The Up Series

I wrote this beautiful song in the shower, and it was so good, so true, and so sincere. I imagined how well received it would be in an emotional sense, if not a critical one — that people would feel it as something so true, something that they understood from experience — inchoate sentiments they had yet to verbalize. However, there is the fact that I have no musical ability whatsoever, and a song is really nothing without music, is just a bad poem.

This was because I was really emotional, am still a little so, and was made so by the large cup of coffee I recently drank, as well as by the viewing of 42 Up. This is the last one of the series that is out on video. 49 Up is going to have a screening this fall at the New York Film Festival (this, a future note to myself). For those that do not know, the Up Series started in 1964 with Seven Up, a documentary that followed 14 British 7 year olds from different social strata, with the intention of critiquing class structures, showing how the rich kids were bound for further richness, and the poor kids for further poorness. Every seven years, Michael Apted and his crew followed up on the 14 subjects, looking at how their lives have progressed. It is an amazing film project for so many reasons, not the least of which is watching human beings grow — children grow into adults, happiness fade into sadness, sadness fade into happiness. I came across a lovely analogy that is so perfect I am going to have to quote it. It is from Vogue writer, Molly Haskell, “Amazing. . . the spectacle, as in time-lapse photography, of human beings taking shape before our eyes.”

I made the mistake of watching them into close a succession and got burnt out and a little tired of the series by 35 Up. The problem I had was that each film shows so much footage from the previous films as they show the progression of these subjects. The films were originally made for TV in the pre-DVD era and so all that footage is a refresher since they were aired every seven years. Watching it all in a couple of weeks, some of that footage seems boring and unnecessary, but I understand the necessity even if I did get bored by it at times.

But this last one, 42 Up, I enjoyed so much, having taken a short break between this and the previous one. It is so sad to watch these people age, as it probably is sad to watch anyone age, seeing them go through traumas (the death of parents, marriage, divorce, children, etc.) and looking all the worse for those traumas. It shows in their faces. And that these are things everyone goes through, that I will go through, is totally terrifying. Neil Hughes, who in Seven Up is a gorgeous, cute, sprightly young boy, is one of the saddest stories in this series. Something happens to him after that first film and I am not what it is, but he loses all that enthusiasm, that cuteness, and eventually becomes homeless, and it is so sad. All these stories are so sad, perhaps because they are so real – stories of divorce and raising kids by yourself in some bland council flat – that not everyone, not anyone, grows up to have a storybook life. But there is happiness to be found and most of the subjects by the time they turn 40 are all decent human beings, their rough edges being smoothed out, and with some wisdom gained through those years.

There is so much to say about this series, so many possible avenues to explore, so many questions — and so many of those questions, at least in my case, are unique to the viewer. That this character reminds me of my aunt Sue, and so I love this character and wonder how my aunt is doing these days. And then, of course, there is the projection of yourself, of myself, up onto to that screen, wondering were my life to be filmed every seven years, were I to have to report progress and give an accounting of things I had done, how would it look? I was a cute 7 year old. Everyone was, is. But what happens to those qualities, those enthusiasms and dreams you had then? People don’t grow up to be cute 7 year olds. They grow out of that and disappoint.

And so I wonder if I am already a disappointment, or if, like most people, I am headed in that direction. What would there be to prevent that from happening? What would be the circumstances that needed to be present for you to say that this subject, this Charlie, was a success, was happy, and lived a good life? I am not sure about the answers to any of those questions. I have some ideas and right now, those ideas are pointing toward non-success, toward possibly already failure. In the shower, which I was taking because I was incredibly nervous and they tend to calm me down, I thought about these questions, tried to tease out answers to them, and it only brought up more questions, and more doubts as I recounted what, at that moment, seemed like a long string of missed chances and missed opportunities.

I could recount them for you, but really, there is no point – the same old gripes that so many people have, that you could easily predict – imagining all the decisions in your life as the wrong ones. And this song was so good. I don’t remember all the lyrics, and it might have a couple of blatant end rhymes to the structure, but the theme involved truth and divulging secrets. I was thinking about my family, but now I see that the song also dealt with an underlying theme in The Up Series, of people being honest, showing wounds, and showing their human side. And I think the chorus might have been: “Tell me your secrets and we’ll set them free / I am no shaman but my ears will do.” And really it doesn’t sound amazing as I recount it, but it was so good. It just needed a backing track.

thisspace

I gave in as some of you may already know, and in a fit of something (not really sure what, but most definitely a fit), last night, rejoined the ranks of Myspace. Yes, I have enumerated all the faults of it, the faults that I still think are there and which still grate on me - namely, the disgusting mix of insecurity and desire for affirmation that is present there - and then, of course, all the other flaws of it that are also easily pointed to. But there also are benefits, particularly so if you desire a social life, or at least that option should you want it on certain nights. I was no longer finding out about things, events, and happenings, however, now, hopefully that problem will have been solved with my rejoining this site.

