#30 Speedrunning a Midlife Crisis
I wrote for Hyperreal Film Club about Infrastructure Romance, a sub genre of movies in which the landscape is of intellectual interest to the main characters. Check it out
"How old are you?"
"31"
"Oh you look like you could be 25."
This was when I realized I was hanging out with 20-somethings. People over 30 merely note one's age and move on without comment.
I had started the night at the cemetery. That's where you park for free if you are going somewhere on west 6th on a Friday night. It's easy to spot the tourists when you walk down the sidewalk alongside the cemetery, they are the ones trying to pay at the parking meters that have not worked in 5 years. As I keep walking, I hear a chorus of wails emanating from the cemetery. I fix my eyes on the horizon lined with tombstones to figure out its origins. As I purposely stride towards the sound, the streets get quieter until all that's left is the wailing and my boot hitting the pavement. My eyes get fixed on a smaller set of tombstones where I have echolocated the sound. As I get closer, the lights of a couple of bars on 6th come into sight. My stride slows down, and I'm disappointed that the wailing was only woohoos and woos emanating from the bars. It was to be a typical night of debauchery after all, nothing sinister about it.
An hour later, I was in a garage-turned-music hall listening to piercing hyperpop, wistful for the wailing of ghosts from a cemetery. I turned my attention to my visual senses for comfort since my hearing had been numbed. The style choices of the 20-somethings reminded me of the Brian Eno essay on how nothing is uncool anymore. All decades of styles coexisted in the same space. There were y2k girls with low-rise jeans and shiny wrap-around sunglasses, guys cosplaying blue-collar workers in their Carharts and white towels stuffed in back pockets, a group in indie sleaze leather jackets and Saint Laurent boots. When many styles coexist in the same space, the connoisseur of each style goes maximalist and annoyingly detailed. They are dressing for the crowd but also dressing for their peers who know oddly specific details such as "The zippers on $500 Saint Laurent pants are bad, so you gotta use pins". Yohji Yamamoto talks about how since men's fashion is limited to pants and shirts, you have to use irony or a joke to make it work - think graphic tee shirts, boxy jackets, or uneven or oversized fits. y2k and TikTok fashion trends indicate that women are more in on the joke than men these days. When viewed all at once, it looked as if the fashion, just like the music was on the edge of collapsing on itself.
The music momentarily collapsed due to technical troubles to which I heaved a sigh of relief contrasted by the restless exasperation of everyone else. Then, when it blared up again, I started to see why people in their 40s going through a mid-life crisis really get into cocaine. It was time to leave. I raised my right hand to hug my 20-something friend goodbye but he thought I was going to high-five and missed, which perfectly encapsulated how attuned I was to the environment.
On the drive back along 35, Spitting off the edge of the world by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs came on the radio. A new release by a once young, now middle-aged indie band, still conjuring the intoxication and chaos of Dionysian energy. Comforting.