Kids Music

My two and half year old son, the apple of my eye, the brightest spark in the galaxy…

… has terrible taste in music.

It’s, of course, age-appropriate. We won’t hold it against him.

But hearing the same children’s media on repeat is an experience that escapes no parent. One of the unspoken skills is learning to either disassociate so you no longer hear the content of a song on repeat or to do such a deep study that you hear the entire universe of meaning inside a single song. Happy to talk to anyone who will listen about how all of life is contained in “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.”

Anyway, his perfect DJ set would be Elmo, Cocomelon, and The Kaboomers on repeat with a quick palette cleanse of “Resilient Engines” by Thomas the Tank. If we try to put on adult music, he gets really distraught: “No no no! Google Stop!”

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had adult taste in music.

My first cassette tape was a free one from the Sunoco Gas Station in Putnam Valley, NY. I can’t imagine why this was a promotion—did Sunoco think people would say “Let me stop at Sunoco rather than the most convenient gas station because they gave me a tape?— but here we are. The tape was full of motown hits like “Joy to the World,” “Heard it Through The Grapevine,” and “Turn, Turn, Turn.”

Joy to the World was my favorite. It starts with the line “Jeremiah was a bullfrog,” which was the first time I heard a song use something that sounded like my name (It would hold this position until the music video for “Jeremy” by Pearl Jam came out and everyone decided that I was to be feared.) Heard it Through The Grapevine was my second favorite, because of those damn dancing raisins.

Now, back to my son, who as a reminder, has terrible taste in music. He has a babysitter who is like Mary Poppins and always brings him toys and new kids music to listen to.

She recently watched him and we were saying goodbye, she goes:

”Hey, I played him some adult songs and there were two he actually liked.”

“Really? What were they?”

“Joy to the World” and “Heard it Through the Grapevine.”

Maybe he’s just cosplaying as a kid so we don’t get freaked out.

New York Magic

I’ve been in show business for 20+ years, and it always felt like a “small world” where everyone knew each other. I used to play a game with friends where we’d sit outside a restaurant in Union Square, and whoever saw more people they knew would win a free meal. The scores were always high.

But the pandemic changed everything. We’re now all so isolated.

This dislocation has been something I’ve been grieving for a while. I just assumed the longer I was here, the more that feeling of knowing everyone would build. Up until this point, I hadn’t shared this feeling with anyone.

I got offered two tickets to the final dress of Stereophonic on Broadway. I invited one of my oldest NYC friends, Andy. We met in that “small world” of show biz when we were teenagers trying to get that next Broadway show.

The performance was electric, and the play went on to receive a record number of Tony nominations. At intermission, we watched a younger class of artists in attendance hugging and chatting on their way to creating the next “Small World.” I turned to Andy and said:

”Man, did you ever think that after twenty years in the game we wouldn’t know a single person here?”

As the words leave my lips and Andy starts to nod, I hear:

”JEREMY REDLEAF, AS I LIVE AND BREATH!”

I spin around to find my old friend, Meredith, saying hello.

As the old saying goes: “Nobody kicks you out of Show Biz. You kick yourself out.”

Impossible Finds

Speaking of which, I’ve been trying to make a movie for last few years. The strikes + parenthood + a small seasonal window to shoot in + show business's general contraction have all gotten in the way.

And shooting in Upstate, NY is surprisingly expensive. Everything is 30-60 minutes away from everything, and it kills your days. I hired a line producer who told me there was no way I could shoot the movie on this budget unless I somehow found one place to live and work and shoot everything. Given the number of locations, that seemed impossible.

In the film, one of the leads is obsessed with signs. As evidenced by this series, I have an appetite for serendipity. I’m trying to cultivate my ability to notice it. But if I’m honest, for the last decade, I haven't felt like the universe has been helping any of my creative work come to be.

After they get kicked out of an ayahuasca ceremony, the two characters go to stay at the farm of a former DJ who has a bubble tent. The day after that line producer delivered the bad news, I'm scrolling through Instagram, and my friend Jillian posts an image from a poetry retreat...

I drive up there to discover that the owner is a former DJ who owns a farm with a bubble tent! And also every other location we need. And also enough room for everyone to stay.

We start shooting in two weeks. It stars an incredible cast led by Catherine Cohen, Heléne Yorke, Rebecca Henderson, and Ben Sinclair.

Want to help? We're closing our equity round and also accepting tax-deductible donations. :-)

Twenty years ago, my Mom gifted me a copy of “I Thought My Father was God” - a collection of true stories from NPR’s Story Project as documented by Paul Auster.

The book is full of wild coincidences and serendipities. And it changed me. Until then, I hadn’t really ever heard stories that defied logic or probability. It alluded to a world out there that might be weirder than I had yet to encounter. A world I wanted to live in.

For example, Lori Peikoff recounts:

In the 1970’s, Joe is seated next to a woman at a restaurant in NYC, and they hit it off. She gives him her phone number, which he then loses. He tries to find her at her job, but can’t. Later that year they both travel to Europe, and once again they find themselves—you guessed it—seated together at the same table. They fall in love, get married and have a child, me.

Depending on where you fall on the Woobric1, serendipities are either statistical anomalies, fun coincidences, or whisperings from The Universe that you’re on the right path.

I don’t know what I believe, but I do like the version of the world where I’m more aware of serendipitous happenings. I’ve been thinking about logging people’s stories because cultivating awe at the sheer improbability of all the things feels helpful right now. And we all could probably stand to see the universe as benevolent, if only occasionally. so.

Writing about serendipities is an art form that I need to practice. Unless it’s a top-tier, undeniably insane story like the star-crossed restaurant lovers, you have to structure things in a way that really lets the anomaly shine and the significance land.

So let’s practice! Here are minor little ones that have happened to me recently:

Dopplegang

I have a few doppelgangers in the city.

