Tag Archives: Indri

NYC

Leave a comment | Posted by Patrick Calder on in travel

Have you ever been to New York City? I have, at least four times. And I like it. Just don’t tell anyone I know, because that could get me in trouble. I’m central NY, born and raised. But New York City just doesn’t come up spontaneously in discussions among “upstate” New Yorkers. Like some blemish you hope no one will notice if you don’t mention it. But I’m sure I can trust you to keep my secret.
I was back again, this past weekend; again visiting my friend Indri. She wanted to see an exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, and who would I be to turn down a beautiful lady who asked me to show her lizards?!
lizard
It was very hard for me to come back from NYC. We essentially spent two days wandering around manhattan, on foot. No Times Square. No Rockafeller Center. We kept to the ass end of the island… Chinatown, the West Village, and surrounding areas. It was absolutely everything I love about city life, and everything that is being weeded out of DC. NYC* is the first city I’ve ever been to with the ability to generate and maintain it’s own culture. And you can absolutely see it in the faces of the people you pass. Here they are, living in this incredible collection of relatively ancient monoliths, immersed in the most active, vibrant communities I’ve ever seen, and yet these are the most down-to-earth people I’ve met. I’ve been out west, and I’ve been to the south, and I live in DC, and I can see why New Yorkers have a reputation for being mean. They have a strong directness combined with the ability to ignore anything that isn’t part of their immediate life.
indri eating pizza
I loved walking into store fronts, and finding a designer hawking his own clothing line. Or a cafe that doesn’t know the meaning of the word Starbucks. Breakfast on Sunday was at this great little restaurant … somewhere I can’t remember. Ice cream in Chinatown. Tofu from a man dishing it out of huge pots set into grocery carts on the street. And neighborhoods filled with real people walking down the streets with their friends.
The people. Holy hell, the people! I actually felt safer in NYC than in DC. Not because of any respective amount of crime. But there are just so many people on the street in NYC at every moment of the day, that any criminal would have to be incredibly brazen. And those aren’t the kind of crimes you can worry about. In relative contrast, DC seems almost dead. Our huge sidewalks spend more time empty than even partially used. And outside of one or two holidays, they’re never jammed with people. When I come home from late nights out, The six block walk from the subway to my apartment is always alone. I might pass 1 or 2 other people if I’m lucky, including the hookers.
facade
And the architecture in NYC makes me smile. So much of it comes from times when building was still a craft instead of an occupation. As if the whole city was carved out of rock by a million different artists working spontaneously. No two buildings are the same, and no two facades look alike. And everywhere you go, you can find these little anomalies tucked away where you least expect them.
It really was an amazing weekend, just immersing myself in this beehive of life, and activity, and colors, and smells… . If Indri wouldn’t kill me in my sleep, I’d probably never leave her apartment to come back here.
But I came back, and I wasn’t particularly happy about it. Driving back into this city was like having a cold, wet blanket thrown over me. The streets are deserted. Ominous people lurk randomly on the corner, waiting to intimidate someone. It’s a city that was built for the express purpose of imposing it’s will on other people.If New York CIty is ‘experience’, then Washington, DC is “ambition”. For the next two days, I couldn’t believe I had enjoyed the weekend so much, and yet it was now so far away.

Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!

color

1 Reply | Posted by Patrick Calder on in friends


Indri sent me this picture the other day. Not bad at first look. But the more I looked, the more I liked about it. The lighting and the colors are at the same time subtle and bold. This pile of comfortable, bohemian fabrics across the bottom of the image–which is pure “Indri”–is balanced against the tall, empty vertical elements of the architecture, which is pure NYC.
Doesn’t hurt that Indri‘s cute, either.
Speaking of disturbingly-cute, little women, Nguyet participated in her first art show, this past weekend. She has 2 pieces hanging at the MoCA gallery in Georgetown, for the next month, I think. And her work was considerably better than most of the pieces in the show, by both quality and artistic-ness.
Nothing exciting or new. Just working this week on a couple websites for clients. Neither of which did I get to design from scratch, so there’s only so much you can do. Work still seems a little slow. I could be doing something about that, I suppose.
Yeah… that’s all for now.

Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!

