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Archive for October 31, 2016

Lusterlit on the West Coast and The Times

October 31, 2016

I’m in Mia’s apartment on the opposite coast. My pajamas are the same, but I listened to a completely different set of neighbors having sex this morning (why do neighbors come in sets, like legos?), and it made me miss my lovely Bushwick neighbors. I don’t know why it’s preferable to wake up to their sex noises as opposed to these perfectly nice strangers. Maybe it’s just bias for the familiar. However, I’m not here for the familiar, although I am to a degree. The familiar that I’m here for is the playing and making of songs with my Lusterlit bandmate, Charlie Nieland. The unfamiliar part is the West Coast. It smells different out here. So different. I was just texting this morning about it with my friend, filmmaker Lisa Barnstone who is in Finland with her son as he listens to the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra rehearse what he wrote for a performance Tuesday of new work from composers who happen to be in the fifth grade. She likes the smells of San Francisco too… I was saying that I wish we could record smells like we do songs and sounds… We could make smell-notes to ourselves. Next iphone. Smell symphonies… holy cow. A whole new medium of art. Storytelling through our noses. Yikes. I’m getting excited.

I’m also excited because I’m in print! It hasn’t happened too much before. I don’t know how I feel about it, but I suppose it doesn’t matter (how I feel). The bottom line is, here’s the print, and the fun thing is buying the magazine at the counter at the airport and opening it up and getting to tell the cashier, “Hey! look! That’s me!” And she was happy for me and impressed. The important thing is that Bernice got a kick out of it…

Me and Bernice sharing a moment at 6:30am at JFK.
And there’s more online but here’s the spread for the Sunday NYTimes Magazine. My friend Alison took this one. She stills gets that delivered on the weekend. Like it’s 1995 or something. I like old school values too though.

AND… look, there was a rainbow outside the book store waiting for us and our first show at ADOBE BOOKS on our LUSTERLIT Bushwick Book Club West Coast Tour!

My friend Lisa pointed out that this photo looks “fake as s***.” That’s the filter I used–it’s called “Fake As S***” or “HDR.” But really, a double rainbow, and it smells good here.

And I got to meet up with Mia and meet her friend Hawa who were just gorgeous and opened up and spread their gorgeous around the room until we were all filled with it and we became so good looking we didn’t recognize each other but still appreciated it and the sharing of ideas and feeling. That’s what happens when you play songs about books. I’m telling you.