Nycstical Convergence
There is a phenomenon in New York City that any tenured resident will confirm, where after a certain amount of time—three years or so—you find that everyone you know knows each other. I’m not going to talk about the new TV show 6 Degrees, though I did enjoy watching last week when they were supposed to be in a diner in Queens and I called out,
“That’s Relish in Williamsburg! See, the motorcycle shop is right there!”
But I’m not talking about finally knowing my way around, I’m talking about who I know, and how it all starts to feel like a hilarious mystical convergence out of a Douglas Adams or Kurt Vonnegut novel. It’s NYCsytical. Nycstic. Nycstic pizza.
This past weekend someone mentioned something regarding Friendster, so I was looking at who’d viewed me. It’s mostly friends of friends and so I became interested in how we were connected. One of them shared three friends-of-friends with me, but no direct ones. None of these friends knows each other. One FOF is Brendan Colthurst who makes short films on comedy central and co-founded the wine internet company I used to work for. One is the indomitable Mike Essl of design and Mr. T fame whose nyc-based company did awesome work for us at National Geographic, who was hired by my friend Otto, who I got hired into that position and if I hadn’t my life would be radically different now. I forget the third.
I notice that he (let’s call him Adam Chapman) went to The New School for fiction writing so I message him to ask about what he thought about the program. He’s very nice and loved the program so we talk about grad school and what we write, what we do. He happens to know Kelly and Shelley personally. Who I’d just written about. Well I’ll be damned!
Then we discuss what we do and where we work. He’s a flash developer, I’m a front-end coder. Even when he tells me what industry he does work for when he’s not teaching or showing work, I don’t think anything of it. Until we realize we work for the same company. I’m writing to someone who works four floors above me.
Welcome to New York.
Then I go to talk to my former Herman Miller-podmates and note that Adam sits next to the people I used to sit next to, but he’s not there in the flesh — it’s just a nameplate. Is he real? Yesterday waiting for a meeting someone randomly adds,
“Do you know Adam Chapman? He knows the guy who invented that video game Facade."
I fall out of my proverbial chair.
Not too long ago I was on a conference call with a developer in Detroit.
I joked, “I know one person in Detroit. Do you know Kosta Stratigos?” My coworkers looked at me like I made up this name, just like I always invent new words.
The developer on the line said, “Medialuxe! Stratigos! Hahahah He’s a legend. I do know him. I’ve worked with him!” and by virtue of this, a new legend was born around me. I know Kosta through Mike, and via the Block know many more, including the talented Charles, and trenchant Tobyjoe who married the sensitive Mihow.
I didn’t know Mihow knew Sarah Brown, or that Sarah Brown would remember me after I read some of my teenage <I’m looking for a man to dessert> poetry at Cringe last month. I went home with an awesome shirt (flickr photo long overdue), a face that hurt from laughing, and a feeling of much respect.
Another long-spanning connection is one that I’ve mentioned but not described in full.
My workshop Editor/teacher is the niece of Jay Jay French of Twister Sister. As a young teenager he would ask what she thought of up-and-coming rock stars. Her opinion granted the birth Sebastian Bach of Skid Row, who I met in a bar a couple years ago (his hair smells like pot and shampoo) where he immediately offered to buy me a drink and told me that he loved me.
My affection for Twisted Sister began via my 4th grade teacher. It was her first year and it was a sometimes-stifling Catholic School. Scandal! the music teacher wore dangly earrings!
She created this end-of-year performance in which we, her students, dressed like tiny punk rockers and danced around violently in a circle to “We’re Not Gonna Take It”, with the tallest girl in the class dressed like an old lady. As the old lady she beat us all on the head with her umbrella until we “fell down dead or unconscious.”
When the old lady was the only one standing and had no one around to judge her, she lost her inhibitions and gave in to the glorious tones of Twisted Sister. She began to dance, granny-style, with one finger jitterbugging up in the air, and all of our colorful bodies littering the ground around her. Before long the music crept back into our tiny, jerking, quivering little bodies (truly brilliant direction) until we all sprang back to life again, pranced around slam-dancing in a circle, then paraded off in a happy ending.
This teacher used to let me go sit on the bean bag chair in the “book nook” when I got my work done early. It was her first and last year teaching at Queen of Apostles (I think she wouldn’t take it) and I mentally thank her for nurturing my shy-kid love of books. This is what I think about when I hear “We’re not gonna take it” and it makes me feel good inside.
And so I read books by Shelley Jackson whom Adam Chapman already knows personally, and Shelley of course went to the gallery opening that Mike Essl curated, of tattoo typography photos from a book by Ina Saltz, who is the next door neighbor of the parents of my friend in writing workshop.
You must read again.
I would love to! It was so much fun (while being truly liberating and humiliating). Everyone was amazing. Can’t remember when I’d laughed so hard.
Today I’m wearing the shirt you gave me under my sweater.
Next entry: Hugged not Mugged
Previous entry: Kelly and Shelley, the Perfect Twofer
