NYC mannequin

NYC Mannequin, New York City, New York

Everything is going to be alright

My favorite work of art I saw in New York City was Guido van der Werve's everything is going to be alright.

Like the somewhat over-employed metaphor of Walter Benjamin’s angel of history, propelled into the future as it looks back at the ruins of the past, our man at the front (the artist himself) is a paradoxical figure of fearlessness.

You can read more about it here and watch a 30 second excerpt here. 

Bald mannequin

Bald Mannequin, New York City, New York

Money pool

Statue, New York City, New York

Midtown mannequin

Midtown Mannequin, New York City, New York

NYC

Hotel, New York City, New York

Hold that note

Probably the favorite moment of my trip to New York City is when I was standing in the back of the Beacon Theater filled with several thousand people, and before the show itself started, the band was playing, and Mark Pender, Conan's trumpet player, was doing this thing where he plays a note on the trumpet, non-stop, for this terrifically long time, like so long you can't believe it's real, and everyone shouts, over and over again, "Hold that note!" while he goes up and down the aisles and across the stage of this beautiful, packed gold theater, and he's still playing this note. It was really spectacular. To see something live that was so incomprehensible you almost couldn't believe it, but it was real, and it wasn't YouTube, and it wasn't Photoshopped. It seemed like a metaphor to me. For how to do things right. You just find your note, and you keep playing it, for as long as you can, and maybe there's an audience.

Team Coco in NYC

I went to NYC to hang out with the Team Coco crew and see Conan tape his show live at the Beacon Theater. (I work with Team Coco.) It was a super great time. The best time I've had in a while. I loved being backstage, and being in the war room, and meeting Conan, and watching the writers perform at a comedy club, and meeting people I work with and hadn't met before. Great trip!

Hey, fuck you

This is a photograph I took of myself and my friend, photographer Siege, in Brooklyn on my last night in New York. I'm the girl one skulking around in the background, and Siege is the boy one making an obscene gesture in the mirror. In case you weren't clear.

Mr. Siege lives in an apartment in Williamsburg that is one of the coolest apartments I've ever seen. It's like a human bento box, and you are the sushi. Every time I go out there, I suggest they adopt me. This time, I offered to sleep on a cot in the kitchen, but Siege said the morning light coming through the windows would wake me. I guess that's a no.

We took pictures in the bathroom because the bathroom in this pad is my favorite room. All blood red tile and silver sinks and a shower like a car wash. It's a sexy beast.

Taking pictures of Siege was horrible and embarrassing, like if you were forced to write a sentence in front of Faulkner or something. You think you bring something to the table? Ha-ha. No. You do not.

I ended up hanging around by the toilet while Siege made this lewd gesture, and there you have it. Next time, I'll either try and be more confident, or maybe I'll just take pictures of people who don't know how to take photographs.

Mirrors

Today, I met with a literary agent. Right now, I don't have one. Although, I have had a few. This one emailed me a few days ago, and he had sold a book in my milieu, as it were, so I decided to meet with him. Usually, I reply, "Not interested, thanks," as if I could not even be bothered to be grammatically correct.

In any case, these things go as these things go, and before long, it was clear what we were talking about was the idea of me writing a nonfiction book about the adult movie industry. This is a subject upon which I remain torn. I believe that if your life takes you a place, and you bear witness, you have a responsibility to testify. I do not feel that I have testified fully.

If you know me (or even if you don't, really), you know I am very competitive and very driven. I do not like to perceive myself as having failed at anything, ever. So, I'll have to think it over. I don't have to live there, but it requires a return, nevertheless, and I'll have to consider if that's a move I want to make.

NYC

It's nice to wake up in one city, and find yourself in another by noon. Another day, another night, another hotel room, another city. So far, Manhattan is treating me well. I got a manicure in black, got into trouble with Miss Wendy, went to a party, rode around in cabs, and ended up eating complicating cheeses and sipping enigmatic wines. Not bad, for 24 hours.

Now, it's just me and the hotel room and the TV, which is probably what it's supposed to be. Mostly, the conversation veered all over the place, but some of the time, it was, like, what is this that controls us: chaos or intention? I told somebody that if you can envision it, it will happen, but I'm not even sure that I believed it, although, increasingly, I'm not sure that I don't believe it, if you know what I mean, and maybe you do.