Over the years, many people have sent me photos of people they thought were me. They’re always a little off (“You think that’s what I look like?!”), but people swear that they have my essence.

The idea of a ‘double’ has always felt interesting to me. Based on these texts I used to get, I once sold a television show called “Doppelgang” about a guy like me who meets his cooler doppelganger and teams up with him to take on life as an odd couple duo.

It was the fantasy of what I wanted to happen. But the show didn’t get made. And I’ve never met any of my doubles.

And then, one day, I’m sitting in my favorite breakfast spot, and my spitting image sits down next to me and starts talking to me as though we were old friends. Is this my restaurant story?!

I can hardly believe it. His name is Sascha and we have a strange and hilarious chat without ever acknowledging the absurdity of the situation. He gets up to leave and says “Well, I’m off to officiate my first wedding. Wish me luck.”

We don’t exchange information, and he disappears onto the street.

But in a matter of weeks, he starts showing up everywhere. First, in a coaching co-op I’m a part of. Then, on my Instagram feed. And then, in conversations with friends who apparently know him.

And then, I get asked to officiate a wedding. The first I’ve ever done.

As I’m standing at the podium, I look out into the crowd of 300 strangers, and I see one person I definitely know.

A bearded ginger smiling back at me.

On the dance floor, I go “Sascha! Isn’t this crazy?!”

And he goes “Not really.”

Across the Street from Fancy

I’ve been thinking a lot about the people I’ve met in the first half of my life. I’m curious about things you can’t learn on Facebook or Linkedin. I want to know what those moments where our paths crossed meant in their timelines.

What happened to that kid who lost his finger in a camp boating accident who never returned? Did that girl I dated from MySpace who was obsessed with serial killers ever get over that? Was that theatre director who always had a harem of young girls around doing something nefarious?

I also think about people that I actually knew, like my freshman-year college roommates. We had a wild experience transitioning from our families of origin into city living, and I’m dying to know what was really going on for them during that time and where life took them. A reunion has crossed my mind, but I’ve never done anything about it as I don’t have contact information for half of them.

Last week, my wife and I had childcare and decided to go on a rare date night. I looked up Eater where the kids are going these days. For some strange reason, I felt called towards Eleven Madison Park’s new cocktail bar. It didn’t make any sense; it’s not really my thing, and we had theatre tickets that were nowhere near the Flatiron District.

I couldn’t get a reservation, but I decided to show up anyway. Also not like me.

My wife gets there first, and they tell her it’s all booked. She opens the Google and sees that the hotel bar across the street is supposed to be decent. I feel pretty bummed, but we’re running out of time, so I reluctantly agree.

We go to the hotel and have perfectly decent dirty martinis. In walks my college suitemate on a first date. In my twenty years in New York, I’ve never run into this guy. We hug and exchange small talk, and I off-handedly mention that we should have a reunion, and he goes, “I would love that.”

I email the one roommate whose email address I have and one by one; we track down the gang of six. Now we’re working on getting a reunion on the books in May.

All because I felt drawn towards a bar I couldn’t get into.

The Monkey

My wife and I met on OKCupid, and we had zero mutual friends. Over our decade together, that has continued to hold. I once took a meeting with someone she went to High School with, but that’s the extent of it. We come from different worlds. A real internet success story.

This summer, I’m camping with some of her friends. Around the fire, this guy Michael brings up the idea of having a monkey as a pet. My wife mentions that I briefly dated a girl whose family raised a monkey as a sister.

This is, of course, perfect campfire fodder and leads to all sorts of follow-up questions (Was that weird? Yes. Did the monkey like you? No. Did the monkey ever catch you hooking up? Yes.)

Someone asks what kind of parent would decide to do this, and I explain that her mother was a nurse at a zoo, and her father was a folk singer who had some success in the UK.

And I hear a voice with a British accent go: “Wait. Is her Dad’s name Dean?”

”Uh, yeah. How did you—”

"—My Dad was a fan and named me Lydia after his song. I just delivered a painting to him recently.”

I guess we now have one mutual friend. Two, if you count the monkey.

Maybe the world isn’t as small as it used to feel, but it’s certainly full of strange, magical moments if we’re willing to notice them. I don’t know what I believe, but I do believe in paying attention when the improbable happens.

Do you want to hear more stories like this? Do you have any serendipitous stories worth sharing?

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The Monday before the election, I was eating dinner at the bar of my favorite Italian restaurant. If I’m honest, I can’t say I was particularly enjoying it. I was mindlessly shoving focaccia into my mouth while doomscrolling. But for some reason, I had the thought:

“What if I look back on today as the last day of an innocent time? Maybe I should enjoy this a little…”

And I started savoring every bite. I saw the waiters taking care of me. I took in that NYC jovial-and-cramped ambiance that I missed so badly during the pandemic. I reminded myself how many young parents would die to be eating by themselves. I marveled at the coordination that had to happen to get this imported burrata onto my plate. Yes, I’d love another glass of wine! Not only will I look at the dessert menu, but I will also be ordering off it!

Interesting time to be alive, huh?

Even if you’re happy about this turn of political events, you have to admit that you have no idea what’s going to happen next. It’s not hard to imagine this could be the craziest 4+ years we’ve ever experienced. Beyond the administration’s stated goals, there are all sorts of scenarios that could come up with AI, climate, geopolitical decisions, violence, the economy, and global health that could bring us into some seriously gnarly territory. It is totally conceivable that the world changes as much —if not more— as it did during the pandemic. Or it could just be, you know, a real bummer.

Most people in my circles have come out of their initial despair and settled on the “bummer” path.

… which makes total sense. We’ve been through tough times and survived. We need a narrative to ease the terror and continue living our lives as outlined.

