will o' the wisp

mayor eric adams and his deep, damp morning call

There there, it’ll be alright. BeReal’s down for the moment. Look: a swirling serpent of cloud. Will-o-the-wisp. I watched a square shouldered man tangle with the metal tigers of cars edging around him on Fullerton in a forced migration of metal stopping and starting, honking and stuttering. My cold brew had a paper straw. It was cold out and the paper straw was cold. January in Chicago. Why a cold brew? Why outside? Mysteries abound.

There was an odious noise then, — a ghastly call coming out from the Loop, the city’s glass unknown, the glassy pearl at its cold center, sounding like an estranged goose or rooster who lost its standing among the flock. I looked up uneasy at the noise, where it was coming from (echolocation is a hobby) and wondered whether this noise, this passionate blue tone, was some hitherto unknown device out there somewhere in the city distance, with exposed circuits and a blinking blue light. It would look like a modem but not be a modem. The noise faltered in its pitch, however, and continued singing its sleepy rendition of the chorus to Fugee’s Ready or Not. The noise moved from shiny and robotic into something real: a human voice, then; but it sounded volcanic. The voice of a giant? Perhaps.

Below me on the cracked and shining patio people walked below in and out of the building with cold brews, cups of coffee in ones and twos and threes huddled up in hats and scarves and self-contained monolithic black puffer jackets. One of them coming into the café below, one of a three, looked up at me on the rooftop and shouted, “hey!”, while the other two similarly stopped and looked up, standing cold and agitated.

“Oh thank fuck,” I said out loud, remembering this wasn’t a rooftop patio where i sat but (um) an actual rooftop where I had been swept up off away to by a strong breeze like an older sibling placing me up on a cabinet. Like I said, mysteries abound in the winter. “I’ve been stuck up here for an hour,” I called out. “The window is locked from the inside. I don’t know how to get down!”

“How did you even get up there?” She shouted up. Another bystander stopped and joined. And two people walking out with iced drinks stopped and looked up.

“The wind got me,” I said, loudly… “What?” … “The wind got me,” I repeated, louder… “What?” … “The wind got me!” …

She stormed inside. The small crowd stood silent. A small man in a down jacket and a Bears beanie, looking like a small Hasan Piker, asked, “What do you mean?”

“It carried me up here!” I shouted again, agitated by this point.

Anyways, there’s my review for Kero Kero Bonito’s Time ‘n’ Place, — it swept me away up and off my feet like a strong rush of heavily distorted wind (this is a Substack newsletter after all, gotta hit those music recs sometimes), — it’s a great album, discussed on reddit or on indie college radio like it’s some severely under-appreciated gem hidden in its time, — the same could be said for much of whatever the 2020s moment in Indie was, in hindsight I have no idea, — but I think it’s very likely Kero Kero is going to be very well over-appreciated in thirty to forty years’ time, sort of like how the The Velvet Underground projected itself onto the indie of the future (for it, The Strokes). Kero Kero is certainly going to project something onto the future of music, there’s too much creative exploration for it not to, like it itself was projected onto our era by way of Cocteu Twins and the synth pop from the 1980s. This song is fantastic, and it has kept my winter walks through the city warm, especially the Green Day type chorus which they gradually obliterate completely by the end of the song (cool! spooky!).

On that note, recorded music is fascinating in how it is constantly, always enduringly contemporary. A ghost in sound waves. A calling voice from the distant past by vocal cords that no longer exist, singing chords you’ve heard before. There is not a single song recorded from any single era in which audio recording has been possible which you cannot now play out loud from speakers, making their moment, — the moment of recording, — suddenly present and a part of our own moment. Time travel is possible, just not for the living.

There are songs to be played out loud from 120 years ago which sound foreign and alien to our streaming ears but can be played and relived all the same. For instance, take Molly Bawn:

Comparing such a song to Kero Kero Bonito is insane. I adore Molly Bawn too of course but the difference in eras is fascinating, the progression from one musical era to another! History is not dead! At least not for music.

Architecture work in a similar vein. It’s a style just like any other, and for an older buildings there’s often a specific style accompanying the whole endeavor that’s as dead as Latin but has been thought out as thoroughly as a well constructed text. And still, as I sat on the rooftop of a victorian three story coffee house and bed and breakfast, waiting for help, for someone, anyone, to let me in. No one, I could imagine, makes buildings like this anymore. Of all the rooftops to be swept up onto by the wind, at least the wind chose an interesting one. One with character.

The window behind me creaked open on its hinges, — I turned with a start, — and a large filipino man leaned out of its dark painted frame, agitated at having had to crank open the victorian window by hand to get my sorry ass out of the cold. “What are you doing out there? Get in here,” he called out, stern and grimacing. Inside there was a wide plethora of college students with laptops looking out the window at me.

