Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - Postcards from New York: West Twenty-seventh Street & Eighth Avenue.
When you visit you’ll notice things aren’t the same this year as they were last year. This is old news but you should be prepared for the changes all the same. You won’t even get hints of what the city was like before. Maybe an eighth of the people who would just be out and about and doing things are now out and about and doing things. Weekends are slow; Sundays especially so. Keep everything in perspective. Although the memory of the virus’ arrival in New York in March feels as though it happened five, maybe ten years ago, it was just this past March –––– nine months ago. Nine months in the lifetime of this city is a blink, so it’s still taking time. And it will still take quite some time. There’s word that the vaccines are ready and that they’ll be distributed in small rounds before the end of the year. Though this is promising, it’s not everything. It’s true that New York the untouchable and indestructible has fallen. It’s also true that it can and it will get up.
Saturday, December 5, 2020 - Tenth Avenue & Fifty-third Street - Reflections on TQ’s “Westside” by Jordan Myers
Walking through the rain and drinking a decaf latte, TQ’s Westside came back to me. Maybe I’ve listened to the song two or three times since 2000; it was released in September of 1998. This morning when I listened to the song again for the first time in over a decade and a half, I nearly wept. The song’s lyrics are layered with emotion -––– reflections and memories of friends and family members who’ve been incarcerated, or have passed on.
This morning, it wasn’t just the song’s lyrics that hit me, but also the distance travelled from 1998 –––– when I remember listening to this song often, as a teenager growing up in Indianapolis, and gaining my first glimpses of what adulthood might look like, and feel like ––––– to one rain-soaked Saturday in Manhattan ––––– knowing more than I ever have before about the pain of loss; the value of patience; and the power of speaking the truth on a track, despite the pain: “One day everything's gonna be fine / But until that day my only reply / Is ‘Westside till I die.’"
Maybe it was the rain. Maybe it was the espresso, sprinting through my mind and softening my heart. Maybe it was the grey clouds hanging over this city, after almost a year of this pandemic that made this morning’s walk, as well as the rediscovery of TQ’s song so important. Something happened this year. And even if the lyrics in “Westside” don’t quite capture the facts of what this city has withstood and gone through, the emotional essence of the song without a doubt, does.
Thursday, December 3, 2020 - Eighth Avenue & West Fifty-fifth Street, so we listened. by Jordan Myers
Something happened at the word go, which you said on a Thursday in December while crossing 8th Avenue at dusk. From there, I just remember everything accelerated and we no longer worried about keeping up with time. Small things like miles, distances, and the idea of here or there, we left behind. Then just before nightfall, West 55th Street started whispering secrets and memories, so we listened.
Wednesday, December 2, 2020 - West 46th Street - “We went running around in circles waiting for some kind of flash of light, a sign.” by Jordan Myers
We went running around in circles waiting for some kind of flash of light, a sign. A few white clouds against an all blue sky here or there would be enough to keep us going, for a while.
On a Tuesday in early December I remember we were walking across West Forty-sixth Street –––– over the bridge above the tracks between Tenth Avenue and Eleventh Avenue –––– and the light was just right. It wasn’t just that the sky was blue, or how blue the sky was.
We had seen blue skies before, had felt them even. This was something more. Something eternal had happened and even if we couldn’t explain it at the time, it was obvious. It couldn’t have been more clear.
Monday, November 30, 2020 - Unhook the Stars (1996). by Jordan Myers
It’s impossible to watch Unhook the Stars (1996) for the first time through without thinking something tragic is just about to happen. The first half hour of the film features drinking, domestic violence, child endangerment, as well as an eerily strained relationships between a mother and her daughter.
The mother in question is Mildred (Gena Rowlands), a widow who lives pretty much alone in a towering and expansive house. When we first meet Mildred, her daughter, Ann Mary Margaret (Moira Kelly), is refusing to thank her for covering her morning paper route. (Yes, a paper route). Mildred stresses that she wants her daughter to take more responsibility for her life; and Ann Mary, in response, expresses that she just wants the hell out from under her mother’s house ––– so she leaves.
The aforementioned domestic violence takes place between Mildred’s neighbors, Monica (Marissa Tomei) and Frankie (David Thornton), and is happened upon by Mildred within the film’s first few beats. While Monica tries to figure out what to do with her relationship with Frankie, she entrusts Mildred with the care of their son, JJ (Jake Loyd - most famous for his portrayal of young Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: Episode 1(1999)). Having watched her daughter leave, Mildred is happy to begin looking after JJ. And the two, on balance, take a liking to each other.