And it might just be a bummer! It’s arrogant for anyone to assume they know what’s coming, how bad it will be, and to pre-respond to it as a certainty. I’d *love* to be wrong.

But I can’t shake the knowing that one day in the future, possibly in the next four years, we’re going to wake up to find that the world no longer resembles anything we’ve previously experienced. I don’t know how it happens or when it happens, but I do know it’s going to happen … to the degree I know anything. There are too many things in the air that have a predictable velocity.

And that means if I’m attached to my life and the world looking a certain way, there will be great loss. And if I’m not prepared, I risk spiraling. I lost things during the pandemic that I’m still working on getting back.

I’ve been struggling to know what to do with this constellation of feelings and beliefs. It doesn’t feel right to bury my head in the sand. Is there another way to approach this other than willful ignorance or debilitating terror?

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I think my little act of spontaneous savoring at the Italian restaurant is how I want to approach these times.

I’m officially Gloomsday Prepping.

I’m building my emotional bunker full of tools, practices, and fellowship to thrive in decline. I’m expecting it to come. But if it doesn’t, I know that everything I fortify myself with is still valuable.

I’m seeing the period between now and the inauguration as time to savor. How delightful it is to be focused on the banal challenges of the day-to-day!

Every day that my personal world is *not* upside down is a gift.

I’m teaching myself how to feel awe over the littlest things. If I can be wowed by the experience of breathing, the opportunity to sense and experience even unpleasant things, then I can be okay with whatever comes.

I’m learning to appreciate feeling heartbroken. Grief is praise.

I’m learning how to play musical instruments and move my body more recklessly because song and dance are the purest expressions of human celebration.

I’m forcing myself to go on side quests to stretch my ability to emotionally regulate when I’m uncomfortable.

And I’m letting go of what people might think and allowing myself to invite people into the world I want to live in.

…So I’m starting an Ethical Cult.

Don’t worry; it’s just an immersive theater piece. For now…

People keep throwing around the buzzword of “community” as a response to the election. I’m not sure if that’s enough. I think we need to explore other ways of being with each other that have more ritual and structure.

I’ve had this idea in my brain for a while, but it’s unlike anything I’ve ever done before. That’s code for: it scares me, I know I need other people and I don’t know if I know the right ones yet.” I also don’t know if I know the right me yet.

That’s been more than enough to stop me in my tracks.

But given the recent turn of events, it began to feel relevant enough to figure out.

Cults are not inherently evil. And they’re really good at certain things. The tightness and devotion of the container can create transcendence, the belonging we long for, and smooth over some relational traps.

But, as we know from every docuseries, they almost always fail. Someone gets a little taste of the divine and decides they want to fuck, kill, dominate, or force people to play volleyball.

As Jung said, “The closer to the light, the greater the shadow.”

Cults get into trouble when the leaders think they know “the way” and when they need the structure to continue to exist to serve their ego and connection needs. The Ethical Cult will not be concerned with any of this. It will be completely skeptical of its ability to trust anyone with power. It will be ruthless in disclosing its self-serving motives. If we worship anything, it will be working towards one brief moment where we all feel deep gratitude and connection. Like this lady:

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Cultural Anthropologist Jamie Wheel has written extensively about the elusive concept:

If traditional cults were like taking your seat in an orchestra, and culty cults were like being in a marching band, ethical cults feel more like playing jazz. No sheet music or drum major to guide off. Just us, in the moment, listening for the pulse together.

I recently gathered some creative collaborators together to play some jazz.

We created a 2 hour cult to explore creating an ethical cult. And as evidenced in the photos above, we drank the koolaid and landed on something.

I’ve done enough of these early creative workshops to know that the idea is now both discovered and completely undiscovered. But at least now know I’m not crazy. And that’s an important milestone in any creative endeavor that feels outside your wheelhouse. I’m excited to keep exploring. Stay tuned.

Project Updates

The rewards of this Substack have been really interesting and unexpected. I partially solved my glasses situation. I solved a mystery in my neighborhood. I’ve been approached by one drunken admirer at every wedding I went to this summer.

And the tribute I wrote to my mentor who passed away has come to rank first for his name. Many people who knew him have reached out to connect. It’s been so great to get to know him through the web he weaved.

There’s an interesting piece going around about the “Cozy Web” and how the internet has changed. While I miss the scale and impact of throwing something out there that millions of people encounter, there’s something really lovely about putting something out there from your human soul and getting back human rewards. This space is also a part of my Gloomsday practice.

Thanks for being here with me.

But no one had ever seen her.

This rumor meant something to me as a kid. If someone famous sees something of value in my town, maybe there's something I don't see about this place. Maybe I could make something of myself too?

Years later, I moved to NYC and as fate would happen, I got asked by Youtube to meet with Dr. Ruth. She wanted help figuring out how to share her work with the next generation. She invited me to come to her house and we ended up spending the whole day together.

Celebrities often have two modes: inner circle + everyone else. I was welcomed in.

I got to spend a few years advising her on digital video things and learning more about her amazing life. (If you want to hear her story, "Ask Dr. Ruth" on Hulu is a great place to start)

It was easy to consider her a schticky character, but she changed how sex is perceived in America. She made it cool and accessible on television. We have so much shame about it that we needed a 4'7" German woman to make the word "orgasm" palatable.

She never resented being boxed into something. She understood the power of her character and she had great fun with it. She knew that it was the way she could make an impact. Any frank discourse about sex stands on her shoulders.

One day she called me to catch up and I mentioned I was doing an interactive exhibit in Times Square. "Send me the address," she said. I humored her, but I never expected her to come. She was like 85 years old.

But she took a cab down to the opening and even agreed to be in this video that TIME was shooting. She met my girlfriend and rightfully predicted I would marry her (Though I'm pretty sure she said that to any couple who seemed in love.)

To the doctor. Thank you. May you continue to help us be more whole in your next form.

