"i want a name when i lose"
decongestants, daryl johns, and diner culture
“Don’t interrupt the sorrow, darn right, in flames our prophet witches, be polite.” - “Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow" from The Hissing of Summer Lawns by Joni Mitchell
I had the flu last week, which was a humbling experience. When you go on Google News today and see more harrowing headlines about “Quad-demics” and stock photos of coughing straphangers plaguing American cities with their insidious breaths, think of me, that’s been me. Just another post-pandemic immune system ripe for viral pillaging— hear me wheeze.
Every year I’m baffled by the brutality of January, a shock to the system as the year calibrates its tone, unyielding in its climate, and often a letdown. We close out December with such resolve and energy, while January dangles the promise of our future selves in front of us like a taunting sibling, yanking away our progress while we reach out for it, just to be a dick. The sun goes down at 4pm, temperatures plummet, your facial orifices emit unspeakable substances and sounds from merely experiencing the month — it’s just difficult.
Now, I’ll admit that this is a very New York-centric complaint, as there are other parts of the world that are sun-filled and balmy come January. But then again, I am from the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and with that origin story comes the delusion that everything revolves around the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I don’t even live in the neighborhood anymore and still I feel its tractor beam pull emanating across the East River, calling me home to my diner for a blissfully burnt cup of coffee and overcooked eggs.
You don’t really have much say in which New York diner becomes your diner, it just sort of happens. Proximity plays a role, but isn’t always the main factor. For example, my parents moved 10 blocks uptown a few years ago into an entirely new zip code (and diner radius), and they still frequent the old diner because it’s their diner. Old school Manhattanites love to feign confusion at the “frivolous” decisions of the next generation (“vibe” culture, 11pm dinner reservations, venturing to, or god forbid, living in, an outer borough, etc.) when these are the same folks who will walk HALF A MILE for a club sandwich that they could get on their block. The Boomers are doing it for the vibes and they always have been!
The quality of your diner is also surprisingly unimportant, which you’ll only realize when you happen to go there with someone who isn’t from New York. They take one sip of their coffee and say something like “you really come here just to drink this?” and you nod, and then they say “but you have a coffee maker in your apartment,” and you nod again, and then they say “but this tastes bad and costs three dollars,” and you say “yeah, but what’s your point?”
What people don’t realize is the diner is the only place in New York that always lives up to the city’s true promise. The status of your dreams may be touch-and-go, but you can always have it all at the diner. It’s “come as you are,” whatever, whenever, no questions asked. It’s a place for the dreamers, the yearning, the contemplative; a venue of boundless possibility, its bounty and promise memorialized in a 52 page laminated menu of (wholly unnecessary) culinary prospects. You can have an ice cream sundae appetizer with a short stack entrée and London Broil dessert, breakfast for dinner, dinner for breakfast, lunch for midnight snack. You can have lobster, or you can have a bowl of cereal, and no one will really ask you to leave. In fact, you can even become a fixture here, no audition necessary. What other arena offers this kind of abundance and opportunity?
Now that I don’t live as close to my diner, I do sometimes get panicky, or at least a little itchy.
What if I wake up and want the lobster one day and don’t have the chance to actualize that version of myself? What if my dreams are forever doomed to decay in the congested acceleration of 21st century culture?
If you’ve tuned in here before, you’ll know it’s not really about diners.
It is kind of about David Lynch passing away because he also loved diners and I loved him.
Really, to quote Steely Dan’s “Deacon Blues,” it’s that this is my “day of the expanding man.”
All I can do to pacify the agita of this age is to become the computer I want to avoid, able to subsist off my own references and experience-based knowledge. The vibes are appropriately pessimistic, but they’re set to a palatable jazz rock beat so we’re on a stable course for the time being. I’m finding relief in consuming as much stuff as possible — books, records, sugar cereal, you name it.
This short playlist is my soundtrack to this feeling:
If Mac DeMarco, Alex G, and Pat Metheny had a virtuosic Mario Kart and yacht rock loving baby, it would be Daryl Johns.
Listening to this album feels like old school late night cable channel surfing, stepping into streams of consciousness already in motion, every flash beaming you into a different maximalist landscape. It has all the irreverence we’ve come to appreciate in 2020s indie rock combined with the creativity and skill of someone who spent their teens going to jazz camp, which Johns did. I’d recommend “Crash” as a jumping off point, but the entire record is worth a listen.
“Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow” by Joni Mitchell also fits the Fagenian obtuse-yet-smooth-underdog-song model. I first discovered it at a point in my adolescence where I wanted music to validate my languishing, convinced that there was some glory to be gleaned from how miserable I was if the people I idolized felt that way too. Naturally, the easy rhythm of the track and the opening words “don’t interrupt the sorrow” were dry kindling for the inferno of my 19 year-old anguish.
Amongst all of the other facets of the human experience she’s explored in her art, Joni Mitchell has always made so much beauty out of the melancholy in feminine existence. This year, the song feels like a missive from our foremothers and sisters, a 50 year-old anthem for self-preservation and sustenance.
“He said ‘we walked on the moon, you be polite.’”
“She Cleans Up” by Father John Misty (which I think I mentioned in a previous newsletter) has now become my 70s movie heroine opening montage song (aka I listen to it on my commute so I can feel something about my place in the world). It’s a jaded and scatterbrained diatribe featuring Josh Tillman’s signature wicked incisiveness and anachronistic suavity.
“She ain’t joining you for dinner, been on the menu too long…”
Instability vibrates off the track, the wheels always teetering off their hinges, and you’re never quite sure whether we’ll make it to our destination or not (but that’s the fun of it). It feels like when you sit near someone talking to themselves on the subway and after a stop or two you realize that you actually get what they’ve been muttering about, and then when you finally step off the train you’re like “wait, did everyone else hear that too?”
“Take it from a demon that the devil don’t protect his friends.”
Ok that’s all I needed to say this week.
Oh, one more thing — Musicares has been raising money to aid music professionals impacted by the devastating wildfires in the LA area (this includes artists you know and love and also the thousands in the industry who facilitate our favorite albums and life-defining tours for far less recognition). You can read more and donate HERE, if you’re interested.
Much love xoxoxo
I feel this in my soul -
“ Every year I’m baffled by the brutality of January, a shock to the system as the year calibrates its tone, unyielding in its climate, and often a letdown. We close out December with such resolve and energy, while January dangles the promise of our future selves in front of us like a taunting sibling, yanking away our progress while we reach out for it, just to be a dick. ”