Best Internet Friends OK

This Tuesday I started an MFA program in Game Design at NYU’s Game Center in Brooklyn. It’s pretty fucking weird to be back in school after being out for over 8 years.

But it’s a good feeling. This shit is insanely expensive, and there are a whole slew of new factors that make it feel, well, nothing at all like undergrad:

It glows from my grey couch, with the traffic

sounds of Brooklyn outside, as it glows for you,

the celebrity a span of continent away, dressed

and relaxing in joy within a smaller spotlight,

and you, my passing lover, as you walk by

the public staring into mirrored fences,

as you share with me and her your favorite

work, its white metal shining in the new fall sun.

As it glows for the drag queens in Chelsea

still glittering after shell shock, trying on clothes

all full of holes in some undecorated loft

echoing with their beautiful laughter,

as for the the boy donning horns in the nightclub

with the golden chain around his neck

and for his lover with him, mustachioed

and smiling to be remembered. I will remember you.

For the babe, whose closed eyes cannot see

you capturing her for me, for us, for the first time,

happy traveler, documentarian of friendship -

for the red-haired artist who watches her sister shepherd

half a dozen miniature ballerinas and the one boy

amongst them with his white shirt and black shorts

and love for dancing. I was you once as you are now.

For the unpaid hustler promoting your work,

your photographs once taken, since transported,

having published, and now recorded moving,

it glows just as it does for the marriage of one

twice-removed from me. I wish you joy though

I am not with you and will never know your name.

For the painter in the gym with the writer lifting

weights and posing, as though for me,

it glows within the mirror.

And for you, beautiful taster sitting alone in the bar

with your book and your wine and your telling me

the glow connects us to the comedian and her

musician boyfriend, on a deck in the sunshine

shouting pet names and drinking water

in a sundress, I have heard them all.

I am with them all as it passes glowing.

For the portrait-maker, sketching out base layers

of fresh watercolors, pale hay surrounding

nakedness I recognize, do you hear as I do through

glowing the sounds of the concert south of us

at which the jewelry-maker and the television

channel listen with plugged ears? I listen or am

silent in the glow within all your colorful music.

For the filmmaker, with some strange and smooth

white man fanning the long green grass with his hands -

he stares through kaleidoscope lenses that you take

and hand to me to witness the tucked-in purple gradient

in sunlight as you rest upon his stomach with the glow

resting upon me.

I have missed so much of this real

world and have seen more than anyone has seen of it

for centuries. I have let it kiss me in the darkness

night after night as I long for other kisses.

Meg was frustrated, wondering why the sunlight insisted on changing every day. There was a moment, around 11:23 in late Spring, when the rays dived through her sheer drapes at such a cinematic angle as to guarantee an aquarium of optimal illumination for her near naked body to writhe and swim within. It was an assured 2500 likes on a picture set in one of those rare rectangles of cooperative nature, at the least. But today, it was evidently no longer late Spring. The tilt of the Earth had swung absentmindedly towards the corner of the building across her shaft in SoHo. It had cut off her source. She’d have to get creative. 

Or she could just scrunch back down into that blob of blanket, cashmere, and cat fur she had so eagerly bounced up from this near to optimal posting time. Her legion was most active on Saturdays, pre and post-brunch, but she was usually a little too full of champagne to safely hit that 2PM circuit. The 11 AM hour was better for her look anyway - brighter, lighter, with more air and whiteness and the chance of still deciding to become more beautiful today floating all about her like a trick of empathy, or light. It wasn’t really a decision that she made then, when she moved the floor lamp over from it’s nook next to her banana leaf plant over to her window, but of a former her, a more sober her, with a strategy and a sense of purpose, and an honest nurture towards the tens of thousands of people she never once had met but who looked for her each weekend, whatever time they lived in before her noon. Her uncertainty stayed behind, muffled in the blankets. 

“The Happiness Code” - The New York Times Magazine

Please, add up all the time I’ve spent staring at the hairs lining your jaw, the ones that make the roundness of your wide face so alluring in the yellow light bounced off the palm. Aggregate the seconds into years I’ll spend placing my fingers between your thumb and index, which really is the time I take wishing I could be the knife that cuts the flowing water of your anxiety, your endless need to move, to twitch, to rub and touch when I only pray for calm for you.

