July 20, 2022, 12:15 a.m.
On ❝Scenes❞ // Competitive Eye Contact, Open VCR Night, Punk Service Disruption
Geistlist
Been thinking about Scenes¹: the kind you read of your dead art heroes being part of. What sound like casual encounters, fights, hookups, arguments, lectures, and readings in basements and lofts, now imbued with historical weight and teleological surety.
¹ Synonymous to/newly christened vibe shifts?
Friday: in New Canaan I saw a photo of Philip Johnson and David Whitney jumping in their bed (though David did tend to sleep in the Brick House while Philip took the Glass House—they mirror each other, if the mirror had a ⅔ reduction lens), and Andy Warhol was just…there, if you look carefully by a nightstand, being background not foreground.
Sunday: finally got to catch up with my local historian hero and neighbor Ada Calhoun at a book launch event for Also A Poet, which is all about Scenes: documenting them, missing them, growing up with/in them, and confronting your dad for being more invested in them than he seemed interested in you.
Parts of the internet I hang in seem really excited about Dimes Square being a new Scene that’s either finally being born or mercifully dying. Hoping to ask Christian Lorentzen about that tomorrow night. The more subterranean things I did and found and made during the deeper parts of the pandemic felt at the time like a Scene being born. I’m fairly confident Scenes are subject to some cultural version of double-slit experiment where every essay, memoir, or hagiography of a poet is a quantum observation, but what about a photon asking whether or not it was one that got observed?
Hope to see any of you at any permutation of the below Things. If cost is the obstacle to your attendance, reply and and can often work that out, no questions asked.
¶. Saturday 6pm: The 2022 Eyelympics
As a proud member of the International Eyelympic Committee, I’m pleased to announce its return: the tournament-style professionally-refereed age-old sport of staring contest, featuring live eyesport commentary by local celebrity drag queen power couple, eye contact professionals, and RuPaul costume consultants/critics Misty Meaner & Mocha Lite. Sworn-to-bribery referees include famed local metafiction analyst & Vice President of the James Joyce Society Cathryn Piwinski, PhTBD and living Nicolas Cage mausoleum The Eye of Providence. All attendees welcome to compete at not additional fee, or just ogle.
The City Reliquary backyard ¤ July 23 ¤ $15
¶. Monday 7pm: Open VCR Night
- BYO VHS, or use one of ours
- Anyone may eject at any time
- If you eject, you must INSERT TAPE
Ephemeral film critic (the films not the critic) Matthew Hawkins of FORT90 onhand for VHS identification attempts & Twitch chat commentary.
¶. Wednesday July 27 night: Punk Rock Service Disruption
My favorite linguistic situationist & honored to say very own personal friend Nathan Repasz is one of those heartthrob drummers with a boom vocal mic, in a band called Imitation Crab. Just spent 30 minutes regexing through my 2010 email archives and can’t find it, but I recall The Coldplay Messenger (Coldplay’s fan newsletter at that time written by a pseudoymous “Roadie #42”) once interviewing the first band photographer, a pal from college on his first gig. Feel like that’s what I landed designing these: instagram.com/p/CgOArneM4iy. DM @crabimitation if you wanna go wheatpasting in the night.
Our Wicked Lady ¤ July 27 ¤ $13.70
∞. Prank on the New Museum
I managed to buy old.museum a while back; finally coded it so it redirects to New Museum’s homepage, but with a precisely 20-year inverse delay.