first NYC show came completely unexpectedly on the day the rest of my equipment arrived via UPS.
I'll recount and stuff:
Nika and I go to see some art, I get braindead-hungry from burning whatever particular proteins art-viewing seems to burn so feverishly in my head.. Nika knows about a little place between 1 and 2 on Houston called Punjabi. We search. She calls a friend. We search some more. Turns out the friend was wrong initially and it's between 1 and A. The food is delicious.
A dude walks by and I recognize him vaguely, though I cannot say from where. Everything here feels like a weird residual-recognition dream anyway, so I pretty well let it slip by. But he walks by again.
"Don't you play music?"
It's Harrison. He'd been at that totally amazing show at the copyright room in the grandma's house warehouse (Oakland, CA) back in May with Ghost Family, Western Graves, and La Dee Da. We catch up for a second and he invites me to play a show "tonight". It turns out to be the art auction benefit for the Miss Rockaway Armada: a totally amazing project whose existence makes me feel strangely and suddenly very much at home and enthusiastic to be here. The auction is really neat... so much beautiful art and music.. And then I make a nice girl named Erica ecstatically happy by misrecognizing her as her sister Kendra who plays in Western Graves and who I met at the same show as Harrison.
Later on, we go to a bar in Greenpoint (edit: Wmsbrg). A time comes for me to pee. There is a line and I am standing in it. A girl who is dancing bumps into me and cheerfully apologizes. She says that they are"bringing it North Carolina style." I say it seems like a good way to bring it. She says they have a band. They are playing at Cake Shop tomorrow. I ask what they're called.
"Hope and Anchor".
Jessica Jones and I made the poster for their show together in Portland a week before I left. They are some of Jones' most special people. We talk and freak out for a while and then I remember how it is totally past the time for me to be overdue to pee. They wanna play a show together while I'm in NYC and Jones is in TN.
I don't know how my world got so small and so kind, but I am grateful as hell.