10. Fetty Wap - Fetty Wap Kudos to a bro who can live up to the hype of being on constant HOT 97 rotation for the entire summer. This debut did not disappoint. Instead, it got me REAL pumped for what he’s gonna do next. 9. Grimes - Art Angels WAS NOT EVEN A GRIMES (MUSIC) FAN, but this album is lit af. It just really makes me want to dance in, like, a weird way. The collaborations on it are legit (especially Monae) and she’s feeding me some Cher meets Aqua which can only be good. 8. Joanna Newsom - Divers This album may move up as the year comes to a close, as there’s just so much to parse through here. Spend 5 minutes on the Genius page for this album and you’ll be off in a history lesson about New York City and ornithology in no time. Carrie Brownstein recently called Joanna “a gift to humanity” and in so many ways, I agree. Her lyricism, unabashed RenFaire appreciation vibes, and her consistent insight into human relationships (both with each other and with our universe) are truly special. I’m glad we’re alive at the same time. Plus, who doesn’t love songs about fantastical future space wars. 7. Hop Along - Painted Shut New artist o’ the year for me. This album crept up on me like a punch to the face. Saddle Creek hasn’t shown its face to me in a hot minute and it’s good to see the descendants of my youth holding it down hard with the female-led indie rage that keeps me going year after year. 6. Waxahatchee - Ivy Tripp The pressure was ON for K Crutch this year after the shining jewel that was Cerulean Salt. Though this album didn’t quite reach the same depth of emotion as its predecessor, it’s still a beautifully written collection of songs that I can listen to on repeat basically forever. 5. Screaming Females - Rose Mountain If this list were a ranking of “Best Music To RageStomp Home From The Subway WIth” it’d be #1. Marissa is at the top of her vocal game on this album, and the added production value, which for this scene is always a worry, was done tastefully and with purpose. Also, long live New Brunswick. 4. Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell I’ve been worried about Sufjan, but C&L proved I needn’t be. His songwriting is only getting better with age, and these beautiful, timeless arrangements are sparse and decadent in all the right places. Vulnerability is still a path for success here and it’s in full force. 3. Titus Andronicus - The Most Lamentable Tragedy I frequently oscillate between believing that TA is the voice of our generation and that no one will ever understand me, especially my mom. This concept album is rife with deft allusion, riding on manic waves of ecstasy and anguish. Time travel expressed through differing LP speeds was also one of my favorite music novelties of the year. I accidentally purchased this album twice. 2. Beach House - Thank Your Lucky Stars Though this was a severe troll move on the band’s part, TYLS has solidified my belief in Beach House as one of the greatest album-makers of our generation. All of the spookiness that’s been leaking out of their sound since Teen Dream returned matured here, and I’m back in love, fully. 1. Mount Eerie - Sauna I remember telling my co-worker Chris in the bathroom in the beginning of 2015 that we had already found the album of the year, and I was right. Apparently, we’ve all been merely climbing up the side of Mount Eerie for the past decade to reach this glorious apex of intimate and expansive, introverted and empathetic masterworks. Plane rides will literally never be the same for me. Honorable Mentions: Tame Impala - Currents Beach House - Depression Cherry Jamie XX - In Colour Drake & Future - What a Time To Be Alive Built to Spill - Untethered Moon Deerhunter - Fading Frontier Janet Jackson - Unbreakable

"I simply couldn't," she said in that way that made Jared feel as though, among other less rank transformations, he were a dried up turd on the bed sheets of an abandoned love hotel. "There's just so much to do before the week starts."

"Of course," he agreed.

"With the new order coming up on Wednesday and all the consulting work we have left to do on that Beeswax sculpture I was telling you about." Meg got up off the couch to coddle together a few of her scattered items left at Jared's apartment over the last few weeks. "And Lainie asked me over to her studio around seven tonight to take my photograph for some feature in her blog. Apparently, it's been getting like, a million hits a week." She turned to stare at him for a beat, hands buried in her tote filled with scarves and smelly underwear, and flats. "You wouldn't want to come would you?"

"I don't think I can tonight. I promised Franci we'd chill," Jared dodged as he caught Meg's eye. "You know those things are no fun for me anyway."

Meg turned back to her shitty tote pack job, looking frenetic and beautiful, crouched there on her toes, her ass just barely touching the backs of her heels. The yellow light from Jared's standing lamp sunk through the strays of her hair, gone this golden at such a luxuriously early part of Summer.

"Oh well," she sighed, slapping her thighs before bouncing up to shoulder her bag and turn towards him. "You know how much I'd love you there."

"But you can love me right here," he said and stretched a smile and a limb.

She tip-toed over to him with a smirk, moving across the room, carrying in her steps all the royalty left in this world. "And everywhere," she whispered before kissing him on the tip of the nose. "It's just...there's so much to do."

She left and Jared took his phone out of his pocket. Three missed texts from Jin, 2 snaps from Sarah, an alert about a mid-sized earthquake in Southeast Asia, and a reminder to do push-ups that he set to repeat three months ago and ignored after two days. He swiped his way to an order of veggie Thai delivery and then stared blankly at the door to his apartment, wondering what it was like outside.

you’ll see. the city’s bombs

go off on second avenue

while you wait for ice cream

in a hotel (London) and wonder

why, if he meant to hear your voice

2014 was the year that two friends died, and sadly, as i look out the window of this hotel room, the fifth sunset of 2015 shines its peachy glow off a fake Eiffel Tower without letting me forget it. 

in the plane over to Vegas, I read the latest MashReads book, which depicts a world in which most everyone dies at once. i paused at a moment that describes a time before that collapse - when a single death still means enough to stop for. i look out of an oval window and the sky is clear enough to let me peek down at the wintry patchwork of middle America in January, but all I see is my dead friend rotting. I think of his body sinking away from clothes he rarely wore, and his sweet face, pockmarked, now sallow, brown and buried. it was a morbid thought. 

other friend has a death too young to imagine so fully, even from forty thousand feet up. i won't let her rest so really yet.