I Know What This Is
A woman crossing 7th Avenue avoids getting pulled under a bike tire by a hairpin, a millisecond that hovers around her like some forcefield. Exasperated, having certainly encountered a series of low-grade horrors all afternoon, she says, “I am so tired of being menaced today.” Each word is tapped forcefully with an index finger, as if to ash out a cigarette, as if to snuff out the day.
On the subway, I watch a mother take a photo of her sleeping daughter with her cellphone’s front-facing camera. She is holding tight to a glittering party favor bag decorated with a rainbow arch of butterflies. At the center, in loopy cursive, it winks: thank you for fluttering by!
A couple fights on the other side of the train car. The wronged party asserts, “It feels like you’re judging me.” The other threatens to get off as the subway lurches into its next station. The judged says that’s not why she said it. The judge had asked her what she ate today, that’s what started this. A few minutes later, they are laughing, feelings folded away to fuel a later argument.
Someone lets go of two balloons across the street from a church in my neighborhood with some level of ceremony. It is late and dark but the twins spin upwards, two silver coins falling in reverse, catching and reflecting light as it is available. The releaser turns to watch their ascension for only a moment. The smattering of other people walking by can’t seem to look away.
I’m waiting for my friends in a coffee shop manned by a barista who looks like The Cure’s Robert Smith, if only for the hair, but also for the eyeliner. A former Bachelor walks by the floor-to-ceiling windows, arms stickered in tattoos he didn’t have while on television, hands pushing the stroller of an infant he also did not have. He is with his wife, who he did not meet through the puppeteering of producers and lavish, international dates, because, like me, she was a teenager while his season aired. Regardless, the sighting sings inside my stomach, trills like a penny slot machine’s jackpot bells. It grosses me out how exciting it is to see a software sales executive turned reality star turned podcaster flounce through their day, but I can’t pretend to be above it. I text the shortlist of people who would possibly care to know. It’s possible they do.
Another afternoon, at MoMA, I am no better than anyone else because I am also addicted to my cellphone, but I feel myself unhinge in response to the volume of people who are looking at the art through the unfocused, smudged screens in their hands. I am being very irritating in my solo-quest to make meaning, the way almost anyone can be when strolling around rooms of modern art with headphones on. I know I am no better than anyone else because I am also addicted to my cellphone. I am listening to Adrianne Lenker sing directly into my skull and staring at a very simple Matisse that depicts a little pink table, a basket, and three limes. Or what I think are three limes. But what the MoMA website clarifies are apples. Eye of the beholder. Eye of the iPhone-holder. It does something like move me, but I can’t say why.
The museum is the permanent home to quite a few famous paintings, namely Dalí’s melting clocks, Warhol’s soup cans, and van Gogh’s swirling and starry night. Crowds form around them like red carpet paparazzi, and it feels as if any second a cacophony of, “Over here! Meryl, over here!” will break out. The lesser-known pieces in each wing are ambivalent to the inattention, smiling tightly for those who deign to spend a moment with them over their celebrity counterparts. I hang out with Méret Oppenheim’s fur-covered teacup until I imagine it feels loved. The crowd formed around The Persistence of Memory lock-steps together, side to side, swaying as if on a ship.
Isn’t it exciting to see something we already know? Someone we have seen stretched across our televisions? Something printed in textbooks, scanned and reprinted to portray “November” inside a wall calendar? Isn’t fame just a form of repetition? A bicep curl of attention, building meatier muscle over time? I remember someone in college poetically describing how muscles often grow through violence, the tearing of fibers. Maybe fame is created by a similarly possessing, brutal force. What is a “greatest hit” if not a song bludgeoned black and blue? From a certain headspace, a “breakout star” might conjure the image of shattered glass. For something to even appear in the court of public opinion, it’s made “the cut.” But maybe I’m losing the thread. I am allowed to, this is my oft-abandoned Substack.
How a painting becomes known is far different from how a software sales executive becomes known, of course, but to recognize either in public is a lime/apple off the same tree. In the case of van Gogh, he had to die first, the famous sky re-created from memory, depicting the view from his window at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum. In the case of the Bachelor, he had to date 30 women on camera, and in turn received the opportunity to dance on another popular show, publish a book hawking relationship advice, and sell a line of essential oils (with a bizarrely, presently private Instagram account). The unspoken, unthought truth of it is: I have seen you somewhere else, and you, factually, are rare, but somehow, now, you, as close to real as it gets, are really, truly in front of me! Regardless of the medium, it’s evocative to shuffle through the mind’s storage bin and match a file to what we see. When the fiction blooms into a tangible reality.
Of course, we also form our own attachments and connections to these subjects, create long-lasting memories of our experiences of them. We hitch our own emotions to art, music, television, people, places, things – lions, tigers, and bears, oh my. This is not news, of course, but it sweetens the recognition, softens the hard candy of my general disdain. In an indifferent world, and as bloodhounds for meaning, maybe this form of mirroring works to shrink a small corner of our surroundings into something that fits in a back pocket. Maybe in this way, we find things a little less hostile, a little less endless. A little less menaced.
A movie ends at the Angelika, where I’ve spent a lot of evenings lately, and a nearby patron points to a name while the credits roll towards the out-of-frame heavens. She whisper-shouts, “It’s you!” A series of necks twist in anticipation. Who? A bashful hand covers a face.
At a free, outdoor concert in Central Park, my friends and I keep thinking we are seeing the actor Paul Mescal, but we are actually seeing a stranger, who consciously or not, is doing Paul Mescal Drag. We are tricked by a little pseudo-mullet, a little earring, a little tote bag, and a little pair of athletic shorts. Comically, this stranger seems to be on parade for us, darting back and forth for hours, as if daring one of us to approach and ask, “Sorry, but are you…?” To me, it is performance art. But also proof that we are always searching and scanning to recognize something we already know, a face we have seen, perhaps to ground ourselves in a reality crafted by our own familiarities. Awww, the illusion of control, blinking its wet dog eyes up at us, wagging its tail! Let me scratch under your chin and avoid what I don’t already understand.
All of this reminds me of the way the walk home always feels faster, how the rows of stoops and storefronts can seem unending in the uncaffeinated morning, yet be blazed by in the evening with only certain landmarks catching my attention. Yes, a Dunkin Donuts can be famous, too. A yellow house. A chair bolted to the sidewalk outside a laundromat. I love both sides of this magic trick.
So now you know where this is going… you pull the mask off the monster and exclaim “It’s Old Man Jenkins and a set up to seeing the beauty in the familiar and in the unexpected turns!” But then Scooby-Doo blows a huge cloud of vape smoke. And you notice Velma has had Lasik surgery, but also, three eyes. And then the clocks start melting! This is how surrealism is done, yes? Every pizza counter guy is Dalí. Even in this universe, me and those guys have unmatched rapport.
This past weekend, my friend Viv and I saw Joe Jonas taking pictures with two women steps away from the stairs descending into the pit of the subway. He smiled politely, then kept walking. We did not stop, instead shared in an extended moment of marveling, with each station stop on the train somehow a reminder of the sighting. Was that? It was. And one more thing. I remember the glossy fold-out posters of him and his brothers, tucked at the center of J-14 magazine, slightly ruined by the nature of staples and uncareful teenage hands. Remembering his birthday, not for fandom, but as metadata of related birthdays of 3 of my middle school friends. And there he was, just a man on a Saturday. And how much had changed. It was as remarkable and unremarkable as any moment can be. Meaning -ful and -less, familiar and uncertain. No real conclusion, just vibes, whatever.
Big love,
kaylasomething