It was Trump’s inauguration today. I didn’t watch it. It was the first day it snowed in New York, the sky was clear and the air was still. I went to Leon’s bagel shop just off Broome Street. Ordered cream cheese, capers, tomato, onions and salmon. I then went to a coffee shop around the corner and ordered a latte. As I waited I pulled up the news on my phone. Saw a picture of two old men posing for photos outside of Congress. Their bright white teeth, and skin pulled back over their ageing skulls. Their smooth foreheads, and scolding faces. Their bored wives, and expensive hats. I closed it and put it back in my pocket. I looked at the young man in front of me and the barista he was flirting with. Their clear skin, and coy smiles. Their thick hair and second hand jeans. Their confidence, and total immersion. Eventually and reluctantly she handed the warm coffee to him. The woman working the till came over to her, and they whispered and giggled while she prepared my coffee. I thanked her for my latte and headed home. That was my first snow day of the year.
Tag: writing
-
Buenos Aires
“El conocimiento está en tu cuerpo” – Argentinian graffiti.
I am alone in Buenos Aires. I decide to go to a jazz club called the Thelonius Club. It is just beyond the Palermo district. There is a neighbourhood like Palermo in every city with enough young people with enough money. It has converted warehouses, cocktail bars with exposed brick and indoor plants, and thrift shops with espresso machines. The sun has set and my taxi is rushing through. I see a man with baggy trousers, an earring, and a faded baseball cap. He kisses his girlfriend, and then pulls back and gently smiles at her. They are beautiful. They look happy.
I arrive at the Thelonius Club. It is on a street lined with trees with small pale leaves and tender white trunks. The club is all grey concrete. During the day it would be unnoticeable. It is covered in graffiti, mostly just random tags, only sensical to the graffiti artists that roam those streets. It has a large wooden door, which is half agar and shows a warm red light inside.
I show my ticket and am led into the main room. A woman with a white shirt, faded loose jeans and dark hair pulled back greets me. “Hola, cómo estás,” she says
“Soy bueno,” I respond.
I smile back to her, and she leads me to my seat. She sits me at a table on the left-hand side, a few tables back from the stage. The club is a large rectangle. Down each side are small tables with room for two, while in the middle are larger tables with six or seven seats around them. It is about three quarters full.
In front of me is a young couple. The women’s hair is long, dark and shiny. The man is tall, and slouched back. When he is not leaning close to her to whisper something in her ear, she is reaching across and playing with the back of his brown messy hair. They don’t care that anyone else is there.
The larger tables are mostly men in suits. They sit at a distance to each other, ordering bottles of malbec. Their conversations are brief and they rush to refill their glasses as soon as they are empty. They are happy as the lights dim and the band steps out on stage. The band has a guitarist, a drummer and a pianist. The saxophonist is a woman in her forties. She’s skinny, athletic and upright, with curly hair and a flowery jacket. She steps up to the microphone, thanks the crowd for something and says a few things about Charlie Parker.
None of the band has music in front of them. The music exists only in the minds of each musician. Can they feel the music in its completeness. Or can they only imagine it in sequence, like when I have to recite the alphabet from the start to remember just where one letter is. Or is it just instinctual. Like how a juggler doesn’t need to envision exactly when each ball is going to leave his hand and the subsequent arc it will take. He just practices juggling until it is never forgotten.
I feel someone walking slowly up from behind. I look up to see the waitress. She pulls out the chair from next to me and gestures to a man to sit down. He’s older, maybe in his fifties, but still with thick red hair and a scruffy beard. He’s wearing a loose white linen shirt tucked into a pair of cream trousers, with brown leather shoes. He sits down next to me. I get a waft of cigars and aftershave.
The woman on stage looks across at the drummer and puts the saxophone to her mouth. The drummer lightly taps the cymbal with his wire brush, “tsss-tsss, tsss-tsss, tsss-tsss”, and then the saxophone starts to play. The noise fans out from the stage. The room sinks under a warm sheet of music. It muffles the murmuring of the crowd. The waitress continues to shuttle between tables, taking whispered orders and returning them to the bar.