Anyway, the bed is made and ready to be rumpled, the manicure is still intact, metaphorically speaking, if you know what I mean, and tomorrow I'm going to work, and going to some meetings, and we'll see what happens in between. There are so many people on the sidewalks. And the skyscrapers are so high they almost touch the sky. And before I know it, it'll be gone.

Spread your love, baby

I'll be in NYC later this week, partly for a work thing and partly for a fun thing. I'm still thinking about moving to NYC, so if you know of a sublet or an apartment that's coming available, let me know. Next month is my birthday, which means anything can happen.

In any case, I'm looking forward to seeing my crazy friends from work and doing some other fun stuff.

My overlord, The Harpoonist, says I should move to NYC if my heart so desires, so there's that. (Also, she is a great book doctor, so hire her if you have an ill book.)

Now, I just need $100,000 to fall out of the sky, and my life will be complete.

Make it happen, people.

Chinatown

Me and Katie full of Vietnamese in Chinatown, NYC, Christmas Day, 2009, by Clayton Cubitt.

(Click picture for bigger.)

After that, we trekked uptown and watched "Avatar" in 3D with our super-cool shades.

Choke

I was watching that movie "Choke," and I was watching the guy stagger around while pretending to choke, after I had watched another TV show about a guy who ran Ponzi schemes on people who like to gamble, and for some reason I thought about this guy who got into a car accident in front of an apartment in which I lived years ago.

I don't know. Maybe the trigger was all the noise from outside. New York City really is the city that never sleeps. You can tell because it never stops talking to you. So, that was in the back of my head, too, when I thought about this kid. I lived in the back of the building of this place on Los Feliz Boulevard. That's on the east side of LA. The road there is big, and busy, and, sure enough, about once a week there was a pretty bad accident somewhere along the road. You could hear it.

But this one was particularly bad, as I recall. Big enough a smash to send me running out the door, for some reason, and down a couple flights of stairs, and out the front of the building, where there was this kid sitting in this car that was all smashed and spun around so it was facing the wrong way, and all the traffic stopped. I went up to him. He was dazed, and bloody, and he kept saying over and over again something to the effect of, "I don't know what happened." I took off my hoodie, I think, or another shirt that I was wearing over a wifebeater or something like that, and I gave it to him, and I think we wrapped his arm in it. I don't know what happened to him after that.

Traffic brought strange things in LA. There was another time at the big intersection where there's a Blockbuster on -- I don't remember, Sunset or something. And I walked out, and everything was stopped, all the traffic all ways, and a car in the middle on the other side, and nobody doing anything. For some reason, I trotted over to the car, and I went over to the passenger seat, where the driver, who had gotten out of the car, was standing in front of the guy who was still in the passenger seat. I guess there was a drive-by shooting right before that, because the Hispanic kid in the passenger seat was dead, from being shot, and the driver was screaming, in Spanish, so I didn't know what he was saying. The front of the passenger kid's white shirt had two big bloody handprints on it that were from where his friend, the driver, had put his hands on him, except he was already dead.

I don't know why I thought about all this stuff, watching some stupid movie on the couch, listening to this truck that has been running outside for what seems like forever. I mean, is there even enough gas in it to have run this far? I guess I am trying to sort things out in my head. Like, LA was crazy, and where I went after that was something else altogether, and I thought maybe, I thought this exactly, actually, in New York City: This is where my future lives. And the movie kept playing.

Filth

I'm staying in Hell's Kitchen. Or Midtown West? I am sure you can figure out which description I like better. Surely, there are wonderful things to be said about various other parts of New York City, from the Village to Brooklyn to whatever the hell is Alphabet City. But I love this part of town, because, in this weird way, it reminds me of LA. Not LA, per se, but like the seedy underbelly-ness of the east-end of Sunset. Yes, yes, I know it used to be much filthier here, I wandered through it then, but it has retained some of its stickiness. The random strip clubs linger, offering totally dated photographs of girls who have long since disappeared, and who knows what they're doing in the back rooms, except for sure it's illegal.