And of course, I had to ask her if she ever lived in Putnam Valley:

"Oh yes! That was our family lakehouse. Have you ever been to that beautiful little town?"

“I love getting these calls,” he explained. “If I didn’t do something like this, there’s no way they would come on their own. You have a little friendship capital on your birthday. People are the most game to meet you where you want to be met.”

I love this concept. And I really tested it this year.

I have birthday baggage. It all stretches back to the time I invited my 11-year-old guy friends to see a movie starring Billy Crystal as a NBA referee.

It turns out it had almost nothing to do with basketball and everything to do with adult intimacy. “Forget Paris” was a romantic co-starring Debra Winger that I have never been able to forget.

I’ve always told myself that the trailer was misleading and I was bamboozled into thinking it was a different movie. And to my credit, there are *several* seconds of basketball in it and lots of talk of Billy Crystal working a referee. But looking back, this is exactly the kind of movie I would have wanted to watch at eleven. I was a secret soft boy and movies were the first place I learned to feel deeply. I was there for the basketball but I was also there for the Debra Winger.

Perhaps subconsciously, I wanted to see if they would come along for the ride.

But they did not; to this day they still make fun of me for this choice.

Since then, my birthday has been a source of discomfort. So a few years ago, I decided to scrap having parties. I’d just invite people to do a bunch of things I like doing at different dates, times, and group sizes. It’s been a valuable shift.

And so for this year’s milestone birthday, I had a super special batch of things in the works. Then, life got in the way.

In quick succession, I burned out, encountered some family health issues, freak accidents, and the tragic, sudden death of my step brother.

My birthday felt canceled. I couldn’t muster the energy to celebrate.

I had decided that this milestone birthday was a “portal” to the next phase of my life and it felt really sad to let it go. I happened to walk by the new Portal Exhibit in NYC which gives New York and Dublin a live view of each other. I remembered what JD said about birthday capital and it gave me an idea.

I sent a hail mary email inviting people to join me the next morning at the portal for a quick 20 minute ritual. I had no idea what I’d do, who would show up, and for the first time, I actually didn’t care. It was what I wanted to do and I would’ve been perfectly happy doing it by myself.

And of course, people were game. But minutes after I sent the email, the exhibit got shut down.

… apparently, nobody did a SWOT analysis and anticipated that someone might flash their boobs at the good people of Ireland.

I told everyone to meet me anyway.

A beautiful crew gathered and a ritual emerged: we jammed on what a portal means to us and which one we might be approaching in our lives. And then we wrote messages on posters for our future selves. The dark screen ended up being perfect. Because you can never really see what’s on the other side of the portal you’re approaching. One by one, we stepped forward with our message.

I asked future me to hold my fear of the unknown, which he gladly agreed to do. He knows what happens, so it’s not scary to him.

I told the story of my stepbrother and shared a few gifts he gave me. And then I told each person something I appreciated about them.

The Portal redirect allowed me to bring more rituals into my life, which is something I’ve been looking to do, and invite others to join me. I got to shift the focus off of me as a birthday celebrant and create a collective experience for people I care about. And I got to got to tell people how I feel about them, which I’m realizing doesn’t happen often enough unless I go out of my way to do it.

You have a little capital on your birthday, so you might as well do the thing that will make you feel the maximum amount of joy. On our ever-unfolding quest to become more ourselves, it’s an opportunity to plant a flag in a direction you want to go.

If your friends aren’t eleven-year-old boys, they’ll likely meet you there.

GLASSES UPDATE

I wrote recently about my strange and mysterious inability to wear glasses. I posted the article on the interwebs and someone I met 15 years ago suggested I try Neurolens, which helps people with extremely sensitive eyes see through super customized lenses. I went to a specialist and got tested and they told me they thought it was an issue with near-sightedness and gave me a new progressive subscription to try. I’ve got a new pair of frames that I can wear for several hours at a time! We’re making progress, folks!

BROCANTE UPDATE

I ended the mystery of Brocante with the idea that I was going to show up at the restaurant of the family that owned the building and see if I could get Marc his knife back. And I didn’t do it. There’s something that feels aggressive about showing up there by myself, so I need a sidecar to make it a little more playful. If you’re in New York and game for the adventure, let me know!

EARTHQUAKE WISDOM

On a Friday morning a few weeks ago, we had an Earthquake in New York City. We live with lots of physical challenges, but this is not one of them. “What were you doing when the city shook?” was water-cooler talk for days.

5 Rhythms is a “dance meditation” format created by Gabrielle Roth in the 70’s. The basic idea is that there are five rhythms of life, and that dancing them in succession around other people is a cathartic, spiritual, and moving release. I met a few people who told me it was “Better than any drug they’ve ever taken” and so I decided to check it out.

If you happened to have a view into the space, it would look like the wackiest thing: a room full of people totally absorbed in their own worlds, dancing poorly and with abandon to new age music. It’s as if they took the adage “Dance as though nobody’s watching” as a challenge. I found it difficult, interesting, and occasionally profound. When I really got into it, the world melted away.

On that Friday morning, we finished a rollicking 90 minute experience and the room went quiet … only to hear the sound of 100 phones going off with Emergency System Alerts. We were dancing so hard we didn’t notice the Earthquake.

I haven’t been able to think of a better metaphor for how I want to approach our meta-crises.

Wanna dance? It’s somebody’s birthday somewhere.

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No?

Just a reminder that you can “wipe the slate clean” whenever you want. I totally read somewhere that Ernest Hemingway thought that anybody who is anybody starts their year on January 8th.

After running Caveday for 7 years, I don’t really believe in new year’s resolutions. It rarely converts into sustainable fuel.

The real skill that makes the difference is learning to notice, explore, experiment, and make meaning of new possibilities.