During the first hour of this film, on account of its crawling pace, I nearly turned it off. Even more so, I couldn’t quite feel, believe, or detect any chemistry between Mildred and JJ -–––– the difference in their ages, of course, makes this a long stretch as well as a big ask. Then something happened.
Monica and Frankie work things out. JJ’s and Mildred’s time together winds itself to its natural close, and Mildred is confronted with the realities of her life. Before finding her footing once more, without anyone left to look after, she takes to sitting alone at bars and ordering back-to-back vodka martinis. It’s not that I was ever rooting against her, but Mildred, along with the film, grows just the right amount of backbone once she stops trying to solve everyone else’s problems, and starts considering her own.
Cyndi Lauper’s “Unhook the Stars” theme is an added bonus: “With time on my hands, I can make a new start.”
Sunday, November 29, 2020 - Box of Moonlight (1996). by Jordan Myers
There’s something freewheeling and irresistible going on in Tom DiCillo’s Box of Moonlight (1996), which is felt from the film’s first beat. The opening credits fill the screen over aerial footage of a countryside made up of vast expanses of green fields, blue lakes and clear skies. Yet it’s not just the landscape. It’s the feeling of flying that the aerial footage creates –––– a feeling that carries throughout the entire film. Later, once the closing credits roll, we learn that these shots were taken in and around Knoxville, Tennessee.
John Turturro plays Al Fountain, an electrical engineer who keeps seeing coffee and water being poured into mugs and cups at the same time as the coffee and water begins to disappear again. Also, he sees a young boy riding a bicycle and pedaling forward, yet the bicycle, as well as the boy, keep moving in reverse.
Fountain is stationed at a job away from his home in the suburbs of Chicago, and at a plant where he and his crew have been tasked with the good work of making windshield wipers en masse. The job gets called off, and Fountain and his crew are sent home early. However, they do still get their bonuses, and when viewed from afar, all is well in Fountain’s life. His wife, Deb (Annie Corley) and his young son, Bob (Alexander Goodwin), are waiting for him at home, and wondering whether he’ll make it back for the Fourth of July. Fountain doesn’t tell them that he could make it in time if he wanted to; instead, he rents a car –––– and starts driving. Not long thereafter, he meets Kid, “Or Buddy, or Buck, or the Kid. Or heck, you can just call me whatever,” (Sam Rockwell), as Kid’s 67 Ford Galaxie 500 is stalled alongside the road.
There’s a way to tell this story and shoot this film in a fashion that’s riddled with cliches and deprived of any and all originality. Fountain could just be a middling man wallowing in the shallows of middle-age while living in the suburbs of middle-America; and Kid could just serve as a caricature ––––– a reflection of Fountain’s polar opposite. Yet Box of Moonlight, with skill and with heart, weaves around these traps. Rockwell’s Kid is just too likable, “I’m off the grid!” he keeps repeating; and Turturro plays Fountain with such a compelling and beautiful balance between honest restraint and long-overdue abandon, that it’s impossible not to relate.
Saturday, November 28, 2020 - Sixth Avenue & West Forty-Eighth Street. by Jordan Myers
Once it was possible to believe in differences between distance and time. Now the truth is more evident. These changes, they’re inevitable. The island of Manhattan is a composite of emotional experiences –––– those that have already occurred are constantly blending with those that will. The fallacy is the inclination to believe that a separate line may be drawn between these timelines. It can’t.
The new pace of 2020 has illuminated these differences, and has brought truths to light that were once almost impossible to detect, though they were there all the same. These truths’ gradual revelation have been accelerated this year, which is impacting the island of Manhattan’s ability to hold vibrations and create experiences that were once frequent and common place.
This photo was taken at Sixth Avenue and West Forty-eighth Street. You may or may not be able to notice the changes. Though if you were here in person, and standing beneath these giant buildings, and looking out across the distance in a quiet and meditative state for long enough, they’d be obvious. You couldn’t miss them.
Friday, November 27, 2020 - City facades: Brooklyn Heights - Hicks & Clark. by Jordan Myers
After the dust had settled. Before it started to rain. While the sun was going down in July, maybe August as well. Once it started to get cold. While you were putting on your jacket. Just after I had loosened my tie. A Friday morning. Maybe a Sunday evening as well. When the wind started to pick up. Definitely then.
Thursday, November 26, 2020 - Happy Thanksgiving from C.Q.
We found acrylic paintings in the attic from years and years ago. Almost all of them felt unworldly and had voices of their own. Two were painted by the shore, facing the East River, and glancing north toward the Manhattan Bridge.
Happy Thanksgiving from Curlew Quarterly! We are grateful for our contributors, our subscribers, our readers and our supporters. Details regarding Issue No. 8 - 2020, forthcoming.
All of our best,
C.Q.
