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Counterculture in America

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Counterculture in America

Thursday, November 7 I watched the election at The Free Press party, and then at Earth , and then at Sovereign House . Magdalene Taylor wrote the Sovereign House Scene Report for GQ, which you can read here . The only thing I can really add is that while I also was not on the winning team, I did arrive late, and then stuck around until some approximation of the bitter end.

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Thursday, November 7 I watched the election at The Free Press party, and then at Earth , and then at Sovereign House . Magdalene Taylor wrote the Sovereign House Scene Report for GQ, which you can read here . The only thing I can really add is that while I also was not on the winning team, I did arrive late, and then stuck around until some approximation of the bitter end. I don’t really have any sweeping political commentary to offer from my evening spanning the Election Parties of New York City. On all sides, people seemed generally more subdued in their mourning and/or celebration than I expected. Looking through the backyard window of Sovereign House a few hours before results are declared but a few hours after everyone is already certain of what they will be, you can see a shadowy mass of people cast in the blue light of projector TV. You can see some outlines of figures jumping, but their forms are blurred by the clusters they compose together. A few people are chanting USA, but not too loudly and so the sounds are muted from the garden. The garden feels more distant from the party than in past times that I’ve been here - from outside, I can’t get that good a sense of what’s happening within. There aren’t that many people left at this point in the night, and I wasn’t here earlier, when the place was packed with sensitive young men and e-girls. I leave then - it’s probably around two am and outside, the streets are quiet. I walk over to 169 Bar to get a water. There’s residue of a party going on, here, too, but it seems more like a kickback than anything political. They have one TV here, but it usually is playing a choppy re-run of some movie from the 90s. I don’t think to check what they’re playing tonight. I’m not really sure. I go to the bathroom, where I find an “I’m Immune to Propaganda” Milady hat forgotten on the sink, no doubt the leftovers of a Sovereign House straggler who got tired of waiting for the single bathroom at the crypto party. I consider taking the hat, but decide against it. It is very late. I would like to be home. Last week, I linked to Hannah’s piece about aesthetic and moral nihilism and value judgment. If you didn’t read it then, I am linking it again here . Today, on my phone, I see many things like text saying if you put down your phone it’s still 2003, overlayed with a photo of a river - sentiments which are kind of true and kind of annoying because they think they’re clever and they’re not that clever and also, they are not that true. A few weeks ago, Ellie asked if there is such a thing as counterculture in 2024, and if so what is it? Outside of vague anecdotes and vibes, how would a contemporary counterculture be defined? I thought about this a lot, particularly in the context of downtown, heterodoxy, material vs aesthetic vs moral platitudes, blah blah blah but you get what I mean. In her GQ piece, Magdalene points out that “if Dimes Square really was some psyop to convert conservative-curious young hipsters into full-on Republican voters, it succeeded.” Granted, most things you think are psyops probably aren’t, people are pretty predictable, unlikely coincidences were probably actually pretty likely all along but I digress, because the question remains — Ok, so now what? Contrarianism becomes trendy as a form of kind of aesthetic resistance, tethered to meaning not as an idea in and of itself, but as a reflection, as an opposite, and as such it has a lot of give, a lot of plausible deniability. This is not necessarily a political idea - anything that identifies itself largely as what it is not is able to maintain an ephemerality in its substance. And not everything should be solidified in substance, the best things sometimes aren’t, something often exists as transient in its golden era and yet — the counterculture is not a terrain marked by its historic longevity. At a certain point, an alternative either becomes incorporated into the mainstream, or it fades away. When the lines become solidly filled in and something either defines itself or becomes laid bare as empty from the inside… then I think some sort of vibe shift probably follows. Beckett Rosset texts me today - “I really want to try and put together a group of not necessarily like-minded but rather open-minded people whose main agenda is community and offering the opportunity for people to creatively express themselves through their chosen medium.” Beckett is good at that. He knows where to find the heart of things. His salons are not rehearsed, he doesn’t read the works presented prior, but I am always struck by the cohesion of his events. At the risk of immense cliche, he curates almost in the realm of the collective subconscious. I would encourage everyone to attend the next TENSE event on November 15 (and not just because I’m reading). Today – I go to the opening of the new O’Flaherty’s on Allen Street tonight. It’s a cool show, a weird space. It’s a huge space and really not a ton of work, but I guess it’s Alex Katz and Matthew Barney in a pop-up seeming gallery on the Lower East Side, so you can kind of do what you want. I see Ruby . I tell her I’m scared I’m being mean. Ruby says be meaner. Lydia and I go to Bar Valentina . It seems like everyone in the world is milling about outside. Someone gives me five dollars in cash for a cigarette. It’s ok, I say. She puts the cash on top of my bag. David materializes inside Bar Valentina. David was at Bar Oliver . David orders strip steak. We duck into Trapizzino on the way home. I used to come here all the time. I used to come for breakfast. It’s late now, but everything looks the same. I forgot this place existed. Of course it looks the same. Friday, November 8 I’m recalling things in bullet points. Diner at Casino with Ellie and Shannon . Lychee martini, then dirty martini then steak tartare and chicken and pasta, etc. Then, The Magician publication party at Sovereign House. I’ve been writing about this book - it’s very nice to see the short film that accompanies it. Here is something I have written about this book

