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Big Huge World

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Big Huge World

WHAT I DID Monday, September 22 On the Upper West Side, there are stone townhouses and quiet streets and nice branzino and diet coke with lemon and they bring us baskets of red pesto and baguette and memories both good and bad become holographic quite quickly. There are the last days of summer to take care of. In a cab downtown to meet Lily with a stomach ache, Lily tells me that she is at a bar meeting boys.

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WHAT I DID Monday, September 22 On the Upper West Side, there are stone townhouses and quiet streets and nice branzino and diet coke with lemon and they bring us baskets of red pesto and baguette and memories both good and bad become holographic quite quickly. New York is not all rotten. There are the last days of summer to take care of. Last days of gluttony. Last days of Reading Series. In a cab downtown to meet Lily with a stomach ache, Lily tells me that she is at a bar meeting boys. I meet her on the street. She’s wearing a white dress and she looks sparkling. There are others, on the steps, out here, and we all do the whole charade of all pretending like we have all never met. Lily met a boy at the bar who wants to take her on a road trip with his dogs, she tells me. You’re too young for me, but it’ll be fun while it lasts, the boy tells Lily. He sends each individual word as a separate message and then shares a video of two pitbulls sparing on a field of plastic turf. Lily lays her phone flat in her hand and we loom over it in the orange September sort of night. The video plays on an infinite loop. The dogs unhinge their massive jaws and aim to swallow a basketball whole. You’ll go upstate and get mauled to death by this guy’s pitbulls, I tell Lily. I’m not going upstate, Lily tells me. We walk further downtown, trace the usual path to a magazine launch in a night club that I thought would be more crowded. We sit in the backroom, and you can hear the readings better here than if you claw your way to the front like everyone else, but we probably appear to be kind of checked out. I’m going to save you, Lily tells me. We walk to Funny Bar where Sam is smoking outside. Am I safe to go inside, I ask Sam. He nods and flicks his hand towards the door. His friends are all from The Internet, and they introduce themselves by alias. Standing by the bar and Sam is saying that Los Angeles is it now. I stand a little halfway outside the conversation circle with my shirt pulled pretty tight around me and contribute a few half hearted sentiments about how Los Angeles can’t be it . The cars, the sprawl, the niceties, the plastic surgery. It’s got to be Austin, Sam’s friend is saying. It’s the same stale conversation topic as usual. How New York is over. Culture is over. Sam is listing a few mid to low tier Los Angeles based Internet personalities around which a new and transgressive art scene could revolve. I am dead sober, and therefore relieved to notice that I do not float out of my body and watch myself say something annoying and off-beat, like I inevitably would if I were drunk. None of those people have a mass fanbase of beautiful women, I point out to Sam. In Los Angeles, you’d find fifteen e-girls and they’d have to take Ubers. Sam agrees that this could potentially be a problem. If it’s uninteresting here, then it’s uninteresting everywhere, but I understand why everyone is seeking renewal. Like The Internet isn’t alive and everyone isn’t talking about the same things everywhere. Like Sam and his crew could wash up on Hollywood Boulevard and say the same things five years later, to a five years younger crop of wonderful young girls, fresh eyed and eager, they’d spawn out of nowhere, they would never have heard all of the things that have already been said before. Tuesday, September 23 Watching the gray light filter through the windows of a studio where everything is tan or cream or pale blue or gold. Watching a waiter at a cafe down the street bring over black coffee, cannoli, and strawberries in a chalice. Start the day with solitude. I have never lived like this before. A smooth and slick kind of woman across from me is talking about her sister who broke up with her boyfriend after meeting a Danish stone carver who believes in hard work and apprenticeship and not necessarily general education. The sister became repulsed by her boyfriend after spending time with the stone carver because she felt her boyfriend had too pragmatic a view on life. The sister left her passport at her ex’s place for one whole week and needs an ego death. She needs a concrete understanding of the next couple years. She wants to continue to go to school for forever, though this part, the whole family agrees is fine. The girl across from me is practically dripping gel from her slicked back bright red bun. She’s cloaked in business casual and a bad attitude. She’s drinking a cappuccino and she’s off to pilates. I am wondering if I would find her smug and didactic demeanor less off putting if she were more beautiful. She is wearing a stripped shirt and she gestures a J-Crew sleeve towards me and my own striped shirt as she leaves. It’s like a movie , she says. My shirt is softer and thinner and I want to coil the sleeves up and climb inside. It’s like mimes , I respond. Mimes ? she asks. I do not mime. I hope she knows what that word means. It is not so much a thing of feeling out of place. I have worlds of characters and oddities at my fingertips. I like characters and oddities, which, along with a desire driven by ennui and terror to remain right at the very center of things, is why I am still here. I tend to like when people are abrasive, because it means they are fixated on just one thing. I watch the woman leave and I know for certain that I do not like her but it is not a thought that troubles me too much. It is a thought that passes like a cloud. Wednesday, September 24 Later, the air conditioning is off, and I’m pacing through empty health food aisles, drawing signs of the moon in class; waxing crescent moon, Libra moon, PLS GO FETCH ME THE MOON. Later, someone is talking about bio weapons at another party downtown. The genomes, the rapture, the clarity, the apocalyptic ideation. Please do not stress me out right now, the man on stage at the party is saying. I do not like that question. A different question. Could