There is an end to everything. When I moved to New York City in 2003 I was 22 and mostly stupid. Having just graduated from art school, I was still laboring under the misapprehension that the world owed me a living, that my friends would always be my friends, and that I would be young for a long time. Those first six months were probably the hardest time I’ve ever had. I was seriously poor, working jobs that were detrimental to my health and my self-esteem, sometimes barely scraping up enough change to eat, and just wrapping my head around the fact that my previous four years’ experience in no way prepared me for life in the ‘real world’.
Desperately trying to figure out who I was, I stumbled through the next few years, clinging to whatever small morsels of truth were tossed my way. Sometimes they came in the guise of books, music, or places, but most often in the form of other people. There were good-time drinking buddies, itinerant exes, the enemies who seemed like friends, melodramatic showboats, fortune-readers, dreaming idealists, and pragmatic scholars. Each person that intersected my life at that time was a sort of guide, for good or ill, but most of them faded into the background din of the city, save a very few. Perhaps a pat truth, but it took me a long time to realize that good friends are both hard to find and worth their weight in gold about fifty times over.
These were the few who graciously received the brunt of my post-adolescent thrashings, who didn’t hold it against me when I called them at 2AM and asked for a ride from Queens, who stayed with me until the bitter end of the night, climbed construction fences in Manhattan, drank Sparks and ate White Castle sliders, survived the absolutely retarded Vice party of 2005, helped me garner six noise complaints for karaoke stylings, blessed out my ex-boyfriends in public, cooked innumerable dinners, crashed ICFF events, and have loved and lost with me for the last seven or more years. We have spent arguably the best and worst decade of our lives here, equally defined by our attachments to one another and by the city itself, an icon of vastness and inhospitable indifference, of excitement and frightening impenetrability. But, things change.
This week, one of my best friends takes the next step, following another of us a year earlier, and one the year before that. So, this mix is very much dedicated to Alicia, but also to Leah, to LeeAnn, and to all of us that laid our foundations here. I wouldn’t be who I am without you, and here’s hoping for another ten years.
For all that I learned: that the city can’t hold you forever, that you won’t be 20-something for very long, that ‘cool’ really doesn’t mean that much, that you have to learn who you are without looking for a reflection of yourself in another, and that success is relative, the most valuable things I gained were the people who I learned with. To everybody: thank you. And to Alicia: I hope that this gives you something to listen to, to remember, to roll your windows down and turn the stereo up on the way to Tejas. I love you and will miss you.
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1. Gliss – Morning Light
2. Best Coast – When I’m With You
3. Asobi Seksu – Lions And Tigers
4. Bear In Heaven – Ultimate Satisfaction
5. Small Black – Bad Lover
6. LCD Soundsystem – All My Friends
7. Desire – Don’t Call
8. FM Belfast – Synthia
9. Parallel Dance Ensemble – Turtle Pizza Cadillac (Yam Who? Rework)
10. Woolfy – Oh Missy
11. Telefon Tel Aviv – Helen of Troy
12. Unsolved Mysteries – Falling in Love
13. Washed Out – Despicable Dogs (Small Black)
14. Millionyoung – Mien
15. Joe Goddard – Lemon & Lime (Home Time)
16. La Grande Illusion – I Wanna Be Your Dog