Rather than resolutions, I like time-bound experiments. Below are some bits of inspiration and a few of my experiments:

James Clear is Fairly Clear

Why is Atomic Habits is consistently on the top of the NY Times Best Seller list? Because we’re desperate for anything that might work better than a placebo. The book has some inspiring quotes, helpful frameworks and interesting tidbits. You can get most of it by reading Derek Sivers’ summary here.

But of course, no self-help book can actually help. Otherwise, we’d all have awakened the Giant Within by The Secret Power of NOW years ago.

The best it can do is inspire you to play a different inner game and give you something to hold onto while you do.

I’ve run an accountability program at Caveday for many years. Many participants have read it and here is what I’ve seen stick:

1. The most powerful lever for adding a habit is making it part of your identity

2. Habit Stacking - Do new habits when you do existing habits.

3. Don’t miss a habit twice - it’s the start of a new habit

4. Cue, Craving, Response, Reward

The Golden Algorithm

The most helpful framework I’ve come across lately is The Golden Algorithm by the executive coach Joe Hudson. Whatever you’re avoiding has a feeling associated with it, and you’re likely to feel that way whether you do the task or avoid the task.

Example: If I’m avoiding sending an email, I’m scared that it’s not going to go well. [I’m feeling fear.] And if I don’t send it, I still fear because I know the impact of not sending it grows with every day I procrastinate.

The way out, according to Joe, is to befriend the emotion and move through it as quickly as possible on the way to doing what you know you really want to do. The emotion is part of you. Might as well befriend it!

One New Habit is Really Two

Any new resolution is actually two resolutions: the “external goal” and “the internal game.” Most people ignore the internal game. I’ve found a lot of success using the golden algorithm to create a secondary metric that allows me to move through the emotion quicker.

Outer Habit: I’m going to do 100 pushups a day, 5x a week

Inner Habit: I’m trying to avoid the physical sensation of pain. If I think to do pushups but avoid it, I can choose to free write about it for five minutes. After a few times, that becomes boring, so I just do the pushups.

Connection Roulette

As the world has turned inward, it’s easier to assume that those connections are gone and that your world is in fact now smaller. I’m finding it meaningful to push back on that assumption. Here’s one small way:

I’ve collected thousands of contacts in my phone, most of which I have no idea who they are. Once a day, I scroll with my eyes closed and pick someone to say hello to. If they respond, I get to have a convo I wouldn’t have had. If they don’t, they get deleted. Here’s the template I use:

“Name! I’m doing a little thing for January I call “contact roulette.” I scroll with my eyes closed and pick someone in my phone at random and say hello and you wouldn’t believe it, but today you won! [Question i.e. how the heck are ya? Where did you end up in life? What’s something you appreciate these days?] or [Memory: Remember when we did _____?]

End of the Day Protocol

If you’re a recovering overachiever or card-carrying member of capitalism, you probably have feelings at the end of the day based on how you did.

When someone asks you “How was your day?” … what protocol are you running?

“It was … okay?”

“I got some stuff done”

“My teammate was so annoying.”

“I’m worried about this thing.”

“It went too quickly”

We are also cognitively biased to remember the end of our day and the worst moment. Unless you finished something amazing at 5pm, this can set you up to color your day negatively.

A new thing I’m trying is coming up with End of Day Checklist Protocols that are aligned with my values.

Day with lots of Obligations

☑ Did these obligations help maintain relationships that are important to me?

☑ Did I find a moment for myself?

☑ Did I notice something beautiful?

☑ Did I bring positive energy to something I could have been negative about?

Day with some Obligations

☑ Did I do something bold? Did I zag where I could zig?

☑ Did I make progress on my most important task?

☑ Did I do something risky/vulnerable?

Exploratory Day

☑ Did I listen to my intuition?

☑ Did I learn something?

☑ Was I in my body?

☑ Did I talk to a friend?

How do you make meaning of your days?

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PS: If you’re looking for an external boost that isn’t just talk, we’ve got a Caveday sale running for a few more days. We host 20+ hours a day of guided focus sessions, planning workshops, and accountability groups. Members report they get more done in less time and feel happier while they do it.

I was on the subway escalator and a teenager somehow managed to get their iphone cable stuck in the rubber between the escalator and the handrail. Why he had a iphone cable out, I don't know, but what a great opportunity to say "Gen Z and their technology! Ugh!"

He tugged as hard as he could but the escalator rushed him away and as he realized he was going to lose the cord, his desperate eyes locked in with mine as if to say “You! You can save it. With great power comes great responsibility!”

My limbic system sprung into action and I grabbed the cable and pulled with all of my might. I really put my torso into it, pulling with the amount of force reserved for that old game "Tug of War" we used to play at summer camp before we had smartphones with cables that got stuck in escalators.

It worked. The cable was freed! And because every object in motion stays in motion, I smashed my torso into the other side of the escalator. 

And fractured my pelvis.  

I've had eight weeks of steroids and bedrest to think about all the opportunities to help people in more meaningful ways that I pass on every single day. We have 35,000 choices per day. And some of them have tendrils that take you into your next future.

I'm actually not sure I had any free will in the matter.  That need to be helpful was carved a long time ago and I never in a thousand years thought that could happen. I was destined to make the mistake in some form until I learned to counter my desire to jump into the fray with a little more skepticism.

Maybe our only free will is how we metabolize the results of these instinctual experiences. 

I’m in college and waiting in line for rush tickets to Wicked. As we get closer to the box office, my friend Scott glances at the understudy board and delivers the bad news: “Idina Menzel is out today.” I squint and go “You can see that far?” And he goes “You can’t?! “

And that’s how I learned I needed glasses.

…Although I submit Wicked is the best show to see with blurry vision:
Dorothy + Wicked Witch + Defying Gravity = pretty much got it.

But like that green blurry blob Elphaba, something changed within me.
Something was most certainly not the same.

