in New York that I will still feel so lucky to return to. "You guys are in love!" a girl in micro-shorts told us at the party last night. "How long have you been in love for?" "Almost two years," he said. This is the pragmatic answer and also this is true. The girl beamed. "I've been in love for ten days," she said. I need to hold things closer to my chest. Not here - I am obfuscated enough about it here, so it's hard to do much damage. It's different in the real world. I say things that I know to be true, but I say them before I really understand what they mean. I am more protective of the things that are good, and I am quick to give away all that is bad. This is not how a person should be. Happy Mother's Day, the light and water show at the airport is saying. Elderly couple to my left devouring fried chicken. I feel incredibly ill, come to think of it, but some of this stays sweet. Darling darling darling, he keeps telling me. Are you ready to fly in a plane in the sky? Artificial Intelligence will come to destroy the earth and you will be like twenty-five years old and on your phone and talking badly about your friends behind their back and forgetting to call your family and drinking to disgust. Artificial Intelligence will come to destroy the world and you will call your sister, call your mom, lie under the open window with your boyfriend. You will be making up stories and praying over a glass of sparkling water. You will be listening to music and sound and language from real life. You will picture a relic of yourself still human, and you will be pleased. Saturday, May 10 I have decided to return to Photos. It is funny how these things work. I felt quite repulsed by images for a moment, but even just a few days of speaking out loud how much the equilibrium has been missing and how much now, it is time to get it back - I said this out loud along with other things, and now I can face the physical form again. And so much of the physical form is so pretty. I do like when things are ethereal and kind of between realms - it is why I have always liked to be very thin, although I’m pretty Normal in Body these days - and this is the most boring of boring things to discuss, anyways. My tendency is to archive and hoard. It is comically wrong to suggest that I seek to leave behind no trace. My point is, for a while now, I could not bear the traces. Something has shifted. There is a gold framed photo of a palm tree across from the bed in this hotel, and it’s the kind that is old school not tacky. Everything is art deco here. The ceilings at the bar are ten stories high, he told me, before dinner. There was salad and a cosmopolitan and such nice conversation and, I do always get whisked away when the time is right. I’m feeling pretty even keeled. If April happened again, it wouldn’t happen like this. The day has been so good so far. The hotel is old, classic, and art deco. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, May 13 Doors at 7pm, reading at 8pm at TJ Byrnes — Bronwen Lam & David Dufour present Patio, an evening of reading. This rendition features Martina Mendoza, Mark Iosifescu, Myles Zavelo, Stephanie Wambugu, Babak Lakghomi, and Steve Anwyll.
Inline links: TJ Byrnes, Bronwen Lam, David Dufour, Patio

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