I can feel the man next to me tapping his foot. He then leans closer to me, the smell of cigars intensifies. “Esta es una de sus últimas actuaciones,” he says.
I can’t speak Spanish. Only a combinations of “lo siento”, “gracias” and “cómo estás”. I always appear overly polite and apologetic. It’s insincere. I would rather be rude, passionate and provocative, but they don’t teach you how to do that in 4th grade Spanish. Only to grovel and leave everything undisturbed.
“Lo siento, no hablo español,” I say.
“Ah, how do I say,” he pauses for a moment. “This is her final performance,” he says. “You are lucky”.
We sit in silence. The pianist’s fingers run over the keyboard. The saxophonist turns to watch him play. A warm smile broadens her face, before she turns back to the crowd. She lifts the saxophone. Starting softly at first. She then picks up speed. The man next to me starts to tap his foot. The solo goes on. The girl in front intensifies the ruffling of her partner’s hair. The music gets faster. I then close my eyes and feel a tingling spread over my lips.
She finishes playing, and we fill the room with applause. The man next to me leans back. He stretches both his hands out, with palms flat on the table and relaxes his face.
She leans into the microphone. “Gracias, por una segunda oportunidad y gracias por Charlie Parker”.
I can’t say a word of Spanish but after a month travelling in South America, I can understand some. I knew she would be playing Parker, so I played an album before I came. A few hours earlier, I was lying on my bed in the Recoleta neighbourhood, with the window open, staring at the ceiling fan listening to ‘Summertime’.
I lean slightly towards the man next to me. “This is her second chance,” I enquire.
He glances at me and gives a small and sad smile. “Yes yes, it was my sister who gave,” he says.
I assume his sister must have helped her pay off some kind debt. “How did your sister know her,” I ask.
“She didn’t,” he responds.
The saxophonist starts playing again. This time in harmony with the guitarist, who is sitting on a speaker, with one leg bent and the other stretched out. They stare at each other as they play. The music skips along, like children arm in arm.
“I don’t understand,” I say.
Suddenly the music slows and then gently crashes. Like the slow motion breaking of ice. The shards are sucked into the water, before bobbing back up to the surface. She holds the final note.
He looks up at the saxophonist. “She used to, um, drink much after the shows.” He twists the ring on his little finger. The waitress comes to our table and I order a beer. He asks for a “fernet con coca” and a clean ashtray.
“One day, the phone rang,” he glanced up at the saxophonist. “She wanted to thank me for my sister”. The drinks arrive. He reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a cigar, lights it and takes a short puff. “It was a surgery, um, how do you say? A transplant.”
The saxophonist leans over, picks up a towel and wipes the sweat from her brow. She looks over the crowd before settling her gaze on our table.
“She’s really good,” I say, feeling insufficient.
“Yes, and she’s alive,” he says.
She continues to play. I look around the room, all the eyes staring down on her. I think about this man’s sister. Who was she and where is she now? When someone dies where does everything that is them go? All her memories. The traumatising ones that are always present. And the unexpected ones that lie dormant just touching larger memories, waiting to be disturbed. I think of those that came to the surface just when she didn’t expect it but also those other reservoirs which will forever remain untouched.
There was no physical “her” in the first place. She emerged, was loved by her brother and died. “She” was just a person for a moment. Those atoms still exist but are now scattered and for some reason she is gone. But her brother is here, next to me, loving her.
“I am so sorry about your sister,” I say. “My grandmother also loved jazz, her favourite Parker song was Summertime”.
“Gracias, significa mucho para mi,” he responds.
I nod back.
I look from him up to the musicians on stage. I think of recording the performance. My first at The Thelonius and her last. But no one else is. So, I close my eyes, and listen to the music. The music which exists in the musicians’ siloed minds, and then for an incalculable moment, in that room in Buenos Aires.
