Spring has arrived but it screams and sighs, schizophrenic, sporadically possessed by the faint whispers of summer as she tickle-teases her cautious, winter-war hardened worshippers into surrendering to her promises of bounty and redemption. Awakened from repose by the kiss of sun upon skin, our selfish inner Gollums grow insatiable for the warm morning divine, bypassing the simple gratitude that should fill our souls for, at long last, not feeling so ghastly cold. Siberian traumas evaporate in the selfsame moment that down coats are lain to rest on peripheral closet hangers, and memories of the way we veered toward cannibal games are buried in the beam of a grin amidst stray windswept blossom petals as they float about, comely and silent.
Thank goodness, too. Things were getting dismal.
There have been little hints of the coming inauguration into better days that, like unseasonably ripe cherries from a row of fallow trees, were ceremoniously plucked and relished. In early March, a city-walk Saturday spent straying liberally from my intended destinations as I wandered, gazing upon the faces of Manhattanites painted in the vibrant, unguarded, expressions of relief for having successfully emerged from yet another big chill. A bit later in the month, a few hours were idled away on a well-tended rooftop garden awash in the kind of rapturous early afternoon light that compels people to speak more softly – with the exception of a bony French girl who wailed, cackled, stumbled, and sprayed water out from her Polish Spring bottle (and then, unsolicited, our Polish Spring bottle) onto anyone in her ambling 5 foot radius, her prim friend in exaggeratedly puffy sleeves, the daughter of a Spanish diplomat, offering up the explanation that “It’s her first time rolling”*. It was a surprising respite perched just a few floors above one of the more shameless circuses of a party that I managed to wriggle into the belly of in quite some time.
*I saw her subsequently at an afternoon birthday disco a month later and she didn’t appear to have cultivated much mastery by what I can only imagine was her 8 or 9th time around.
But for all such hints, the first sure-footed step transpired a few weeks ago at the M. Everyone converged on the place in the usual way, but it had been awhile, and it was lovely.
It is difficult to discern whether I would be more self-indulgent to elaborate on the details of my funny little capers at the M or to wax philosophical about the grand meaning of it all, though I suppose that tending to a blog, however occasionally, indicates some inclination to “talk to hear the sound of my own voice”. Even as I blush, I imagine that I’ll be able to muster up the indecency to press on.
The music, as par usual, adhered to the M’s consistently refreshing “slow and steady wins the race” ethos. No Regular Play presented the crowd with the newest incarnation of their ever-evolving, simultaneously tender and urgent live set, and girl-crush worthy Deniz Kurtel, whose unpretentious self-discipline and ability to exercise just the right amount of tasteful restraint in her productions are marvel worthy, finally brought the set that she’d been carrying over vast expanses of sea and soil home. Taking the attendees on a musical journey through spirited tracks that dredge up the deep but discriminating inner “uhhhh” (the good kind – that is, the rapper kind) from the bellies of all who posses it, eminently adorable duo Soul Clap reliably delivered on their good-times-for-all reputation, and Wolf+Lamb rounded things off with their lush, roving selections that, at their best, meld to create that rare, seductive something that floats, film-like, atop the delicate cusp between the erotic and the religious.
In a recent conversation with Pea-tea – a friend in social analysis and co-occupant of the “academy is misery but I’m not sure of where else I belong” existential crises category – we sunk our speculation- rabid teeth into the waning patience for shit-shows infecting the souls of many among us. Naturally, one too many parties inspiring the fantasy of tele-transporting yourself 15 years back in time to cast a stake into the heart of the moment when you declared to yourself, green and adventurous, that “getting high is awesome” can certainly have that effect on a person. M parties, however, serve as an intriguing counterpoint to this sentiment. This is not to suggest that they are shit-show proof. Hardly. Anyone who’s had the honor of working the bar past a certain hour or has attempted to clear the place out when the cleaning lady arrives has an arsenal of stories about just how pathetic and devolved a broke man in search of a beer and a good time can be. Nevertheless, there is some kind of a tangible difference in an M night’s trajectory from civilized to strange.
The atmospheric alchemy, as it were, has something to do with the combined power of space, light, and the near scholarly intentions pervading fastidious musical selection. That it is a warm, golden, charming space – something of a post-modern, uniquely Brooklyn answer to an 18th century salon – must affect some degree of genteel behavior, at least for a bit longer than an average warehouse, dank and underworldly. This distinction does not only rest on the point of decor, but also the relationship between space and the progression of time. Warehouses, where it is perpetually night, are like inverted casinos (perpetually bright), rupturing nature’s signals of temporality to induce amnesia in the mnemonic lobe of hard-won, decision-directing, archives where life lessons that should remind us of the contingency between action and consequence dwell – to encourage zombie-esque debauchery of the highest order.
At the M, the transition from night to day is more like a pilgrimage, and the passing off of the baton between nocturne and the diurnal figure centrally into the scene; not repressed or scorned, but invited and delighted in. The skylights gently filter the reality of a new day’s arrival, easing the bodies lavishing beneath it– almost as if underwater – into yesterday’s future, and the soundtrack, slowly segueing from insistent thumping to celebratory, melodic, and sincere, dictates the pace of the carriage as it plods, steady, in the direction of pillows and dreams. With stock of witty stories to recount and performances for the ego to enact depleted over the course of the night’s passage, everyone glows for a finite, crystalline, moment with the freshly purged tranquility usually reserved for martyrs and sages.
There is a tangible cinematic timbre to it all, and not simply as a consequence of the dance between set, staging, characters, or plot. At its core, I think it has more to do with the way that our experiences become part of our memory’s inner film reel. On M mornings, you can almost feel the presence of your future self remembering those moments in the self-same instant that they occur, hearing it wonder if you’d ever been more extravagant…or if you’d ever been more contentedly undefined.