I said something like Thank God, and wormed my way into the warm safety of the café from where I sat, my legs overhanging the gutters and all its frozen leaves, somehow keeping my cold brew intact and not spilling a single drop. I tried to explain, once inside, that the wind had carried me up there and he shook his head at the ground sternly, locking the window.

I decided to get another coffee after my first one. Waiting in line of jackets, hats, and fur scarves, I rubbed my hands and blew air into them. When I got to the front of the line I ordered a small black coffee and asked, “what was that noise outside? There was like an estranged goose.”

The barista looked confused and scratched his head with a certain performative genuineness … He said, “An estranged goose?” … I said that’s what it had sounded like, yeah… After a moment or two he looked down at the Toast register which he held with both hands while he had put in my order with his thumbs. He said, “oh you haven’t heard?”… “heard what?” … “Eric Adams is staying in the bed and breakfast.” … “Next door?” … “Yeah,” he said… “Hm. That was him I heard outside?” … “Yes.” … “It was him singing like a Fugees song?” … “Yes.” … “There was like a lot of pain in the singing is he doing okay?”, I asked… “I don’t know what he’s going through, yeah,” the barista said… “What’s Eric Adams doing in Chicago anyways?” I asked… The barista looked exhausted. “I don’t know but he’s here. He sung it yesterday too.”

That’s to say, I also rec Fugees’s Blunted on Reality. I like The Score too, of course, — who doesn’t like The Score?, — but there’s something about Blunted that sticks with me. I go back to the album a lot this time of year. The production is gorgeous and slightly fuzzed out, they have a sound that works incredibly well in conversation with the hip hop of the Wu-Tang era with a hint of Tom Waits dirt, eventually influencing Outkast a couple years later to create their best work.

In the basement of the coffee shop was (um) more coffee shop and I passed my friend who was leaving with a basket containing half a croissant. The tables in the cellar were long slabs of thickly lacquered wood running out from the cobbled walls like wooden caskets surrounded by aluminum novelty signs, not at all like the Hypercasket future¹ but then again the Hypercasket future would not fit; this was not that kind of coffee shop. The general chatter in the basement was less significant but still pronounced. Sunday mornings were busy across all three floors.

My friend had, back in the summer, gotten dinner with her partner’s family and, last time I saw her, had told us the story as to why she hadn’t cared for them. They ate at a restaurant on a rooftop patio, — a real patio, not a slate rooftop, — and her aunt’s husband had brought the whole dinner party into a hushed whispering around the candle-lit table underneath round string lights and the night sky about how he may have gotten himself involved in a multi-million dollar international tax scheme through independent financing, beet red he had glanced around the restaurant while he told the story over an espresso martini.

I asked her how their family was this time around. She said they were good this time around, hadn’t talked about financial crimes.

My friend struggles with a similar feeling to me: a wandering around our twenties. To be in our twenties today is a baffling hand of cards. I don’t need to tell you this but it’s a shock to discover there are no more institutions left when you’re first looking for something to strive towards, when you’re fresh out of school. The reassurance is always that there’s a world out there, outside of school. I can’t see anything now, though, except the ruins of a dream. Everything about the future is a washed canvas. Every good story for us starts with an open sky because it’s the only thing we have in common anymore.

The fight of our lives, and this goes for any generation, is usually the least discussed and only hinted at, mainly, How are we going to stop feeling like outsiders in our own lives?

Sitting in the cellar I shifted in my seat, writing this post, sipping my second coffee. On the wall above me was an aluminum Coca-Cola sign. I looked at its rust for a minute.

Someone at a nearby table suddenly cried out and flung up an arm, a woman nearby stood up in a flash, and I felt something rustle my leg so I sat up straight, adrenaline a spike in my spine. “What was that?” Someone asked.

The barista from behind the counter upstairs came barreling down the steps, said “babies,” quickly, exasperatedly.

“What?”, someone asked.

“The exterminator’s coming later. There’s a basement baby infestation. We’re dealing with it. They’re harmless.”

“They’re so fast,” someone said from the far corner of the basement.

I looked down to the floor like everyone else but didn’t see anything besides the floor. I thought vaguely, How are they so quick? From inside the walls was a goo goo and the muffled sound of a plastic rattle.

And somewhere above, the sound making it all the way into this basement, Mayor Eric Adams began bellowing out the lyrics to Where Is The Love? by the Black Eyed Peas.

Xoxo,

Briffiniffiniffiniffiniffin

1. It’s so funny to me that this exists, but it makes sense for the self-preservation/cryogenics ideology to want a vacuum sealed stainless steel casket to preserve their remains perfectly, it’s like space age mummification.