Within an hour or so of rejoining, I got a message from Joe asking me to meet him at the Metropolitan. And despite my better instincts telling me not to go, to go to bed early, to read a book, and to be content, I went, hoping for something, a something which did not materialize last night - a something that never does there, especially so when you are hoping for it to.

Because at that point there were not many people that I knew, I ended up in circle with the only people there that I did know: Joe, Kevin, and Matt. It was definitely weird, at least in my mind it was, and I sat across from Matt, not wanting to think he was attractive, but doing so anyway, even while listening to him act like an idiot, someone I would normally not be able to stomach, but because he is this person, this boy that I find really attractive, I found myself terribly attracted to him, watched him straddle the bar stool he was sitting on, his shorts bunching up at his crotch - and I was mad at myself because of the path my eyes were tracing, the paths my mind was wandering - it was all so typical, so this bar, so a year ago, so two ago, so three years ago. And the prospects of change seemed bleak, and actual change, which I believed had occurred, proved to have never taken place.

And I consumed more beers and more cigarettes and found myself in a haze, bouncing from one person to the next, talking to this person, that one, this old crush who is still, unsurprisingly, a current crush - and the names are all familiar - Matt, Christopher, Christian, etc. At some point, toward the end of the night, I not so subtly (but, really am I ever?) made advances toward Christian, which, unsurprisingly, were rebuffed. Unsurprisingly has now reared its head twice in this entry and I think that speaks to what I am talking about, that nothing was surprising, it was typical behavior, the same play enacted night after night, way past the point that the audience had tired of it. Even our actors have tired of this play and want new lines to say, new stages to say them on.

loneliness scrapbook (cont.)

AOL’s misstep last week in briefly posting some 19 million Internet search queries made by more than 600,000 of its unwitting customers has reminded many Americans that their private searches — for solutions to debt or bunions or loneliness — are not entirely their own.

-Your Life as an Open Book

coors light scrapbook

In Lufkin, where in recent years the economy has been surging without the help of alcohol sales, some citizens just want their town to be a bit more like the rest of the country and a little less Bible Belt. “This is the 21st century,” said Ernest Rowe, a 70-year-old retired forest worker. “I just want to be able to buy my case of Coors Light, come home and pop open a cold one.”

-
Across South, Push Is On to Make Dry Areas Wet

loneliness scrapbook (cont.)

“It seems like the service guys, when they hit 65 or 70, they kind of fall through the cracks,” said Jeannie Riley, Mr. Baker’s stepdaughter, who also lives in Modesto. “I tried to get help from the county for him. They were a little slow on it. He didn’t have anyone. He didn’t have a family. I think that was why he was always around the older people all the time, because he was so lonely.”

-For Californians, Deadly Heat Cut a Broad Swath

I hung out with Gregg last night, closing some gaps that had been lingering in my life. It has been nice to make attempts to be friends with both him and Niki again at this same point in my life after not talking to them for a while. I need to reconnect with other friends that I have fallen out of touch with and make new friends and make friends with myself. Today was spent on some quality me time. I am feeling so good lately and there are surely many factors going on, such as the fact that I have a job, the fact that I live in a nice room, the weather - fuck, everything. Things, most things, are working out and I am really feeling as on top of things as I probably have in a couple of years.

Like clockwork, the minute I got off work today, I got a call from that guy on 96th Street, so I went uptown, got a blowjob, had a nice conversation, and got stoned. I rode home on the subway sitting across from Jean-Paul Sartre wearing a Colorodo t-shirt with a giant picture of a deer head on it and wanted to giggle and hide because it was amazing and totally freaky.

The soundtrack for today and this entry is Isolee's "Schrapnell," the most beautiful song I have heard in so long and a song that I would march to the end of the earth for so long as that could be my soundtrack. It's such perfect marching around town music. I saw The Puffy Chair tonight and it was cute and had a really cute soundtrack. I took a long walk home, stopping at various stores, picking up essentials - milk, oj, shaving cream, batteries. The moon is full or at least appears to be and I love New York so much it makes me sad. I miss it for some reason. It's really weird.

Also, I am toying with the idea of working for the Princeton Review in Mumbai.

The Knife is finally playing a show in New York come November 1. I am so there. Beirut in McCarren Park on Sunday. And it goes on and on, these good things.

I love you.

williamsburg development

Walking home from work today, I thought about something I think about often while walking around Williamsburg, while walking around New York - about the changes in the landscape, about new stores, new buildings, old ones, my memories of them superimposed on the new ones and wondering how long those memories of mine can hold of that old toyshop on Grand Street that was torn down a couple months ago, about how long it will be until some condo goes up and that store, or any old building, fades from my memory.