-
Resist
Anxiety makes you lazy and selfish. So resist that feeling. Do something for yourself, like flossing. And then do something for others, like smiling at the cashier.
I wrote a letter to one of my best friends yesterday for his birthday. Writing it made me feel better. Maybe reading it will make you feel better.
Dear Henrik,
I am writing on the eve of the US election. It is easy to feel like we are at a cliff’s edge, making it impossible to see what’s in the future and this can be scary. Especially because it feels totally out of our control.
But I know this isn’t true, because I know that regardless of what happens I will still have my friends. And in particular we will still be friends. And we will keep watching sports together, keep inviting each other to stay with our families and keep showing up for each other’s birthdays.
This brings me to the main point of this letter. Happy Birthday! In particular, happy 30th birthday. Sorry if you feel old, but we are happy to have you in the club. At some point in the near future, someone will ask you how old you are and you will have to say it out loud for the first time. That won’t feel great.
But then you will do it again, and again and realise it doesn’t matter. In fact, all being 30 means is that we have been friends for another year. And when you turn 31, that will simply mean we have been friends for another.
Love,
Karl
-
Curiosity
I was walking through Washington Square Park today. The sun is bright. The light is shining through the trees. The leaves shimmer, glowing yellow around the edges and condensing to a dark green mass in the center. They undulate and people lounge in their shade, drinking coffee and having private conversations.
In the center of the path is a woman with a stand and a sign that reads “23 days until the election”. She is selling memorabilia that celebrates American democracy. Badges with George Washington’s face on, a keychain of Ronald Regan, and small mock constitutions.
I walk past her to my friend who is sitting on the grass. It is my college roommate. We met on the first day. Standing on a lawn playing a game to break the ice between all the kids that arrived for international orientation. He showed up late and as soon as I saw him I knew we would be friends. He told me about a trip to India he had been on over the summer. The sort of trip where rich kids from Europe go to “help” the “needy”. Maybe, the rich kids feel helpful. Definitely, they know it will be good for their college applications.
Fred was honest about this and made fun of himself for going on the trip. Then told a story of playing football with children that suffered from polio. Some were missing arms and legs, but still could run and kick the ball. Fred played with them for hours, sweating in the Indian humidity. Nobody kept track of the score. Eventually they all collapsed under a Jamun tree next to the dry pitch, drinking tea and gasping contentedly.
Now Fred is sitting on the grass of Washington Square Park with his girlfriend, and her friends from college. They are sitting on a pink blanket, Fred has a coffee for me and his girlfriend has got me a bagel. They shuffle to one side to make space for me between his girlfriend and one of her friends I have never met before.
As an outsider of the group I sit for a while and let them speak.
“I am going to my 10 year high school reunion next week, hopefully I don’t get too drunk,” says one of the friends.
“I always get too drunk, they are fucking nerve racking ,” replies the other.
“Yep , at the last one I got hammered. Talked to my ex-boyfriend, went home and lay on the couch eating trail mix and telling mum how much I missed him”
The whole group laugh. They clearly know each other well, happy to be vulnerable and I am thankful their ease is not disturbed by my presence.
“I hear he might be about the break up with his girlfriend?”
“Yeah, apparently so.”
“Do you think your mum would mind if you bought him home after the reunion?”
“She would honestly be thrilled”. The whole group broke into another round of laughter.
I took my chance to join the conversation. I ask them where they went to high school. Philadelphia they reply. I jokingly wish her luck in the pursuit of the man of her dreams and say I will be following up with Fred to hear the outcome.
My eyes drift to the the woman selling a Barack Obama postcard at the stand. A few more people are now surrounding her, inspecting the coins and badges. The shadow of a tree has swung round and half cover her table, the dark outline of the leaves rippling over the red table cloth. The woman is smiling as she takes the cash from her customer’s hand.
“Flags are just so ugly,” someone in our group chirps.
