Raw Thoughts 5.4.25

I look at the sky. It's the same color of a pair of 990s. Ready to step all over your day. It looks like the worst has already passed. The ground is wet, but just barely. All that carrying on for nothing.

I'm wearing Gore-Tex Danners for no reason. It barely rained today. Guy across from me on the train is wearing Blundstones. I still kind of want a pair. Just so that I don't have to think about what to wear. I just want to throw some things on and it kind of works well. That's how it's supposed to be, right?

It never looks good being deliberate. Or at least looking deliberate. I remember a friend of mine, his wife did a podcast about podcasts or something. I listened to every episode to try to understand but we live in two different worlds out of thousands. One thing that stuck out was that she didn't get why people didn't like Kendall Roy. Or rather Jeremy Strong.

There's something about showing how hard you worked that shows desperation. You not only want to be acknowledged for the result but the process as well. It's... grating. I guess on some level it shows that you have no true faith in what you've managed to produce so you want credit for the man hours. Seems kind of childish to me.

This carries to my favorite runs in rap. I said that 95-98 Jay-Z and 2000-2004 Cam'ron are my favorite runs in that thing I wrote about Hell NYC 3:00 AM and Get A Hold. I have to throw 95-97 Nas and Big from the second half of Ready to Die through Life After Death in there, too. The main thing that ties them together is how effortless they sound. On the Uptown songs Big is rapping mad hard like he's trying to get a deal off of that verse but the Bad Boy songs he's as smooth as fuckin Kerrygold. There's something about being able to get into those particular pockets and those particular couplets and rhyme schemes and sounding like you're doing it with the greatest of ease as if you just pulled these bars out of the ether that will always impress me.

Word choice is important. Being able to pick the right words at will and at the same time make them fit together in a way that doesn't sound forced. Being able to convey the right message without it sounding too wordy or too concise or too vested or not vested enough. To be thoughtful without overthinking.

Language can drive you fucking mental sometimes.

We invent these complex systems to communicate with each other and yet so many things still get lost in communication. Kind of sad isn't it? Sometimes you have to wonder what the point of all of this is. I'm sure the other person does too.

So much is trial and error. Grasping. Taking ideas that might be in the same key and trying to make them harmonize. Far too often there's discordance and even though I played the piano I'm not fucking Thelonius Monk.

Business has picked up and the rain has started to come down again. I walk by the coops on Avenue A that my doofus uncle was scared to walk through because he thought they were projects. I cross the street and pop into Mast Books. There's a retrospective for Kim Hastreiter I might get when I get some money. Paper Magazine was pretty important to me.

A bookstore in the East Village or the Lower East Side seems incongruent in 2025. They seem like areas that are very much "post-literacy" for lack of a better term. Downtown in general as a matter of fact. Too many finance people, too many influencers, too many tech people. These are not people for words, only pictures and AI prompts. People for whom language has already lost a lot of value.

The rain has tapered a bit and I make it under an awning on First Avenue. Across the street is the McDonalds where they caught the subway shooter. Around the corner is that one block that used to have all the Indian restaurants. They used to joke that all of them shared the same kitchen. In front of me is a C class convertible. Jet black. Beyond that is a truck covered in graffiti.

I walk into a coffee shop and blessedly I can get a sparkling americano. I tip more than I usually do. I haven't had one of these in a year. I look out onto the street and think about the weeks ahead.

Time is cruel.

Alfred Hitchcock invented the dolly zoom for Vertigo. If you've somehow never seen it it's that one shot where you pull back the camera on a dolly but you zoom in so that it stays on the actors face while the background grows fainter.

This is time. Everything moves as slow as molasses while everything slips through your fingers. You have no room to get any sort of bearings you live like the old Mario games you have to keep moving or you die. Somehow you have to put yourself together every once in a while so that you can stay in motion. Always stay in motion.

I think about things I have to say and the best way to go about them. And again the primacy of language becomes crucial. Sincerity without being self-effacing. Hitting every point without sounding clinical. Thoughtfulness without obsession. Once again I go back to those old Mario games where you had to avoid flying bullets and Venus fly traps coming out of pipes at the same time.

I read an article in the Times magazine about being depressed on a trip to Finland. I need to go to Helsinki at some point and link up with one of my Finnish homies. Ludwig Borga aside they seem to care about community and the collective there. Some of the first coops in New York were founded by Finns. And I always loved Hel-Looks.

Walking does East 6th I look and see a closed barber shop. That was where I got my last haircut before lockdown. That was when the dynamics started to shift, wasn't it? The world returned but it still feels off, even if no one can really explain why.

On 4th, a 4 train passes underneath. I can tell by how it has that particular electronic whining sound that the R142 has and I know the 6 hasn't used any R142s in at least five years. Another shitty vintage store full of CHAPS, J Crew Factory and maybe Vineyard Vines. The pool hall where Louis CK went with Parker Posey in the episode of Louie where she dies. That was a weird show.

Did I just pass by Jerry Saltz in the rain outside of Village Cinema? I don't know. He could have just been another sexagenarian Jewish man in tortoise P3 frames that was of average height.

To walk the streets of New York is to dwell in the past tense. You walk by your old barber shop it’s closed down and then you go past a former union hall that used to be the Rugby store and now it sells retro sneakers to people who are wistful because they couldn't afford them as kids. You pass by the movie theatre your mom worked at as a kid to hide under scaffolding to duck the rain. Across the street in a storage facility used to be a sneaker store with an SB account. They used to be so prevalent. Once the rain dies you'll walk by your old therapists office and you'll remember the awkwardness that came when he said he'd be out next week because he's going to an AIPAC meeting and you said you supported Palestine. Incredibly you both agreed on a two state solution for the duration of that appointment.

The ice in this sparkling americano has melted and now it looks like I'm drinking a lager. This seems like a good place to stop.