Just within two blocks of my house, there are six construction sites; five buildings have been razed (two within the last two weeks), and the ground floor of one has been gutted. My neighborhood is feeling pretty weird, pretty unneighborhoodish, with all this construction going on. I have decided to document these six sites since they are all in their early stages and to take pictures every two weeks of the six sites (every month if I get lazy) and to document their progress.


Grand and Keap, NE corner


Grand and Keap, SW corner


Keap and Hope, SE corner


463 Grand Street


Borniquen and Hooper, SE corner


Rodney and Borniquen, SW corner
______________________________________________________

And then while wandering around taking these photos, this man came to up me and told me I was really "good" and essentially asked to have sex with me. As friendly as he was, I told him no, and he told me it would only take 30 minutes. I kept on saying no in a friendly mannner because this was a friendly guy. He told me I could find him on the corner later if I wanted to. He is working for a movie that is filming in my neighborhood.

This morning I woke up as tired as I have been in so long, having not gotten enough sleep because I stayed up late watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, and tired, thought about just not going into work today, but somehow, thankfully, managed to get myself out of bed and moving. I am working at the Princeton Review this weekend because they called me a couple days ago asking if I wanted to work.

It is weird that they called me during the summer because my working for them tends to conincide with peaks in school year testing. And today, I found out why I was called in. Some idiot messed up and delivered the wrong tests to a school system for their summer school kids, and so the students all answered in their answer booklet or on a non-compatible Scantron. What this meant is that every single one of these tests had to be bubbled onto a Scantron by hand, and each student's personal information had to be bubbled in as well. Not that the job isn't already boring, but oh man, today, I kept on having to hit my head to keep from falling asleep. One guy there did fall asleep. Eight hours of bubbling in tests = a nightmare. This, done in an over air-conditioned room, and cominbed with the tediousnes of it, the perfect formula for nodding off.

I came home and took a nap unsuccesfully, sleeping in fevered spurts, tired as hell, but unable to sleep deeply because of all the coffee that I drank to try to stay awake at work earlier. Now, I just feel nauesous and am going to eat some eggs and settle in for a documentary about sneakers. This, unless one of you young lovers wants to call me and do something, say, dance.

I am so not looking forward to doing this again tomororw, but it does pay money, and aside from the boredom, there are some nice momemnts of reflection enabled by sitting and doing menial work for eight hours.

I wish I had time, enough to say the things I want to say, and more importantly, enough to consider, really consider, why it is that I want to say these things, relate the events happening to me, for whose good, and why, and perhaps even to consider one more level of this, the actual events and the why behind those - the forces that determine my behavior and why it is that some things can excite me so much. And with all this buildup, all this postponement, you would think I had some grand events to relate, some super sordid gossip, but alas, none of that, just the imaginery variety. As they, and as I tend to often say as well: Same old, same old.

I met up with Niki last night for the first time in close to a year. We went to some place in SoHo with her friend and split a pitcher of sangria, the sangria cooling me off so much. By the time we left the place, the heat had broken and it was not cool, but in comparison to the hundred degree days of late, so fucking cool, so nice - mid-eighties never felt so cool.

Then the events that I would like to describe - and here comes time creeping up on me since I need to put on clothes and leave for work - but as usual, it comes back to the sight of cute boys and my desire for them that leaves me crippled and regressing to the most juvenile of behavior. There was an open bar at Starbar that we went to. There, this crush of mine, David, was standing right in front of me with his friends as Niki and I sat on the couch. He was in these shorts and a cut-off t-shirt, and looking so attractive, and my leg brushed against his at one point, our leg hairs touching, and the thrill was so much that I had to repeat it. Again and again, I found myself lightly brushing my leg against his, the thrill of my skin against a crush's who seemed oblivious to it all. And the pleasure was so great and I giggled each time and had obscene fantasies that I kept relating to Niki.

From there, Phoenix, where I had some more beer and found the new love of my life, the most beautiful boy ever, a Josh - so many of these that I have had crushes on - and he is a stem cell biologist and dreamy as I don't know what and I am pretty sure he thinks I am crazy, because last night, one could be fogiven for thinking so, and I have his number but I sort of doubt he will answer the phone when I call, but we will see, and maybe we will have babies together.

And yes, now I have to go to work, and I am just looking forward to when I get off work because that, my friends, will be nap time. I am ready to be back in bed right now, but will have to hold off until this afternoon, at which point, I am going to catch some major z's. Hang ten.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that while big commercial power users appear to have cut their demand, residents need to due more to avoid overstressing the electrical distribution system and triggering blackouts.
-NY Times

I am considering writing The New York Times to point out this typo (due instead of do) with a copy of my resume attached.

PS - It is hot as the silliest analogy you could ever think of. It almost feels unreal, like being stuck in bus exhaust or something. It is grade A disgusting, and thus I don't feel like writing much, doing much, anything.