“Why red, red white and blue? Such jarring colors. Why not more pastels?”
“Agreed there are so few good flags. The German one, three blocks of color, so ugly”
“Yeah but they have had to change it a few times,” chimes in Fred. “Used to be red, white and black, then the Nazis changed it and then it got changed again.”
“Oh yeah, that whole thing. You know if someone is trying to change your flag you are in trouble,” jokes someone.
“Wouldn’t be surprised if there is something about it in Project 2025”. Everyone chuckles.
This is the only time we touch on politics. I know Fred is more sympathetic to Trump than the rest of the group, made up of young women, are likely to be. The conversation swiftly moves on. I am grateful.
For a while I have been struggling with how to discuss politics. Part of me wants to ignore it completely, which I do with new company. But another part feels a duty to talk about. If I ignore it, am I complicit? What if the Nazi’s only got to power because people didn’t want to have awkward dinner party chats? Or protestants only got burnt in 16th Century England because it was bad etiquette to suggest otherwise? And how do I even know “what the right side of history” is?
The truth is I am scared of Trump winning. America is becoming a more nationalistic country. Hostile to outsiders. Pessimism is the driving political force. Instead of imagining a different future, the winning politics is holding onto what has been. They are losing the brash confidence they can fix the world’s problems, instead they are retreating back onto their continent, believing that turning a blind eye will make the problems go away. Yes, America got itself into trouble, but it’s confidence was attractive. Now it is becoming a shy, complaining brat.
Sitting on the pink blanket in Washington Square Park, with my best friend from college, his girlfriend and her friends, I know there is nothing I can do to stop these forces. No matter how often I bring politics up, or how much I read the news or argue with my mum about immigration.
The comedian Louis CK has a stand up bit that has been uploaded to YouTube. Standing there in a grey suit, slightly overweight and ginger stubble on his face, he tells the audience, the whole world is made up of people that didn’t kill themselves.
“That’s who’s here, everyone who went, ok, fuck, I’ll keep doing it”.
He then tells an anecdote about looking over into someone’s car on the motorway. A person sits in it alone, a trash bag for a window flapping in the wind. But they still haven’t killed themselves. “What are they waiting for, another trash bag window?” Louis enquires.
The truth is, Louis knows what they are waiting for. They are waiting for something interesting to happen. Everyday we are faced with the prospect of keeping going or not. You might have just fallen in love, or been broken up with. Got a new job, or been fired. Had a child, or lost a parent. All these things may lie ahead of you. Or they don’t.
Either way, you won’t know unless you keep going.
Curiosity is what keeps us alive. The urge to know what happens next. To learn about your Fred’s girlfriend’s friend’s reunion and whether she marries the man of her dreams. Or how long the experiment of US democracy can last. Both are undecided and both are life changing for at least one person.
The conversation continues. We chat about thanksgiving plans, then someone asks me what I do for work. I give them a brief synopsis but make it clear I don’t want to get too involved in work chat. The sun is falling down in the sky, I thank everyone for the coffee and bagel and stand up to head back to my apartment.
-
Anxiety
People often try to ease social anxiety by saying, “don’t worry no one notices you anyway”. The idea is you shouldn’t stress about what you are saying, or your appearance because even if you did do something embarrassing no one cares. Everyone is too interested in themselves.
I open my laptop to read emails. I am anxious and shaky. The alcohol I was still consuming in the early hours of Sunday morning has now fully passed through. I feel empty, stripped of the dopamine needed to motivate me. I open Twitter, and see a notification.
It is a link to an article about freedom of speech legislation. “Took me 2 mins of Googling to find. Next time, make sure to do your research before calling someone else a liar”.
I was at a wedding on Saturday. It was a friend from college. We weren’t that close at college but over the last few years I have got to know him and his family better. They are a family that seem so self assured. I know this can’t be as true as I think it is. But from the outside, they are attractive, confident in their intelligence, and generous with their home. And I want them to like me.