I started wearing glasses and my face finally made sense.

I have light features, blonde eyebrows, and pale eyelashes. When I’d look in the mirror, I’d find myself wanting. It wasn’t a matter of feeling myself, more like an inability to feel the “self.” A lack of cohesion or completion.

I had what my friend Ashley calls “Dave Matthews Disorder (DMD)” Think about it. Can you imagine his face? You can’t. It’s blurry, he’s blurry, his songs are blurry: “Candlight dudda in da street lie” Dave Matthews does not have gestalt and neither do I without glasses.

For me, glasses provided shape and definition. The edges of the frames spotlit my eyes. The color made me seem less pale. The shape contextualized my oval face as if to say “Yes! This is in fact a real face!”

The world treats you differently when you’ve got four eyes. Studies have shown that spectacle-wearers are perceived as more intelligent and trustworthy. Trial lawyers often put defendants in them for perceptual benefits:

“Glasses soften their appearance so that they don’t look capable of committing a crime. I’ve tried cases where there’s been a tremendous amount of evidence, but my client wore glasses and got acquitted. The glasses create a kind of unspoken nerd defense.” - Lawyer Harvey Slovis in NY Mag

This newfound cohesion pushed me into an archetypical box that had recently been created by Judd Apatow and hoodie-wearing tech entrepreneurs: “The cool nerd.” When the world’s sorting hat doesn’t know sort you, you don’t get sorted. I was happy to finally fit into a box.

And I leaned in hard. Glasses became a canvas to express myself. Face art, if you will. I even started taking photos of strangers wearing glasses who shared this frame.

This was all made possible by the good folks at Warby Parker who broke the monopoly and ushered in the era of glasses for the masses. I discovered there was a shop in Chinatown that would put frames in anything and I began shopping at thrift stores and vintages stores. At my height, I had over 30 pairs of prescription glasses.

And then one day I woke up, and I could no longer wear any of them.

Wanna Solve a Medical Mystery?

A few moments after putting them on, I’d get tension headaches and nausea.

I went back to the optometrist and got a new prescription. And a new one. And another. And another. And ANOTHER. Nothing took the discomfort away.

I went to a prestigious college of optometry and plead my case to the head of the department: “Wanna solve a medical mystery?” For a year, the doctor and a gaggle of assistants in N-95s took on the case with rigor. They put me through the full battery of tests. Visual Field. Corneal Thickness. Retinoscopy. OCT. Dilation. Prisms. Bi-Focals. Contacts.

And then they broke up with me. Some mysteries are not profitable enough to solve.

There was only one option left: I obviously had a brain tumor.

But an MRI revealed that my brain is unremarkable (Which is why I need to wear glasses!!!)

It got to the point where I was open to anything that might give me hope. I have a penchant for wanting to do things even more when I hit roadblocks. But I’ve always found that in order to do this, I need a cocktail of two stories:

1. To believe it’s possible. To really believe I’m not wasting my time.

2. A narrative that elevates the importance to the level of the sacred. A reason for doing it that transcends the facts of the situation. I call this a “Potion” because when I find it, it works instantaneously.

A relative introduced me to a world class medical intuitive which is not only a thing, but a thing with hierarchy! (Ever met an average medical intuitive? I think they call them ‘nurse practitioners.’)

My world class medical intuitive told me to turn off all electricity near me while she scanned my eyes from 100 miles away. She then proceeded to draw the issue:

Apparently my right optic nerve is 2mm shorter which is the perfect psychic answer because it’s both plausible and unverifiable. She told me to take some supplements and do some eye exercises.

This all happened during the pandemic. I couldn’t handle any additional weirdness, so I bought a bunch of fake glasses to wear on zoom. Don’t judge, you used the beauty filter, I used some non-functional acetate to make my face make sense.

But now that we’re back in the world, I tried wearing dummy lenses out in the world, but I just feel so … dumb.

And now I’m faced with the dilemma that befalls all of us when things don’t go our way.

Is there more meaning in letting this go or trying harder?

Where’s the potion?

Losing Well

We’re all going to lose some of the abilities and attributes we hold dearly. It’s part of the deal. And in general, I think learning to get better at losing with dignity is one of the most important skills we can all cultivate right now. Sometimes I feel like getting a sneak preview is instructive and maybe even lucky. A little pain for the future gain of inner peace.

I once went to a spiritual experience where the facilitator had an eye patch and admitted she couldn’t really see anyone after a botched lasik surgery but that she’s come to believe it was fate because she’s “Supposed to learn to see in a different way.” She did have a fairly powerful “third eye,” but she also broke several tchotchkes during the ceremony.

In my glasses sabbatical, I have cured myself of Dave Matthews Disorder. I make enough sense to myself and I’m a little closer to not caring about physical aesthetics. It’s increasingly clear that the internal game of sense-making is so much more important.

…But I’ve lost more than just my face canvas and I haven’t been acknowledging it.

I’ve lost the ability to see subtitles, sit in the mezzanine, or see signs in the dark. I don’t experience the nuance of micro-expression if someone is sitting far from me in a room. It feels a little less alive. I’ve turned inward in the last few years and I sometimes wonder if this has anything to do with it. If on some level, it makes the world around me feel a little less worth taking in. ‘Sight’ and ‘Vision’ are among the most powerfully linked double-meanings in the English Language. And both meanings resonate: I’ve been getting by seeing only what’s right in front of me. And as a new Dad in a moment of technological, cultural, and economic change, the future has never felt blurrier.

After four years, nine optometrists, a department head, and prestigious psychic, most people would probably give up and get lasik. I’m strangely terrified of eye surgery, but maybe finding the potion for that is a better use of my creative energy.

