time storage

I'm being watched, sat here alone in my hotel room. There may be about fifty eyeballs focussed on me, it's difficult to relax.

In the Carlton Arms every square inch of wall space has been painted. I haven't found out what the history of the place is, but each room has been treated by a different artist. There's a guest book in the drawer, specifically for this room - I had a glance at it but quickly decided I didn't want to know too much about the hundreds of people I was sharing a bed with.



Some glimpses of the trip over here. I came here in a jumbo jet with British Airways, travelling alone due to my return trip being later than the others [who return right after the Rotozaza gigs, on April 9th]. They were all on an American Airlines flight 20 minutes ahead of me. I had a window seat and was thrilled to see we were following somone else's air-stream - surely theirs?

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The first two hours of the flight involved chasing the sun, climbing higher than i've ever been in a plane - for a moment we succeeded and the Rolls Royce jets glowed pink. I saw the last piece of land off Ireland before heading off over the pond:

And some hours later the first lights appeared below - Newfoundland! Too dark to take a photo so instead I cancelled Spiderman 2 and took a shot of the screen showing where we were.

Spiderman 2 is an interesting way of seeing New York - I wish the sequences with him swinging around town would go on for longer. Perhaps there's some videogame with the whole city mapped out like Google Earth 3D buildings. If so, surely there's no better way to get to know New York? Strangely, Peter Parker [the 'Clark Kent' of Spidey] looks just like Vallejo Gantner, artistic director of PS122 and the man bringing us over.

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I'm the only one of us who's never been to NY, but still there's been a fair amount of OO AHS and OH MY GODS between us, walking around town and bumping into endless film locations from Harold Lloyd to Ghostbusters. Ok, so i'm blown away, nothing but wonderful things. How about a list:

- Blueberry pancakes and the New York Times for breakfast in the Lyric Diner, sun streaming in through the windows.
- A trip out to Williamsburg on the L Train. The beautiful people, selling bikes and useless tat to each other on the streets. Everyone in shades enjoying the sun. There's still snow here and there in some corners. A quick visit to Gallapagaos Art Space where Greg and Melanie do their solos on Tuesday, to pick up flyers. A walk down to the water with a view onto Manhattan.
- A long walk [4-5 miles?] from there to Brooklyn, underneath Williamsburg Bridge and on through the Jewish quarter, a completely gated area it seems. The old school buses.

- It is VERY run down, and I am so glad about that. I had no idea and was bracing myself for a cleaned up, shiny new 2007 version, all bars to hold onto and glass facades like London. The roads, even in Manhattan, are terrible which means the yellow cabs still lurch and bounce around. But out in Williamsburg it's something else - completely shot, block after block of deserted factories heading down to Brooklyn, many of them magnificent buildings.

- The 'It Will Do' aesthetic of people's living and working spaces contrasting vividly with the vehicles they drive through and over it.

- Ed Purver very generously threw a party for us last night at his gorgeous Brooklyn loft and invited a ton of interesting guests, hardly any of whom i managed to meet being locked into conversation with old friend [from Paris] Daniel Serafini Sauli and his girlfriend Lara - i'll be seeing a lot more of Daniel. However one person Ed made a point of introducing me to was Andrew Schneider whose project www.actingstranger.com sounds fascinating. He wrote a series of 15 dialogues, put them up online, and invited strangers [via craigslist! ] to meet him and enact them without rehearsal. Andrew would set up a camera at the location, the stranger would walk in, and they'd 'do' the script [each role having been learnt by heart]. The scripts are all short - about an A4 sheet of paper each. When it's over the stranger gets up, leaves, and they never meet again.

I have arrived in the USA in a jumbo jet.