new york, we have a problem

Something appears to be quite wrong.

Steve mentioned in an email exchange that it's going on four weeks since I've been in New York, and I responded that I didn't know what I have to show for it. And while I meant this in terms of large-scale career development and day-to-day writing and research work, I started to think in literal terms. Then the shocking realisation hit: I haven't bought any new clothes. Or shoes. Could it really be true? "What have you done with Robert?", you're asking. So am I. And I've tried, really I have. I've been to all of my favourite shopping destinations, tried and true winners, and a strange sense of disinterest has come over me each time. Either I've become too complacent about shopping here or clothes this season are just not doing it for me. I'm just going to have to expand the search more widely. Must buy!

This week has featured going to see not one but two downtown experimental performances. This is entirely thanks to Elle who is in town and checking out the performance scene and potential venues for her own show. The second show we saw was fabulous, and fabulously fucked up, relishing in the title "Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland". Not unlike most David Lynch movies, it made almost no sense whatsoever. But because it was so amazingly well crafted and staged and costumed and soundscaped, I was completely caught up by its bizarre spell. It was early Freudian psychoanalysis meets Gothic paranoia meets Victorian parlour melodrama meets turn-of-the-century paranormal phenomena photography. And almost entirely without dialogue.

The show we saw the night before was less successful - much less professional and developed, but still worth seeing. But our adventures after leaving the theatre made up for any shortcomings. We had three serendipitous street encounters. First Elle found her dream shop, ending a long multi-city search for cool bumbags/fannypacks (she bought one in sequinned soft pink). Then we ran into the performer of the show we'd seen, with whom Elle swapped contact details. Then we ran into my friend David, who I hadn't seen since I left last June. So, glimmer in our collective eye, the three of us hit favourite East Village bar Phoenix and made the most of $2 beers and a room full of chatty, loud and shaggy-cute gay boys (plus an eclectic range of song choices on the jukebox, including Kylie's "The One" which I have to say made me feel all special and gooey, partly by fond association). After this, we head down the street to Eastern Bloc where the shenanigans began in earnest. Heavy heads and hazy memories all round the next morning, but the warm afterglow of experiencing the great, wide-open possibilities of New York midweek nightlife.