After the ceremony, we sat down to a starter of a salad of green leaves, shredded carrots and tomatoes, dressed in a vinaigrette of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. It was light, with the perfect amount of dressing. Not swimming, just brushed. Confident in its flavor, without being overbearing.
I ate it and then went to the bar, where I was introduced to a girl that wanted a cigarette. I had a pack of Marlboro Lights tucked inside my jacket pocket. I offered to go outside with her and her friend. It was a clear night and the stars were dotted across the sky. I offered them both cigarettes.
I like smoking because it gives an opportunity for a quiet conversation. I don’t like the smell it leaves on me, but the trade off is worth it.
“How do you know the couple,” I asked.
“Went to middle school with him,” he responded. The girl I offered the cigarette to stood in silence. She took a long drag, her eyes darted between the two of us and then she let the smoke drift out of her slightly opened mouth.
We were standing twenty meters away from the party, everyone else inside was dancing to a live band playing covers of Abba. You could hear them shouting along in a disorderly way.
Outside, we were trading a few details about our childhood. “I went to college with him”, “I grew up in England and moved here a few years ago”, “I am a writer”.
Then he asked me. “What do you make of the freedom of speech law in England”.
“Which freedom of speech law,” I enquired.
“The 2010 one, that says you can be put in jail for something you put on Twitter”.
I stopped for a moment. I didn’t want to talk about politics. I definitely didn’t want to talk about freedom of speech. And certainly not with this guy. I tried to keep my calm.
“I don’t think that is true, we are protected under the European Court of Civil Rights which protects freedom of speech in the UK,” I responded with more confidence than I should have.
He denied this. Told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. I asked him when the last time he went to England was. He said a year ago. I said I am from there. He told me I was an idiot. At least that is how I remember it.
“So you are telling me parts of England aren’t ruled under sharia law, that the mayor of London isn’t a Muslim?” he took a different line of questioning.
“No, none of England is ruled under sharia law, and yes the mayor of London is a Muslim,” I responded.
I explained that I have lived there most of my life. And that our common law system applies equally to everyone in the country. He called me an “elitist piece of shit”. I apologized to the girl for the conversation. He told me not to, she agreed with him and then he turned and walked inside with her.
I stood alone in the dark, away from the party while Abba still throbbed in the background. The cigarette smoldered in my hand. My fingers stunk.
I open the article on Twitter, it’s from a news website I trust. Published two years ago and gives some examples of people in the UK that have been prosecuted for threatening to “kill” and “rape” people on Twitter. Am I wrong? Is this what freedom of speech is? I always thought it was illegal to threaten people with violence?
Then I realise this man has been thinking of me all weekend. Sat down on Monday morning, found my last name, looked for me on social media and posted the article to my feed in public. “Don’t worry no one notices you anyway,” I think.
What else has been noticed? I told a girl I was trying to flirt with her, and then when she said she had a boyfriend I quickly apologised. That seemed respectful. But maybe it was pathetic. Maybe she saw flakes of dandruff on my jacket, or my breath smelt. My fingers certainly smelt like cigarettes.
She hasn’t found me on Twitter to tell me how pathetic I am, but maybe she told her friends. And her boyfriend. And the family of the wedding.
I want to respond. Argue back. “That legislation doesn’t exist anymore”, “It only applies to death threats”, “the US constitution doesn’t allow you to say anything you want”. I want to win. Explain why he is wrong, remove all doubt and get him to see the world the way I do. I sit for a few minutes. Do nothing, wait for the decision to settle.
Slowly the warmth dissipates from my face and heart rate begins to slow. I read the article again. I am right but he will never agree.
Sometimes people do notice you. Sometimes it is because they love you. Sometimes it is because they hate you. You might remind them of their dad, their first grade English teacher or themselves. But you will never know and they might not either.
I don’t respond. I get up, yawn and go outside. It is the last nice week of summer. It is still sunny and warm, but the mugginess of August is gone.
Karl's life 