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Everything I Wanted

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Everything I Wanted

WHAT I DID Monday, October 14 It’s getting late again, and I’ve fallen behind. I’ve fallen furious, fallen fatigued. The flight home was quick, easy, it’s cold back in the city.

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WHAT I DID Monday, October 14 It’s getting late again, and I’ve fallen behind. I’ve fallen furious, fallen fatigued. The weekend was lovely. The flight home was quick, easy, it’s cold back in the city. I felt the seasons viscerally more last year. I had just moved downtown, there was one stretch of Houston Street by the old apartment that I remember like a wind tunnel. I’d be sucked in on my walk every day. I’m less victim to circumstance and whims now. Nothing is quite as frigid. I miss being manic a little sometimes, but not a lot. Soft golden hour glow as the plane lands. I cleaned before we left, which is nice coming home. Noting – I should anticipate these things more. Tuesday, October 15 I fall back into routine with ease today. It’s not too hard, because my routine does not require too much. I go to the gym, I go to class, I get coffee at Cafe Reggio with a friend who tells me about empathy, and which of the mutual people we know IRL don’t have it. I get what he means on principle, but I’m not sure if this boils down to anything more than Being Good and Wanting To Be Good. I’ve been wanting to Be Good very badly lately. I’ve been counting all the lies I’ve ever told and it’s a lot. Mostly small ones. I go home. I lie on the floor. I like that I don’t live alone. I can’t remember what it’s like to feel lonely. I can’t remember what it feels like to be bored, either, but I don’t think this is a good thing. There is so much sludge and I don’t think I do a good job at avoiding it. I have increasingly realized the importance of doing things outside of my favorite cycle of orbit, and so I go to Tibet House tonight. There’s a reading. This part isn’t new, but the particular material here is. Tibet House is in Flatiron and it smells distinctly of incense and of something else that I can’t place, but which I recall immediately with a childlike simplicity as the scent of YOGA. It smells like the meditation room in my mother’s friend’s house where I would play growing up while the grownups talked. They would host silent barefoot retreats in the backyard. I would watch through the window, and would think these were silly, but I knew you weren’t supposed to laugh. I always thought I should like the scent of incense, but I never really did. Too earthy. Turmeric made my stomach hurt. The reading is part of a poetry series at Tibet House. The first reader speaks about her experience with Tibetan Buddhism as a living breathing entity somewhere near a lesbian motel in New Mexico. Somewhere near a body of water that had a lot of lithium in it. People bathe in the lithium and then they feel euphoric. “I’m going to read a poem that is all things the sun said to me while I was sitting on a bench facing Delancey Street,” she says. “I didn’t believe it was really speaking to me until I started feeling made fun of.” I’m predisposed to dislike the sentiment, but she continues. “The Tibetans don’t think you should get attached to mystical experiences or emphasize them because then you will start to think you are special,” she says. Gideon Jacobs reads next - a segment from his forthcoming novel that begins in the Byzantine empire and continues with his announcement that he’ll now be performing as a southern preacher character. He puts on black sunglasses to don the role. I’m sitting in the wings, and the program director motions for me to move to the back of the room so I can better see. I’m comfortable here and I can see just fine. I pretend not to notice her movement. She motions again. I get up. Gideon switches into characters. He’s really good. it’s a very good performance. it’s more a performance than a reading, which I suppose is what people hope for when they say they hate readings. This exemplifies a good reading. I don’t hate readings, generally speaking but I can see the difference between this one and text read aloud. The speaker on stage (Gideon’s preacher) is talking about Adam and Eve’s fall from the garden. Adam and Eve were severed from the Creator the same way a baby is untethered from his mother. Mothers untether their child, and a baby is born. The Creator untethered Adam and Eve, and humanity was born. “What was in that apple?”, the Preacher asks repeatedly. Eventually he lands on the answer: Images. “The most fundamental threat to humanity is images,” the Preacher says. “Have you ever been on the subway and looked up from your glowing images to see everyone else transfixed like that screen held the word of the Lord itself?” He advises the audience to take out their phone, select one photo, delete that photo, delete that photo from recently deleted. He instructs the audience to do it again. He instructs the audience to take off their phone case and turn their phones over. Everyone, at once, of course, noticed the glistening apple looking back at them. My apple is a mirror, which I’d never noticed before. Gideon Jacobs takes off his sunglasses and breaks character. The performance seems mostly to be a bit, as heavily signified by the costume and accent. Obviously, it’s a performance of a sermon, and not a sermon itself, but I’m convinced in a way that extends past irony. I would be easily indoctrinated into a cult based on signifying factors of ego, agreeability, and desire to belong. I’ve said this before. I would be easily hypnotized based on the signifying factor of agreeability, that’s the only factor that matters for hypnosis. I do feel a bit hypnotized. I’m not sure if I was just indoctrinated, or if I just woke up. Later, back at Cafe Reggio alternating sips of hot apple cider with whiskey neat (a new one for me), Madelyn , who knows about these things, explains the Lacanian implications of it all. The mirror stage. You recognize yourself as an individual only in the reflection of the other and as such, the ego is born. Our own narcissism is reflected in the influx of images we become transfixed