Every few years, every few months, I say, oh, I am tired of writing about X! Whatever X happens to be. Usually something filthy. Then, a month will pass, maybe more, maybe a few years. Then, there I am, right back at it again. When I was stuck waiting for a flight in DC, at one point, I took out my laptop and fiddled some with my novel. Sitting in the middle of all those people made me realize how filthy it is. I suppose I usually then wonder: What's wrong with me? But, hey, maybe it's in my DNA. Or something, somewhere deeper.

In a way, that's what I like best about NYC, what I wasn't sure I liked about it at all in the first place: it's freakin' filthy. I grew up in California, where "new" is mid-century modern, and the sky is made of gold, and we all drive fuel-efficient unicorns. By comparison, Jesus Christ, New York is a fucking dump. The stench of urine, and sidewalks no power washer could ever clean, and even the snow is a mess of dirt, and grime, and slip. But I like that. That feels about right.

In any case, I suppose this is a dress rehearsal for moving here soon. That is what I want for 2010. Won't I be happy then? We would like to think.

Bed

I got stuck in DC on the way to NYC, on account of the storm, that left all the snow, and the endless stampeding herd that is humanity. Life could be worse.

I get nervous flying, sometimes. During the ascent, the man in the seat next to me told me: "The day He pulled you from your mother's womb, He gave you a set number of days." That was supposed to console me. "But how many!" I wailed. He had no answer for me.

Tomorrow, I'll be in another place.

Sublet

A possible sublet in the West Village looms upon the horizon. It's all still up in the air, but moving to NYC seems closer daily. This would enable me to get up there, then find a place there, rather than try and find a place there from here, which isn't easy.

I can't say "I've wanted to move to New York since ..." because I don't remember a time when I didn't want to live there. My father grew up in Flatbush, in Brooklyn, so I've lionized it since, well, forever.

To live there would be like a dream that you couldn't quite let yourself dream, and then you dreamed it, and then it turned out it wasn't a dream at all -- it was real.

Apartment

I'm looking for an apartment in NYC. In the Village or Brooklyn, ideally. Got a lead? Email me! susannahbreslin [at] earthlink [dot] net.

Strand

One of the highlights of my trip to New York City last week was a visit to The Strand, one of the oldest bookstores in the city, which features 18 miles of books. I about died. It was this book-lovers dream come true.

And it wasn't just the books, right? The place was packed, filled with people who had come from all over the city and all over the world to stare at, and fondle, and buy books. Nothing but books, everywhere you looked.

In 2005, I lost most of my books, but I am slowly replacing them. I bought a trio of Faulkners -- As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and The Sound and the Fury -- and I even found a copy of a book I never expected to find, City of Glass: The Graphic Novel. I've read them all before, but nothing beats having them in your possession. Then they're there for you whenever you need them.

When I got home, I started re-reading As I Lay Dying, which is probably my favorite Faulkner novel, although that's like picking your favorite child.

And at night it is better still. I used to lie on the pallet in the hall, waiting until I could hear them all asleep, so I could get up and go back to the bucket. It would be black, the shelf black, the still surface of the water a round orifice in nothingness, where before I stirred it awake with the dipper I could see maybe a star or two in the bucket, and maybe in the dipper a star or two before I drank. After that, I was bigger, older.

I wondered what agents and editors would say today if Faulkner wasn't Faulkner. What's with the bucket, Bill? Enough with the bucket already! Get on with it and tell the damn story.

Last night, I dreamed I was trapped in a bathroom with Paul Auster. I put my hands over my face in horror. "The only way this could have been worse is if this was Faulkner!" I wailed.

Novel

Here's an excerpt from my novel, Happy, and a photo I took last week of Andy Warhol's Skull at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Over time, there was a certain numbing. Occasionally, it was as if he was observing his actions through a pane of smoked glass. With increasing frequency, he awoke from night terrors in which he could not locate his firearm. In the company of Charon's chattel, he had been forced to admit that whatever delicate system enabled him to do this job was likely being irreparably damaged by doing it. Of course, it was hard to know, when you were surrounded by homicidal maniacs, when you bore witness to death every day you lived, when you got home at night and the guy in the mirror looked a lot like you, only deader.