Prospect Park
Alina’s play reading
A classic children’s toy from the USSR I grew up with
Alina doing a noise set
Danny
Zach
Emilio and the perfect sign for him, Lioni’s Heros
Playing with Pete’s analog synths
Captured by Emilio at Lioni’s
The photos from April were all over the place. Some decent, some dogshit. I didn’t care. And on the days when my grandmother didn’t need me, I was all over the place myself- bolting around Brooklyn and downtown Manhattan, filling every spare moment. Anthology one day, Film Forum the next, Basement and Paragon, Pete’s noise show, Alina’s play rehearsal, nights at Mister Fong’s. And always running home to Sheepshead Bay, knowing it was high time to find an apartment. I was spending a lot of time with Pete and Emilio, with whom I’d quickly become good friends. On a day-drinking stint one Sunday at Welcome To The Johnsons, Pete and I slurred in agreement that we should look for a house somewhere in Brooklyn where we could split rent. Somewhere with enough room to squeeze in my easel. And there the plotting for my next chapter began, beside the clear vinyl-covered couch at Johnsons.

The month was punctuated with a “bonfire” (setting wood on fire in a metal barrel) at the beach on Pete’s birthday and with Harris’s solo show at Sara’s. I was permeated with restlessness, much like the vintage plastic never-fall doll I got Pete as a birthday present. As soon as you push her down she jolts back up. Since the tail end of the previous summer I’d been fractured and remolding myself. I was searching but wasn’t sure what for. The only way I knew how to find it was by nosediving into anything that would enrich or simply stimulate me. I achieved this, but not without getting scorched by the hazards of my dabbling. But by April I was finally beginning to see a little straighter, and couldn’t deny that I had definitely been lost in the winter. And as even more time went on, I would realize that in those months I’d been in a perpetual wrestle with my sadness, wrangling it like hard clay and trying to rework it into something that would feed me instead of poison me. On the phone, my mother remarked that while she was a little on edge about my behavior and especially couldn’t understand the drugs or the techno, she had admiration for what I had done with my heartbreak.