Street art, intentional and otherwise

Small-scale sightseeing in NYC

One casualty of no longer spending much time on social medias is that I haven’t had a convenient repository for the NYC street photos I occasionally snap. The city provides an endless array of novel sights, and I always carry a camera in my pocket. I let more things slip through my fingers than I manage to capture, but I manage to get in a few good ones - they just don’t make it farther than my camera roll. 

UNTIL NOW. Having a captive newsletter audience is a great substitute for the algorithmic vagaries of the apps! So I’ll kick off this Friday email with a handful of recent favorites before the usual weekly diary entry. Enjoy New York! 

Okay, okay. I have a few dozen more of these, so let’s not use them all up at once. 

You may have seen the other day that I announced I’m doing a theater show. I’ve been quiet about it, but it’s something I’ve been working on slowly for about half a year now. It’s also something I’d like to turn into a series, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. One thing I’ll say here that I won’t share with the rabble: The show contains an incredibly elaborate and bizarre prop that’s unlike anything I’ve ever chosen to create. I’m not sure when and if I’ll ever share any images of it, but I’ll assure you it’s a doozy. It’s not finished yet, but it’s been quite an experience to go out on a limb in creating it. And for better or worse, it’s an artifact that will outlast the ephemeral moment of the project - though I’m not about to suggest that’s a good thing. (Spoiler: It’s GROSS.) 

As the project ramps up, I’ve still been finding time to read and stuff. Here’s what we’ve got: 

BOOKS FINISHED

• Dhalgren, by Samuel R. Delaney: I started this book in May and worked through it gradually over many months. Delaney is a highly regarded Black queer sci-fi author; I’d read one of his books many years ago (Triton), but this was another animal entirely. It’s a stretch to categorize it as a genre work - it’s too big and unruly to be anything but itself - and yet that patina gives it part of its power. I’m planning to write about it at greater length over the next couple of weeks, so I won’t belabor it here - suffice to say, it was an experience to remember. 

• The Lie and How We Told It, by Tommi Parrish: A contemporary graphic novel about friendship and identity by a non-binary Australian cartoonist. The lovely painted artwork tells a story of two old friends who unexpectedly meet up and spend an evening hashing out old times, it also contains a graphic-novel-within-the-graphic-novel featuring a spare story about a strained romance that reflects the main plot. Lovely in many ways, but ultimately quite sad. 

• Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson: My first book by Johnson, and a very memorable one. This is a slim novella that somehow encompasses the entire life of a rugged loner who lived in the Idaho panhandle from the late 19th Century through the 1960s. I forced myself to down it in one sitting, and I think that’s the way to do it - it unfolds in a series of images and anecdotes, some funny, some strange, some devastating, that lead up to more than the sum total of its parts - kind of like, well, a life. Existence in all of its grit and glory is here, but very sparely depicted. I don’t think I’ve read anything quite like it. 

• I Want to Be a Vase, by Julio Torres and Julian Glander: A very tongue-in-cheek kids’ book with digital illustrations about a plunger that - yup - wants to be a vase. Torres is a remarkable writer and comedian, co-creator of the great Spanish-language HBO horror sitcom Los Espookys and star of his own whacko stand-up special, My Favorite Shapes - both highly recommended. The book was about what you’d expect from the concept, but hopefully poised to help a whole generation of kids tear down the whole system.

BOOKS STARTED

• Sandman, Vol. 5: A Game of You, by Neil Gaiman et al: 

• Head Lopper and the Crimson Tower, by Andrew MacLean

• The Picnic at Hanging Rock, by Joan Lindsay

MOVIES WATCHED

• The Murder of Mr. Devil (1970, dir. Ester Krumbachová): I haven’t seen too many films from the Czech New Wave, but the ones I have all bore the mark of Krumbachová, who was best known as an art director, costume designer, and screenwriter; this is her sole directorial credit. It’s essentially a two-hander, the characters being a lonely spinster with culinary gifts and an old paramour from her past who comes over for dinner and eventually reveals himself to be, yes, the devil. If you’ve read the title you know where this is headed, but it’s still a hoot. Mr. Devil is such an egregiously, solipsistically, unattractively BELIEVABLE villain, with his bland certainty that his slovenly masculinity is superior to his counterpart’s industrious cleverness, that it’s a delight to anticipate his inevitable fall. Krumbachová sets the whole thing in an impeccable little curiosity-cabinet of an apartment, with subtle surprises tumbling out of every nook. And at just over an hour, it’s exactly the right length.  

• Birdboy: The Forgotten Children (2015, dir. Pedro Rivero, Alberto Vázquez): An astonishingly dark animated feature from Spain, about a bunch of animal-headed children losing their innocence in a postapocalyptic world of addiction, violence, and trauma. I can’t exactly recommend it, and I never want to see it again, but the hand-drawn animation is spare and lovely, and it has an undeniable vibe that it sticks to at all costs. One of those movies that I respect without exactly liking.

Until next time!