Wednesday, November 25, 2020 - City facades: Tenth Avenue. by Jordan Myers
At the end of the film we walk up Tenth Avenue on a cloudy and cold November morning, having survived.
Tuesday, November 24, 2020 - City facades: West 47th Street, between Tenth & Eleventh Avenue. by Jordan Myers
You’ll remember we were talking about cityscapes and seasons and wild imaginative skies over tree-lined streets at dawn. It all felt so expansive and quiet for November, but by that point the world had shifted into time-lapsed colors beyond praying beige and newly-devout crimson. Every morning was an epiphany back then. So we could just walk west across 47th Street together / with the sun’s rays flirting with the clouds every now and again / and nothing else, really, would need to be said.
Monday, November 23, 2020 - Eleventh Avenue’s ocean of yellow taxis. by Jordan Myers
Last week I watched an ocean of yellow taxis flood down Eleventh Avenue through the clouds, against the wind and amongst the rain. There must have been twelve of them. Or fifteen. I lost count. In my sleep, I have spent days thinking about the dance of light and shadows, how monsoons of the imagination resolve past lives and reset the subconscious. I thought of all of this on Eleventh Avenue, while waiting for an order of fish and chips from the Landmark Tavern. I had time. Then twelve or fifteen yellow taxis started flooding down Eleventh Avenue, and I watched them.
Sunday, November 22, 2020 - Happy birthday Billie Jean King. by Jordan Myers
Happy Birthday, Billie Jean King. Found this gem of an interview with her, taken by James Day in 1973 as a part of the program, “Day at Night.”Her energy and enthusiasm for the game is a lot of fun to tune in with. An excerpt below, the full interview, linked above.
____________________________
Day: You would make other changes in tennis. You've said, the game is caught up in tradition, trivia, and etiquette, when all that really matters is the caliber of play. You think a lot of it is nonsense I gather and that it could be changed without any real damage to the sport itself.
Jean King: Oh it will enhance the sport.
Day: How will it enhance it? And what sort of changes would you suggest?
Jean King: First of all, I'd like to see more crowd participation.
Day: Do you mean booing and cheering?
Jean King: Oh right on! That's great.
Day: Wouldn't that break your concentration?
Jean King: No. It's all in what you're brought up with. If you're brought up that way . . . golfers are brought up in that environment and it hurts them too in the long run.
Day: Would it make you feel better?
Jean King: I love it, because I like emotional involvement. I like to communicate and share with the audience there. And anybody who pays their hard-earned money at the end of the week or during the week that wants to come and watch us has a right to let it all hang out so to speak. And it's no good when they have to sit on their hands. They can't enjoy it.
Day: Wouldn't booing break that positive attitude that you have toward the game?
Jean King: No. If you're having a bad day and you're playing el-stinko tennis then they're gonna say, "Boo! You're playing badly." And you'll know. And at least you'd know that they're there and that they're not indifferent to you. And as an amateur athlete people are very indifferent to tennis, they're indifferent to me, they're indifferent to the men's tennis players, and it's not a good feeling. Because we are artists, and we like to perform.
Day: You are a performing artist; you view tennis not as something beyond the participating sport . . .
Jean King: Oh, definitely.
Day: But as a spectacle so to speak.
Jean King: We're entertainers, we hope that we can share a few moments of happiness, or whatever, or fun for people. And if you can't do that, then you've missed the whole point.
Saturday - November 21, 2020 - An everywhere. by Jordan Myers
I have been thinking / about an everywhere
that we could go to / all the time
Friday, November 20, 2020 - City facades: Carnegie Hall’s Seventh Avenue balcony. by Jordan Myers
Only the wind of Manhattan, your breath, the clouds –––– the lights / / The tick-tock of time / clockwise
- The balcony alongside Carnegie Hall; the one that looks out over Seventh Avenue.
Thursday, November 19, 2020 - City greenery: Central Park & MoJoosh reflections. by Jordan Myers
A few steps inside of Central Park, this morning I sat on a bench and sipped from a cup of English Breakfast tea. The park, like the city, was quiet, and the air was cool and crisp. A woman in a teal coat and black denims walked by and spoke “It’s pretty chilly out!” I looked out over the park and smiled, “A little.” She laughed, “A little?” Then waved goodbye.
A few moments later, knowing that I’d be heading down to Park Slope and interviewing MoJoosh’s founder, Ting, in a few hours, I enjoyed my first tea meditation: no setting a timer or anything; no counting breaths. Just stay silent and calm, and watch the trees and the leaves and the sky in the distance, and don’t do anything else until the cup of tea that you’re drinking from is empty. Or as Ting would put it, “You can forget about yourself and follow the tea.”