7

There's a different New York out there, and it is a strange and appetizing place. It's more like the New York I guess I'd imagined - someplace where, on entering a bar, you see someone you had a memorable conversation with months before, and then begin the ritual of drink-buying and culture-discussing and jazz-musing. I should back up a few steps. There's a really amazing older gentleman that comes into Naidre's very often named Stanley - I may have mentioned him before, as the "culture critic" that took a liking to me above all the rest of the staff. Tonight, after watching me deal with what was basically one of the most harrowing days at this job so far, he asked me if I wanted to go get drinks with him. We wandered the Carroll Gardens bar scene a little, ending up at a Mediterranean bar where I had some delicious sangria and talked about things with him.

Stanley is an amazing guy. You say, "I was watching this Scorcese movie the other day . . ." and once you're finished, Stanley will say, "yeah, you know, Scorcese's an interesting character. We talked once about . . ." You say, "you ˆknowˆ Scorcese?" He'll say, "well, we've talked a few times, especially after he stole my opening line at a conference we were both at." So on and so forth. Stanley has been everywhere and seen everything - but he's not a name-dropper, and he wants to talk about things that interest you. In the bar, we ran into a guy that Stanley had discussed Thelonious Monk with - Stanley happens to be an expert on the subjects of both jazz and blues, as evidenced by the novel that he wrote about two jazz musicians struggling to keep their relationship alive underneath growing racial tension. Again, almost inexplicably, Stanley took an interest in me, giving me his essay about Quentin Tarantino and then earlier this week, his novel. Which is freaking brilliant, by the way.

I listened to these two New York men - neither of them natives, but there's really no such thing anyway - talk about music and movies and jazz and Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington and Wagner and Tristan and Isolde, and realized that this is what I'd always imagined from New York. A place where you can wander into a bar and happen on an expert in some random field, and then just soak up the knowledge that is taken and exchanged so casually. I'm sipping on sangria in a tiny bar in the back alleys of Brooklyn, talking to one world-renowned jazz/blues/culture critic and one enigmatic classical music expert who offered himself as a "neophyte" in the jazz world but started off by comparing Beiderbeck's duality of piano and cornet to one of Monk's bank members who also played the violin. Brilliant, amazing people walk these streets every day, and I brush shoulders with them. There's a wealth of untapped possibilities, conversations; trafficking of knowledge and a library of stories to be had.

After the day I had, suffice to say I deserved that night. I closed at Carroll Gardens today, where the AC was being fixed. Which means they had to turn it off. I was hot. Burning up hot, for two or so hours while the worryingly flirtatious AC guys tried to fix it. Sinclair said, "yo, pay the AC guys." So they come to me with a 500 dollar invoice, and I pay it to them. Janice calls an hour or so later, I tell her what's up, and she says, "but you didn't pay them the full 500, right?" I'm like, " . . . what?" She says, "They were paid 110 yesterday. You paid them the full 500, godammit." And at this point, this rush goes through me: panic, for one thing, and absolute, crushing rage. By all that is sacred, if you have one person pay part, wouldn't you tell the other person not to pay the full bill? She didn't get angry at me - I would have legitimately looked her in the eye, said "screw you" and walked - but the whole situation just drove home exactly how ridiculous this job is. What's best of all? They didn't even fully fix it - apparently she'd told everyone ˆbutˆ me how to tell whether the AC was fixed or not, and left strict instructions not to pay them unless certain conditions were required. Thanks for that communication, guys. Thanks a ton.

Trip-hop has taken over my world. Massive Attack has become the soundtrack for New York, very suddenly. "Exchange" and "Black Milk" from the "Mezzanine" album. "Angelica," by Lamb. "Le Monde," by Thievery Corporation. "Fixed Income," by DJ Shadow. Something about those smooth beats, those sensual rhythms, that certain aura of mystery that goes back to something elemental in the the chord structure that I'll never understand - these things have become the sound of New York to me. Was something else the sound earlier? I can't remember. This summer seems to have stretched on for decades.

I spent an hour two nights ago listening to Jars of Clay's "Sad Clown" on repeat. The reason why? There's a piano solo about two and a half minutes in that has been cathartic for me many times, and I suddenly missed the feeling of keys under my fingers really desperately.

There is something mystical - spiritual - about music, isn't there? The way two notes can strike together and be . . . perfect. There's something in their very nature that causes them to stand together and be better than they ever could be alone. The context matters more than we let on, though - major and minor sound right and wrong at different times, depending entirely on the world they exist in. It's such a beautiful metaphor, even. And then moving on, two sequential notes - just two notes - can set a mood for an entire song. Tricky's "Aftermath" springs to mind, with that opening riff of just two notes that give you a blueprint for an entire song. That motif is both brilliant and elegant in its simplicity. It's just incredible how two tones are, in their very wavelengths, made for each other, or made to create something beautiful and unique together.

Also: ass tat.