  • I hope to share the rest of it it soon: There is a nightmarish quality to Christopher Zeischegg’s “The Magician.” I read the book twice, the first time through the haze of an all nighter — sleep deprivation and sleep paralysis hastening my descent into the blur of self destruction and bodily decay that the narrative presents. “Just a thing inside your body that won’t listen to your head,” a malignant acquaintance tells the narrator early in the novel, as a prescription of sorts for the root of all his problems. At dawn, this rings true. This distance between body and self, judgment and subconscious, good and evil, is perhaps the root of all that is hellish. Saturday, November 9 I call my dad and I tell him that I am worried every thought I have ever had can be surmised as Being Impressionable. He says, well, then that’s a good thing to know about yourself. Later, at a packed magazine launch where I arrive late enough for it to be decidedly unfashionable, I overhear a girl telling a story that at first I think is real, and then vaguely recognize as the plot of some popular movie, maybe a children’s book, I can’t place it. In the story, there is a girl who everyone else wants to be. She doesn’t find their imitation to be the highest form of flattery. In the story, she isn’t flattered at all. When she wears something, she is copied. When she cuts her hair just slightly too, she is copied. And so, one day, she says she is going to shave her head. The next day, she arrives at school with a full head of hair, but anticipating the latest trend, all her classmates are there to greet her, nakedly bald. “So she gets the last laugh,” the girl at the party is saying. “What’s the moral of the story” her friend asks She looks at him numbly. “Like… be yourself,” she says. And then with more confidence, “Imitating false idols isn’t neutral . Other people are trying to trick you. You’re going to get tricked.” I look around the room. I don’t see any idols, false or otherwise. There’s no one here I even really know. No one seems like tricksters. The motives seem pure. I haven’t read the magazine - its front cover page says something about alternative pathways through alternative art and alternative technology and aspects of alternative ephemeral identities and selves. My gut sense is that nothing is really ever new. I’m not sure if this bothers me. I was going to ask the girl for the name of her story. But when I look around the room, the sounds have all blurred together, and I can’t place a face to her voice. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Tuesday, November 12 From 6:30pm at Tibet House — Arden Wohl presents another installment of reading series “The Relentless Shadow Where The Light Surrenders” ; featuring Alice Attie and Patricia Spears Jones From 7:30 - 9:30pm at The Brooklyn Center for Theater Research — Denmark is back for a final run; a winter weekend at a family beach house slowly descends into a psychological hellscape. By Matt Gasda, starring Sophia Englesberg . The play will continue (for the last times) on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. I saw this play last month and really adored it - I’m glad it’s back and I hope everyone gets a chance to go. Wednesday, November 13 From 7pm - 9pm at Spring Place — Rolling Stone journalist David Browne will be in conversation with Matt Weinberger. Performances by Beau and Louis B Middleton . Later , from 10pm - late at Jean’s — Teddy Quinlivan hosts another rendition of new house and electronic party series Electric Pussycat Thursday, November 14 From 6pm - 8pm at Shinola Tribeca — Brynn Wallner of Dimes Piece hosts a conversation (on all things watches, I would assume) From 6pm - 10pm — Pretty Garden Club hosts a closing party and one night exhibition, featuring works by August Lamm , Reiji Fukitsu , Maya Man , and more. From 7pm at Performance Space New York — The Whitney Review presents LIBRARY ; “a four-act performance program that reconceptualizes a traditional reading through poetry, dialogues, and live performance” From 9:30pm at KGB — Olivia Von Blue hosts her birthday comedy show, ft a special roast from her dad. From 7pm - 10pm at Estonian House — Alyssa Davis Gallery celebrates a blow out opening for Martina Cox: Waist Management . Friday, November 15 At 6pm — Island Gallery presents readings by Qingyuan Deng , Terry Nguyen, Funto Omojola, Conor Truax, and Stephanie Njeri Wambugu. From 8pm - late — TENSE is back (Manhattan edition). I’ll be reading at Is That All There Is , along with Guy Dess, Beckett Rosset , Adeline Swartzendruber , Mairead Kiernan, Chris Bray , and others to be announced. Saturday, November 16 From 7pm - 10pm at Sleepwalk — Uncensored New York hosts a show ft DDM , The Suede Hello , Holy Wisdom LLC , and Sacred . From 7:30pm at The Roxy — Alexi Wasser shows an encore screening of Messy . From 10pm (free entry before 11pm) — J.M Kettle is djing his birthday show at Hellphone Sunday, November 17 From 2pm - 5pm — FeedMe by Emily Sundberg (the only business newsletter that matters) celebrates two years at Rhodora Wine Bar – wine, gossip, Primo focaccia, etc. Confessions (duh) at KGB from 7pm — Readings and performances by Aimee Armstrong , Conor Hall, Bijan Stephen , Annabel Boardman , Peter Vack , Carrigan Miller , Cassidy Grady , and Daniel Fishkin.

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