I still keep an emergency pair of glasses for situations where I have to drive at night or God forbid, sit in the mezzanine. I pop them on for minutes at a time until my head feels like it’s going to explode. My prescription expired recently and I went to my 10th optometrist and he gave me the mildest lenses yet. And I can wear them for 20 minutes at a time! I noticed that if I do this every day, that my tolerance slightly improves. He told me that I probably qualify for vision therapy which I was hoping means they do “e-stim” on your eyeballs, but it really just means accountability for doing eye exercises. My world class medical intuitive may have earned her title.

The doctor said it’s possible that my eyes have forgotten how to collaborate together to see what’s in the distance and that I might have to train myself to be able to do that again.

And that’s exactly the potion I needed to keep trying.

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It felt silly to put up a flyer. NYC isn’t a community of whimsical citizens who scan QR codes that aren’t lunch menus.

But I had a mystery to solve. And the interwebs weren’t leading me anywhere.

I was beginning to feel like a character in a quirky indie movie from the time when you could get away with a plot like “Duplass Brother cares too much about a puffy chair” or “Man goes on a quest to make NYC quieter” or “Guy gets really into train station.”

“I don’t know, dude. Maybe you should go back to focusing on the real mysteries of your life like who is going to finance your next movie and how do you define yourself as a Dad, and what is the meaning of your life,” the Parker Posey who lives in my mind said.

But silly Parker, putting up a flyer worked!

It caught the eye of the owner of a neighborhood haunt who wasn’t sure if the man who opened the store was still alive. But he called another restaurant owner to get his number. (Thanks, Tim!)

And after calming my nerves, I gave him a call. Being an armchair journalist requires asking things of strangers, which used to be a skill of mine in the before times. But I am sorely out of practice.

Not only was the proprietor game to talk, he happened to be flying in from Colorado and he was down to me at the store!

Cosmic Soup

When you create something, there’s always a day where you move on.

And sometimes, down the road, someone re-discovers it, remixes it, or sees some other meaning in it. When that happens, it feels like a form of time travel. Like you left notes for someone on another timeline and they reached through the space-time continuum to tell you they found it.

Every year, people discover my first web series. A few times a year, I hear from parents that their kids love the Sesame Street character I haven’t voiced in a decade. Every week, The New York Times brain suggests a year old article about Caveday.

Our creations leave fossils that are added to the cosmic soup. And in an increasingly algorithmic world, there’s a better chance of someone re-encountering your contribution, which is probably the nicest thing I have to say about AI.

But this is a physical fossil. And that’s what makes it unique. NYC is just not a town that has a tolerance for that kind of economic inefficiency.

Marc Saccone moved on from this store eleven years ago.

But the fossil has remained in the dirt of 334 Atlantic Avenue for twelve years. Waiting for an indie film protagonist-archeologist-metaphor-mixer to care more than he should. And because of that anomaly, Marc now gets to be known to you.

So here’s a little piece of the mystery unraveled.

Marc is a french raconteur.

He came to America to open the restaurant Chez Pascal in 1970 and ran it until 1985. It was the kind of restaurant that foreign dignitaries would swing by with security or Bing Crosby would choose to throw his birthday party at.

“I lived the life. I did it all. All the best times. I don’t want to be pretentious, but I did it all. I’d work from 9am to 9pm and then would go out into the night. I did that for 25 years”

Marc eventually aged out of that lifestyle. He got married and had a son. They moved to Connecticut for few years and then one day, he said to his new wife Sylvia “Let’s try out Brooklyn.” He had never been.

They moved above French Louie at 320 Atlantic Avenue and Marc began to brainstorm what would come next. He was a prolific record collector and flea market shopper and his wife’s parents were antique dealers. He had the idea to open a vintage store.

“I knew the son of the landlord at 334 Atlantic. He would always hang out on the steps. Their storefront was empty for a long time and I had him to ask his dad if they would rent it to me.”

They agreed to $1200 cash/mo. The landlord refused to give him a lease.

And with that, they opened Vintage Signage.

Note: this is why I couldn’t find anything on the internet, Brocante isn’t the name of the store. Turns out it’s just French for “Flea Market.”

“I would go to markets at 5am every Saturday and Sunday morning to buy things. Everyone knew me as the guy with the best Enamel and Subway signs”

Vintage Signage was the kind of store that brought character to a gentrifying block. “You classed up our building,” a neighbor we ran into said.

It paved the way for no less than four other vintage stores that now line Atlantic Avenue.

“The store brought us closer. My wife loved it. It was like she went into the family business.”

Tragically, Mark’s wife fell ill and battled kidney disease for many years. She had a transplant, but it didn’t stick, and in 2012, she passed away. Marc fell two months behind on rent.

One day he left a sign up that “We’ll be back at 1pm” and he arrived back to a padlock.

He had no lease and this was a business he ran with his wife.

“I was alone. So I let it go and left New York to be with my son.”

He doesn’t know why the store is still there. But as a man who now lives in Colorado and hangs out at the lake all day, it’s a strange reminder of the wild life he lived in New York.

I asked him if there’s anything of sentimental value in there. “A Phillipe Starke Knife,” he said. “It’s very famous.”

334 Atlantic Avenue has continued to fall apart. A resident told us that there are 16 apartments inside and only four are currently inhabited. She said that they don’t return her calls and that they recently received a “Foreclosure” notice on the door. As I discovered previously, the building is for sale and being marketed as a “Substantial Rehabilitation.”

What we do know is that just after Marc’s wife died, the owner of the building, Anthony Bonilla, also passed on, leaving an estate to his three children from multiple marriages.

Maybe this fossil is literally just a fossil - the story of two families experiencing death and grief on the same timeline.

But it doesn’t explain why the store never turned over.

Maybe the building is worth more as a tax loss harvesting vehicle than an income generator. Or maybe the family has the luxury of just not caring.

