ISSUE-22

NEw york story NEw york story
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4'34"
Listening as a mode of survival.
for much of my American life, I have been trying to
answer a question that has prevented me from reaching
a level of critical self-comfort and fulfillment I thought
to be my inalienable right: why do I cry at the emotional
tipping point of sappy saccharine scores to mediocre
Hollywood films? Despite a near-complete awareness
of the emotional manipulation that, say, a John Williams
or a Howard Shore score is trying to impart upon
my being, the moment that the movie reaches a tender
late-in-the-fifth-act denouement and the accompanying
strings start to crescendo, my eyes begin to tear uncontrollably,
even as my reason curses the machinations
that have deceived me into this fragile state. Recently,
I’ve started trying to think more clearly about the cause
and effect of this phenomenon, and think I’ve found the
culprit. I blame New York.
Some background may be in order: I arrived at JFK
Airport as a displaced seven-year-old foreigner, thrown
into the deep end of Elmhurst, Queens (then to Jersey
City, the West Village, and South Brooklyn), without a
lick of language and with no capitalist-ideal advantages.
My main tools of assimilation were a cultured pair of
ears and a deep empathetic streak, so music became a
natural gateway.
Classical pianist Jeremy Denk recently gave some insight
into his education: “The daily rite of discovery… is
how learning really happens,” he wrote. I too adapted by
soaking the city in, sponge-like, person by person, neighborhood
by neighborhood, sound by sound. And while
the diversity of my playground made it easy to encounter
the baggage carried by the wider population’s diverse
musical choices (much less the sonic-critical discourse
being unpacked in the then-great Village Voice), for a
long time, it was a chore to tell genres and their social
trappings apart. Why did some kids insist that “disco
sucks” but listened to Queen’s “Another One Bites the
Dust”? Why did teen boys quit the basketball team, suddenly
adapt uniforms of black mascara and sad dispositions,
all the while failing to laugh at Morrissey’s jokes?
What did knowing which color fat laces should be worn
on a specific kind of Fila sneaker have to do with enjoying
Whistle’s “Just Buggin’”? How come Bruce Springsteen
isn’t cool, when a stadium full of people says he is?
I was oblivious to the social contracts being signed
and the mores being practiced by my peers, even as I
was beginning to understand the radical differences the
stories their music choices told. My own pop blanket
covered them all equally, just as, it seemed to me, New
York had room for all of their voices, be they tired, poor,
and huddled or ecstatic, stoned, and immaculate. The
WORDS PIOTR ORlOv
IllUSTRATION ROB cARMIcHAEl, SEEN
self-satisfaction I began to feel at my attendance and
understanding of diverse experiences—late-night gay
dancefloors, freestyle rap ciphers, and hardcore matinee
mosh pits—almost made it feel like I was a native. Except
that, of course, natives don’t usually feel equally at home
in all of those settings.
Something happens when you fully lift the dam to audio
stimulation and let music penetrate you beyond reason,
allowing it to flood every bit of your emotional space.
It is a state at once outside of being—and if you could
simultaneously remain cognizant of the physical narrative
playing out all around—completely in touch with
the present. Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose—especially
when abetted by light psychedelic stimulation and not
fiddling about with media-fueled excitement. And once
the floodgates are open, they are very hard to close at will.
I have not seen the inside of a cipher or a mosh pit in
a long, long time (dancefloors are another story). Having
grown older and more restrained, I have been forced to
refine my music consumption—not least because catering
to those habits has changed so drastically in the digital
era. I still try to listen to the city and its music the way
that the younger me once did, but honestly, I recognize
this is impossible. I’m too often focused on the history instead
of the finished pieces in front of me, be it a sample
or what a particular location might have been a decade
prior. It probably has something to do with the endless
yearning for youth, a topic that I’ll save for my therapist’s
couch. With maturation, my emotional openness and extreme
connectedness to music has waned.
There is one listening practice that does remain completely
in place, where the defense perimeter has not
been so fully rebuilt: the corny movie scenes and their
sappy accompaniments. Be it rom-com, dramedy or a
Bildungsroman—regardless of if I am rapt or inattentive—once
the emotive moment comes, the tears begin
to flow. This has also become a lesson in itself. As growing
older and tougher has made crying more difficult
and less frequent, I have begun to enjoy this feeling of
being overpowered. It may be a false emotional tonic,
but I like to think that it speaks to a humanistic quality—one
that reinforces my need to not forget to listen,
to hear things without prejudice, and to not decry sappy
endnotes. Like this one.
Piotr Orlov is a writer, curator, and creative
producer who was born in Leningrad and now lives in
Brooklyn. For the past five weeks he has served as
editor in chief of Daily Note. You can find him at
twitter.com/RaspberryJones.
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