someone in the audience please ask one precise and better question? I see Iris and her blond hair bobbing up and down across the traffic stop as I stand outside the ice cream shop taking stock of my day and my night. Iris is carrying bright-blue-epson-salt and she is walking back towards a glass apartment in the sky. Do you want to sit, Iris asks? Inside? The rotating apartment in the sky. One rotation used to be mine. I can survive going inside. No, outside. We sit on the benches at the edge of the street as the ice cream shop closes, and I tell Iris all about how much things have improved. I have not been home all day, I tell Iris. I throw up my hands. Performative exhaustion. The whole ordeal is pleasant. Iris is very buoyant today. You should write aphorisms, Iris tells me. Passivity responds to harshness. Lethargy responds to good metabolic function. Have you noticed how all the energy here has come whirling-back-to-life? Iris starts telling me about the state of things. She has figured out where she stands when it comes to her positioning in the state of things. She has surmised who will be left behind. I nod. I clarify my own positions and I mean it. So we agree, Iris says. Good! I tell Iris about how I was at a French Cafe in Chinatown drinking matcha with almond milk which surprised my friends because they would have presumed that someone becoming Catholic would take coffee and drink it with whole milk, preferably raw. I tell Iris about how a lot has changed but I am still not so sure. I tell Iris about how culture isn’t dead but a lot of people have just decided not to be a part of it. I don’t say all of this out loud. I am still not so sure. Every apartment I go to is full of relics. Every party I go to is the same. Thursday, September 25 Sitting at Bar Oliver with Celia and it’s all red leather booths, light jazz music, non alcoholic beer which can be good for estrogen levels in women and black coffee and my eyes keep following the ceiling fans in circles. The rain has come and washed everything clean. I can have anything I want. I hang my purse on the metal arm of the tableside lamp. Incandescent bulbs. Write a note on the top of my planner. I CAN HAVE ANYTHING I WANT BUT I CAN’T HAVE EVERYTHING I WANT. Chinatown in the rain is cinematic and less like the land of leggings and small dogs that is increasingly stretching its grimy tendrils out and expanding all over downtown Manhattan. Celia turns her laptop around to show me a photograph of a light wood living room, checkered yellow table cloth, soft and warm armchair. This looks like your parents house , Celia says. Where did you find that , I ask. I found it on Tumblr, Celia says. We go for a walk along the East River, where the rain and the heat have turned everything kind of the same shade of fairytale gray. Celia tells me stories as we walk. Sylvia was an heiress and her dad was an inventor. Camilla was a tragic figure. Lucy was a ghost. I can imagine there were a lot of inventors coming out of that part of the world , I tell Celia. Why do you imagine that ?, Celia asks me. Because there’s little to do but the temperament of the area is less mundane and passive than in neighboring states, I explain. The opioid crisis never hit, Celia agrees. T here was no heroin, and so people invented things . We walk past the Governors Island Ferry and a kind of dilapidated and green Casa Cipriani. This is where the art fair was, Celia says. I have brain fog, I say. I go home, cheerful and ill. I go to an album release party where the singer is shaking with tears streaming down his face as the songs play, and then very cheerful and calm as he greets his wife and friends. I go to a Right Wing magazine launch and then to a celebration for a zine about ETHICS. I listen to the same song until I can’t bear it anymore. Take the M to the end of the line. Take photos of the tennis courts here, because they’re glistening in the rain and night. I show the bartender at Gotscheer Hall my passport from Switzerland and he beams. You should work here , he says. I beam back. I should work here, I say. Gotscheer Hall is huge and cavernous and covered with murals of fairytales. It’s like a whole huge world here. The world of Gotscheer Hall, and then the world of the fairytales that line its walls. It’s a Whole Huge World, I say. I say this over and over again. I took the train to the end of the M line, and then I remembered that it’s a whole huge world. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Monday, October 6 - From 4:40pm at Film Forum — Bresson’s Four Nights Of A Dreamer (1972) screens. - “Third filming (following Visconti’s) of Dostoevsky’s White Nights, transposed to ’70s Paris.” Worth seeing before it closes. - From 6:30pm at Night Club 101 — Skullcrusher is on with Evan Wright in anticipation of their new album Dirty Hit , out October 17. - From 11pm at Petite Disco — Family Affair returns at a new location. Everyone’s favorite Monday Night Party. Sounds by Hector Romero and Stevie Guttman. Bresson’s Four Nights of a Dreamer (1972) Image via FilmForum Tuesday, October 7 - From 7pm - 10pm at Nublu — Tweaker Gospel presents her single Maspeth. PERFORMANCE. VIDEO. PARTY. Ft Ev Christensten and Broom . This will be a beautiful evening and I can’t wait. | Tickets here - From 7pm at Powerhouse Arena Brooklyn — John Tottenham celebrates the NYC Launch of Service , ft Calvin Atwood, Ann Manov, and Chris Motnar. - From 7:30pm at Baker Falls — Torture Tuesday continues, ft performances from Leo Lovechild, Sydni Dichter of Franny Menace, Calla Salicious, Gween Malick, Jack Devaney, and Baby Long Legs. | Tickets here ($10) Wednesday, October 8 - From 6pm - 8pm at Offline Gallery — Emi Kusano opens a solo exhibition in collaboration with GHOST IN THE SHELL . - From 7pm at KGB Bar — Riley Mac & Montana James Thomas present STRAIGHT GIRLS. Ft. Alex Auder, Maya Kotomori, Ruby Mccolister, Georgica Pettus, and True. - From 9pm at Silver Linings Lounge — Scott Lipps presents Lipps Service Live, ft Beau, PartyGirl, and The Breaks Inc. | Tickets here - From 10pm at Jean’s — Leg5 is hosting a table at Electric Pussycat. Thursday, October 9 - From 6pm - 9pm at Foreign Domestic — Joel Wyllie Aerial the Projectionist opens. - From 7:30pm at Warburg Lounge — 92NY presents a discussion on Nabokov’s Lolita at 70 , with Jiayang Fan, A.M. Homes, and Julia May Jonas. A celebratory reading and conversation on the novel’s anniversary. | tickets here ($35)