Indri in town

4 Replies | Posted by Patrick Calder on in friends

I dropped Indri off at the bus yesterday afternoon. No offense to anyone who’s ever visited me, but when I finally turned around to walk back to my place, I actually missed her. I don’t usually miss weekend visitors once they finally leave. Quite the opposite. No matter how great they may be, I’ve been living alone long enough, and rely enough on my weekends to unwind, that visitors throw off my rhythm.I don’t get to calm down. I don’t get time alone to get my head straight.
But I did miss Indri.
indri eating hot dog
So yeah… it was a nice weekend. Just… fun. Nothing spectacular. But it was fun. And active. And … and I ate way too much, and didn’t get enough sleep, really. (As attested to by my oversleeping this morning.) We saw dead people at the Holocaust museum and living things at the Botanical Garden. We finished off the weekend at the zoo, with lots of cute furry things and disgusting slimy things. And Indri rambles on and on, never at a loss for words, except when I said something incredibly stupid, at which point she stares at me like a dog who can’t understand the crazy things humans do. But she’s smart and she’s cute, and she’s nowhere near as innocent and sweet as she would have you believe. (Just look at her obsession with her own butt.)

Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!

New York, New York

Leave a comment | Posted by Patrick Calder on in travel

There is something so wrong about sitting here on a Friday night in my pajamas, doing nothing.
I should have painted. Or at least sketched. (God forbid I should go out). But I was full of self-pity, so I played video games instead. Games are my little mental anesthesia. I feel completely brain dead by the time I’m done. Bad for art. Good for distress.
You know… I think I’m starting to understand the New York City subways a bit. The first step, as with anything else, is to discard your ideas of how complicated they are in the first place. All human interaction with our environment is based on symbols. So trying to figure out things like traffic patterns and transit networks is no different. If one level of information is too complex, make it more abstract. (In my home town, I would watch every car on the street to decide what to do. Here in DC, I watch the lanes.) Once I’m on the train, I’m set. But… you know… figuring out how to get to the right train? I’m completely fucked. So I still gotta work on that.
Did I mention I was in NYC again last weekend?
I was dragged out there by a brutal woman who didn’t care how busy I was.
(kidding!)
I was dragged out there by a beautiful woman who I’d been anxious to see now that she was ‘free’ again from visitors.
As much of a panic as they caused me, I really do love the Chinatown busses. They ferry people literally from the streets of one city to the streets of another. No terminals. No kiosks. No signs. No uniforms. Pay $17.50 and you’ll be 300 miles away by the time anyone notices. Okay… I probably should have thought more about how crowded a Friday afternoon shuttle was going to be. But still… I caught the second bus I tried for, and was only about 2 and a half hours behind schedule. The Washington Deluxe route lets you off at 34th and 8th; right across from the New Yorker hotel. This was the first place I ever stayed in NYC. It has a certain freaky grandeur. The neighborhood scared the shit out of me back then. But time has changed the place, and Friday night in that little corner of Manhattan is loud and bright. Busier, in fact, than during the day. (I’d had paranoid day dreams about sparsely populated sidewalks leaving me standing out like a purple elephant, with a sign saying “mug the tourist”.)
We went into Brooklyn on this trip, to see a jazz concert at the music conservatory. Apparently I’m working my way through the city one borough at a time. I can see what so many long-time NYC residents like about Brooklyn, though. What tiny bits I caught sight of through the rain (and rain, and rain, and rain…) and greasy taxi windows reminded me of all the character of Manhattan, but shrunk down to a human scale. (Well… once you’re away from the bridges, anyway). I actually felt safer walking to the subway after the show there, than I do most places in DC after dark. Could have just been blissful ignorance, though.
Earlier that afternoon, we went to the MoMA, to see the Pixar exhibit. The exhibit itself was fun, and certainly makes me want to see some of their movies that I’ve missed. But I was mostly impressed by some of the pre-production artwork. I was surprised how many early character designs were done as traditional collages. I haven’t seen anyone use the technique for practical purposes in what must be forever. (No. Photoshop doesn’t count.) Other than that, I probably enjoyed the color studies the most. Blocking out entire movies in highly abbreviated, highly abstracted scenes on long scrolls of paper. This great, super-condensed chunk of pop culture and art and motion and…
I got to indulge my New York City fetish on the way home, as we walked through Koreatown and stopped to pick up dinner from Madison Square Garden. Did I mention I have a serious thing for Asian pears? But since they’re roughly the size of a softball and weigh over a pound each, I didn’t think packing them home on the bus was going to work. At least not with my backpack already full of shit.
I pick on Indri, for sleeping late and taking so long to get ready to go out. In DC, thats a very ‘suburban’ thing. But until I sat here writing, tonight, it didn’t occur to me how much we did once the day finally geared up. Up through Rockafeller Center, MoMA, Koreatown, Dinner, Concert, Movie. That is very NOT suburban. And that was just us, having a slow weekend, and a sick host to boot.
My only deep regret is a lack of photos. The weather outside was primarily miserable the entire weekend. Friday and Saturday were all about rain, and Sunday was cold enough to stop me in my tracks, literally. A few pictures of Indri, of course. But otherwise, nothing. I really need to go back when the weather is less horrid, and I have time to wander.

Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!

Part 4: Christmas Trees

2 Replies | Posted by Patrick Calder on in art

I meant to do some drawing tonight. Not gonna happen. I owe someone a picture, but I am barely conscious enough to write, much less draw. I’ve had a finished sketch on canvas done for a few days now, waiting for me to start painting. Want to finish that painting before Christmas, too.
The main cause of my delay, and the reason I don’t feel too bad, is that I finished my Christmas shopping. Amazon.com is my bitch. And… you know… they have all my money, now.
Mostly just want to respond to Indri’s comments in my last email. I could have just left my own additional comments, but if I’m going to take the time and thought to write this, I might as well get credit for a whole journal entry. Plus… it extends the number of journal entries she’s caused to 4.
“If you are commissioned to decorate the National/State X-mas tree what will you embellish it with?”
The idea’s of the smaller, state trees is fine. Having organizations local to those places create some ornaments, and then hang them on a tree surrounding the national tree. But I think many of the places didn’t put much thought into it. I mean… these decorations are representing your entire state to the fucking nation. DC’s sad decorations were just the most obvious example I noticed. DC is nationally and internationally famous for it’s food, it’s arts, it’s music. But do we feature anything done by these local residents? No. We cut out pictures of national monuments to a bunch of dead white guys who never lived here longer than 4 years. Didn’t color them in. Didn’t add sparkles or decorations. Didn’t even worry whether the buildings were actually in DC.
The national tree, though, is just heinous. Trash the gaudy snow flakey things, and the star topper. If I was actually going to do it, I’d obvious put more research into it. But off the top of my head, I just want something more tasteful and traditional, instead of something that looks like it came from the after-the-holidays sale bin at K-Mart. White (water-resistant) cloth sashes going around the tree. Ornaments of unpainted wood and brushed metal. Stripped away about 90 percent of the lights. They should look like a sparse field of stars… not Times Square.
Better?
You’re the one who went to fashion school, Indri. What would you do?

Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!

art.

1 Reply | Posted by Patrick Calder on in art

I know blind, one-legged Buddhists who decorate a christmas tree better than our national tree. The tree itself is kind of frumpy, to begin with. Shouldn’t the national tree be the perfect specimen of Christmashood? They proceed to cover it with a blanket of lights. You can’t go more than an inch an a half in any direction on this 50 foots tall tree without running into a light bulb. Scattered over those are the largest, gaudiest, cheapest baby-blue, foot-wide, opaque, plastic snowflakes. And that’s it. (Besides the clear plastic, 2-foot tall star on the top. It looks like something that ghetto liquor store on the corner would have in it’s window, with cases of beer wrapped beneath it. The state trees aren’t much better. Washington DC’s particularly bothered me. Inside the clear balls which house the ornaments on every tree, were pictures of all the major local federal landmarks. Monuments, Memorials, The Capital, The Pentagon. (Okay… the pentagon isn’t even located in Washington DC!) There’s a half million people living in the District, with a rich local history going back 2 centuries, and all they can find to put in christmas tree ornaments are pictures out of a fucking tour guide book?
gilliam artChristmas trees aside, it was a pretty nice day. I ended up going to the Corcoran Gallery to check out their current exhibits. I first ended up at the Sam Gillian retrospective, even though i knew nothing about him. But oh my god, is his work… impressive. He basically ignores the traditional differences between 2D and 3D; working in non-traditional materials, or traditional materials in unusual ways, almost always on a grand scale. Bold use of color and texture on such an overwhelming scale can leave you briefly shocked looking at some of the pieces. (i.e. The Perfect White Paintings) I’ve never seen a collection from a single artist that showed such a clear progression in his work. You can see exactly how he got to every stage in his development. I felt a clear sense of purpose and planning, that I wish I had more of myself.
maoI eventually found the Andy Warhol exhibit, which was originally my main intention for going into the Corcoran. I was skeptical at first, and almost didn’t go, because I saw a Warhol show at the Corcoran just a couple years ago. But this was a much more comprehensive show, examining the artist over his entire fine arts career. Some of his portraits are so dead-on to the person represented, (such as the Dolly Parton or the Clint Eastwood), that I almost laughed. The skill and dedication with which he examined the media as a source of culture, and eventually his appropriation of it in the creation of something completely new… it’s impressive by today’s standards, much less 3 or 4 decades ago. I can’t believe he came out of the incredibly conservative advertising industry of the 1940s.
But yes… go see the shows. I could write about them for hours, and not convey how much I got out of them. (Although, as usual, the best part was a desire to create more on my own.)
indri.jpgWhat would a journal entry be, recently, without reference to Indri? Pretty sad indeed. She asked, after the last entry, why she wasn’t yet “freakishly beautiful”. But I think being “disgustingly cute” is much better. Cuteness requires an integrated package of looks, personality, and action. It’s your whole being. And it’s applicable to every part of your life. Beauty is so much more limited. It seldom refers to more than one aspect of an individual. (“She has a beautiful face.” “She has a beautiful soul.”) And it doesn’t often come up in a positive manner outside an intimate relationship.
So Indri… do I think you’re beautiful? Of course. There were times during my recent visit when I looked at you and couldn’t help but smile like an idiot. And I don’t often do that. So I guess that makes you abnormal as well.
But I still think being disgustingly cute is better.

Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!

Part 2.

2 Replies | Posted by Patrick Calder on in travel

A couple little addendums to my last entry.
The other thing you should know about Indri is that besides the whole “disgustingly cute” thing, (which she is apparently not going to let me forget), she is disturbingly smart as well. Smart enough that if she let it show, she wouldn’t appear anywhere near innocent. But beneath every puzzled look and cute grin, there’s another question that belies the engines churning away inside her head. And while she may not seem to always like being an adult, her reactions show an acute self-awareness and consciousness of everything she does.
If she’s anything like me, that probably drives her a bit crazy.
And then there’s New York City. Addendum Two. I think had been about five years since my last visit, and changes were visible. We arrived in Manhattan through the Lincoln tunnel, which comes out pretty close to the place I stayed the first time I visited, so I was able to immediately compare. That area just west of the Empire State Building has built up with traditional commerce a bit more. New movie theatre. More restaurants. Signs of life. SO for much of the city I saw. Certainly Starbucks has exploded since my last visit. More banks. More shops. Most of the national chains for just about any industry you care to mention. But what I love — what makes this New York City — is that even with all that, it’s still just a drop in the bucket. There’s just so much squeezed into every last inch of this city that even if every national chain of every possible industry opened a storefront in every square mile, it wouldn’t begin to fill all the businesses. In some places, the store fronts go three stories high. Indri, who’s been there for two years now (?) was saying how she still frequently finds new places when she goes out on the street.
Okay… maybe that wasn’t a short addendum.
Okay. Here’s another New York City thing for you. It’s dirty. It’s worn. It’s lived in.
And that really feels soooo good.
In most of the well travelled areas of DC, you’d be lucky to find a building that was older than 30 years, or hadn’t been significantly remodeled in that time. (The Washington Monument requires a complete face-lift every 8 years, or it starts to deteriorate. No joke.) We have people running machines that do nothing but take bubblegum off the sidewalk. Billboards are regulated nearly out of existence. Everything is square and anonymous. Soot and stains are sandblasted off at regular intervals. Vacant old-time department stores are remodeled into wonderful new office complexes. It doesn’t feel like people live here. It feels like people are here as an afterthought to the city. (Which is pretty close to the historical truth).
Whereas New York City bleeds people. You could never question it’s “lived-in” status. I looked at an ornate door handle in a lobby, that must have been at least 60 years old. It was on the door to the staff toilet. I’ve never seen a better example of organized chaos than Manhattan streets, especially after dark. The buildings are all from an age that remembered art wasn’t something in a museum, and design wasn’t just for brochures. There’s a visual maelstrom of shapes and sizes, between the buildings, and the parks, and the stuff that fills the cracks.
I read an article once talking about how Star Wars, when it came out in the ’70s, it was so accessible because it showed a grimy, lived-in future that reflected our own world, where so much of the sci-fi of the last 30 years had told us the future would be sanitized and soundtracked for our protection, (a la Star Trek). So if Washington DC is Star Trek, then New York City is Star Wars.
I actually thought this stuff about Indri and New York City would be brief. I had much more to say about work, and personalities, and cultural underpinnings. But it’s after midnight, and I’m starting to get tired. So go away and leave me alone until another night.

Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!