by. Self-objectification in images. Etc etc etc. Thursday, October 17 In Joan Didion’s essay “The Women’s Movement” she talks about an eternal infantilization inherent to a life that is all The Big Apple and Chasing Dreams. If every responsibility outside oneself becomes oppressive, then liberation becomes a childlike solitude wherein you answer to no one. You can’t then really answer - even to yourself. I revisited this essay this week. I liked it more now. I like to quantify things. I would like to quantify the time I could theoretically spend spinning my wheels. I wish I could quantify how many thoughts I’ve ever had that are products of pure delusion. I wake up hazy, not hungover. In the morning, I walk on the treadmill and write in my journal about how I want to be a Serious Writer. Later, I go to the bathroom and I get distracted on my phone running images of my face through an AI Rate Your Attractiveness Scale App. I find details in the mundane to be more honest than confessional musings, but I’m simply so un-entertained in my recollections this week. I go to Swan Room again. Embarrassing. I can hear the middle aged couple behind us speculating on if my friends and I are over or under 25 years old. One of my friends turns around and tells them we are 24. I never would have said anything, but I am so relieved she did. I’m not sure why. Plausible deniability in the last dredges of feasible naivety, I guess. I wouldn’t want to be confused with someone who spent money I actually had at places this obvious. The couple tells us their daughter is our age and I can tell it’s not true, they probably are tourists, their daughter is probably a child, they are far too giddy, starry eyed, envious although it’s gluttonous to note that much less mull it over self-satisfied. Most lies are just said because you need something to say, common ground, malignant silence breeds animosity. “Is everyone here registered to vote?” the woman is asking. I say something incoherent about Massachusetts. She suggests we all exchange emails. I’m not particularly enthused, but I wish the middle aged couple well. I wish their fake older-zoomer daughter well. I go to Clandestino . I go home. It was a birthday dinner tonight. It was nice Friday, October 18 Halloween, tonight. The start of it, at least. I want a night that is cozy. I want to be dressed up, but more so I want everyone around me to be dressed up. I want the candles to be gothic, spooky, I want them to drip red wax, I want there to be spiders, rats, mice, caramel cookies, ghost stories. I get everything I wanted. The most important thing in my life is being deeply in love. I’m trying to speak sincerely, and this is the only thing about which I am one hundred percent sincere. There is little else to quantity. Little else to say. Objects all around me tonight. Beautiful ornate aesthetically cohesive objects in a dimly lit room. I only notice what I choose to. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tonight : Monday, October 21 From 4pm - 7pm — Treasure Club NYC hosts an indie sleaze closet sale ft the closets of megsuperstarprincess , Clementine Iris , vodka_024201090909 , and Pippi Nola . You still have 45 minutes to get there. Tuesday, October 22 At 7:30pm and 10pm — Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research presents a screening double header of Éric Rohmer’s A Tale of Autumn , and Erik Løchen’s THE CHASERS . As mentioned on Criterion Channel, these screenings are exceedingly rare! In Manhattan, from 7pm at TJ Byrnes — Bronwen Lam and David Dufour present the second PATIO reading. Featuring Harold Rogers , Greta Scheldorn , Thomas Thatcher , Myles Zavelo , Sean Thor Conroe , and Danielle Chelosky . Wednesday, October 23 From 10pm - 2am — Sissies of Mercy is at Nowadays . I’ve been looking for reasons to get myself to venture to Brooklyn, so maybe this will do it. Thursday, October 24 From 7pm at Pretty Garden Club — Archway Editions hosts a Spooky Reading, featuring Danielle Chelosky , Alex Patrick Dyck , Naomi Falk , Mina Hamedi , Sirena He , and Gideon Jacobs . From 7pm at Canal Projects — Michelle Lhooq of Rave New World presents a double screening of a short film on Singapore’s nightlife underground, and a feature film documentary depicting rave culture in Chengdu, China. After party to follow . From 10pm - 4am — Johnny St Grace , Lydia Lunch , and more at Nublu . Friday, October 25 From 3pm - 6pm at MoMA — Visual AIDS hosts the second annual symposium celebrating the lives and legacies of artists documented in the Visual AIDS Archive, the largest collection of images and biographical information about HIV-positive artists. The event includes new research by filmmaker María José Maldonado , writer Ruby Sutton , and scholar Eduardo Carrera From 6pm - midnight at HEART — Cori Cannavino and Miles Peyton present Lavender Town - a one night only exhibition and night of performance surveying the resurgence of religious practice in an age of networked technologies. From 6pm - 9pm — Swivel Gallery celebrates the opening of the inaugural exhibition of their new space (555 Greenwich Street). “Myriad” is a group exhibition exploring our ever changing relationship with objects and materiality. After party to follow from 9pm - late at Beverly’s . From 10pm

  • late at Silencio — The Stranger celebrates Strange-O-Ween Saturday, October 26 From 4pm - 5pm at RAINRAIN — Craig Jun Li celebrates the run of a solo exhibition at the gallery with readings that respond to the central themes of the works on view; from language, to memory, to image culture. Readings by Qingyuan Deng , Paige K. Bradley , Joel Dean , Morgan Meier , and Matilda Lin Berke . From 10pm - 12:30am — Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research hosts their Fall Fundraiser Ball. (Following a performance of Messages earlier in the evening) From 11:30pm — Ev Christensen opens the ONOS midnight special show “Seven Deadly Sins” at The Slipper Room . Sunday, October 27 From 7pm at Earth — Heavy Traffic celebrates the launch of Issue Five. After, head to Sovereign House for the Halloween Masquerade edition Confessions . Readings by Abigail Yaga , Miami Mike , Christian Gail , Sam Forster , Cassidy , and Annabel .

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