  • From 8pm - 11pm at KGB Bar — Grace Byron celebrates the launch of her new novel Herculine . Ft. Kilbourne, Zyra West, and Whitney Mallet. Party to follow on the first floor. - The Downtown Festival returns with an opening celebration Friday, October 10 - From 6pm - 8pm at Lubov — Lilia Ana opens solo exhibition To Remain Awake. - From 8pm at Roulette — The Triple Canopy Symposium begins with an evening of performances celebrating the theme of the forthcoming issue: Holes . Ft Gregg Bordowitz, Zoe Hopkins, Muyassar Kurdi, Lucas de Lima, Maya Martinez, Louis Osmosis, and Symara Sarai. - ““Absences, aporias, portals, and clearings.” - The Downtown Festival presents a series of screenings at The Roxy — At 4pm; Fior di Latte directed by Charlotte Ercoli, ft a Q&A with Charlotte Ercoli, Julia Fox, and Kevin Kline, moderated by Jeff Ross. At 6:30pm ; End of the Night directed by Keith McNally, followed by a conversation between Keith McNally and Lisa Robinson, At 9:15pm ; Atropia directed by Hailey Gates followed by a Q&A with Hailey Gates moderated by Douglas Keeve. Saturday, October 11 - The Downtown Festival presents a series of screenings at The Roxy — at 2:30pm ; Realities and Illusions - featuring works by Lily Lady, Alex O Eaton, Lisa Hammer, Andrew Norman Wilson, and more. At 5pm ; Desperately Seeking Susan followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Susan Seidelman and actor Rosanna Arquette, moderated by Special Guest. At 7pm ; New Rose Hotel followed by conversation with Abel Ferrara and Stephanie LaCava. At 10pm ; Ryan Trecartin Movies; Selected Works 2009 - 2016 - From 4pm at 720 Strength LES — BRCOpenMics presents October Reading Series , ft Rorey, Chloe Wheeler, Will Lach, Tania Jaramillo, Sarah Borruto, Kathryn Kearney, Tyson Elizabeth Pope, and Paige Walker. - From 7pm at TJ Byrnes — Nick Dove and Anamaria Silic present Above Town #2 , ft special guest Ivy Wolk, a musical performance by Matthew Danger Lippmann, and writers/producers Lucy Geldziler and Page Garcia. On the horizon…. Get your tickets for FYRE FEST WAS SO FUN - opening night is SOLD OUT and the other runs will sell out too.

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