They have a restaurant in the East Village which has been open for 50 years that they have chosen to not abandon. The website lists Anthony’s two daughters as the primary operators.

I have one more stop on my mystery - and it’s to go there. To see if I can hear their story.

And to see if maybe, I can get Marc his knife back.

The Mystery of Brocante continues to unfold. I put up a flyer and an old school neighbor got me in touch with the store owner! He doesn’t live in New York anymore, but he happens to be coming into town. We’re meeting for coffee next week and he promises to tell me the whole story!

Two Profiles Worth Reading

Martin Scorsese “I have to figure out who the hell I am” [GQ]

“All these people you’ve known and loved—“they suffered and struggled so much, and then life is over,” Scorsese said. “You get to the point of saying, ‘Well, what does it all mean?’ It doesn’t matter what it means. You have to live it. And if you choose not to live it, you choose not to live it, that’s up to you. But you are existing and you live with that existence. And so I think that has changed. And I don’t want to necessarily move the camera if I don’t want to anymore. I don’t. I don’t care. I just don’t care about that anymore.””

Sam Altman is the Oppenheimer of our Age [Ny Mag] [Link for non-subscribers]

“He really sees himself as this world-bestriding Übermensch, as a superhuman in a really Nietzschean kind of way,” Sadowski said. “He will at once create the thing that destroys us and save us from it.”

Getting little pieces back

The biggest trap when hosting a thing is forgetting to take something for yourself from the thing.

This weekend, I co-facilitated a retreat for 40 members from the Caveday community from around the world. It's the first time we've done anything in-person since the pandemic. And I forgot how much it takes.

Somewhere during that fallow time-- I'm not quite sure when-- I lost my hosting mojo. And perhaps even my in-person relating mojo. It's been a slow reclamation process, but I still feel a little off my game (Being a new parent certainly doesn't help!)

Coming into Friday night, I was a ball of nerves. I worried we didn't have enough time or resources to pull it off. I kept speaking about the chance that unexpected things would happen and how our margin of error was too small. My partners acknowledged my concerns and asked me what I exactly I was worried would happen. I couldn't really give a clear answer. I had to admit that maybe I was over-cranking on pessimism.

...and then something even worse than I could imagine happened. An unprecedented flood hit New York closing most subways. My apartment flooded. Twice. Most events cancelled. We had people flying in and a few of them willing to find their way there. On the fly, we decided to keep hosting in-person and also created a separate remote cohort. It was wild. We barely had a handle on one event. There was no time to think. We just ... DID! And it was beautiful. All the scar tissue got scraped away and we were just doing the thing.

In remembering that real-time situations bring things out of me that I can't always see ahead of time, I got another piece back.

In remembering that I never know what the gift of an experience will be, I got a little piece of wonder back. Someone came to the retreat who turned out to be the daughter of my grandparents' best friends. Her mother convinced my parents to get married and planned their wedding. I didn't even know she existed!

Life is all well and convenient in our Zoom boxes, but I don't know how to be my full self without the feedback loop of being in the muck, figuring things out in the real world. How do I keep myself in shape? How are you keeping yourself in shape?

On Better Connection

Sasha's 'Newsletter'

Connecting with people more easily

It seems that I’m able to connect to other human beings faster than normal. This tends to mean that I move more fluidly and rapidly through social environments than other people. As compared to many people I grew up with, I’ve made a very large number of lateral social moves, and, as a result, even though I’m a weird person, I’ve landed in a setting whe…

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2 years ago · 45 likes · 5 comments · Sasha Chapin

Bits of Wonder

How to transform your social life

I’ve experienced two versions of social life in New York: You know a handful of people in the city but you don’t ask them to hang out because it makes you anxious, no one invites you to things, and you spend most weekends entirely alone. On Friday nights you feel depressed that the workweek is ending and you have no plans, so you send an office-wide Slac…

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3 years ago · 127 likes · 17 comments · Kasra

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Scot Anthony Robinson transitioned this summer. He was my first mentor.

I put him on a pedestal, as is contractually required in the mentor-mentee contract.
But then he fell off that pedestal and into a hole.

And then he really became my mentor.

When I was a fifteen, I was invited to the CADCA conference in DC. George W. Bush planned to sign the “Drug-Free Communities Act” and someone with an eye for optics decided it would play well if there were some plucky teenage change-makers on stage.

As the cameras flashed, W shook my hand and whispered in my ear “Listen to your Mother,” which was probably among the five most sensible things he ever said (Hi Mom!)

It was all well and exciting, but something else caught my eye.
Among a sea of suits and conference badges, a guy in a hoodie and sweats was giving a performance like his life depended on it in a hotel conference room. I wandered in.

Scot was a protege of Spike Lee and then got addicted to heroin and lost everything. In rehab, he wrote a show called “Vision Warrior.” It was, to this day, the most wild and powerful performance I’ve ever seen.

“Vision Warrior” was an explosive argument for finding joy, power, and meaning in the painful experience of being alive. It was the first time anyone laid out spiritual guidance that made any sense. It cracked something open in me.

Dude was wild. If you were distracted during his show, he would CLIMB into the audience and confront you. ”This shit might save your life, homie.” And you really believed him.

I could tell you more, but it’s worth experiencing him for a minute:

I had a lot of people around me numbing their pain and fucking up their lives. I knew I couldn’t do anything about it. But maybe he could. I became determined to bring him to my school. I raised money and won grants, but came up short of the fee. I delivered the bad news and he smiled: “When can you get everyone out of class?”

I somehow convinced my principal to get the entire school there. It blew people away. Afterwards, he started calling me “Big Red.” It was an obvious nickname for a redhead with the last name Redleaf. I always hoped someone would try out. Maybe I hadn’t earned it yet.

We stayed in touch. I graduated college and he introduced me to his network. He got me my first paid filmmaking gig.

Life got harder for him. His mom got sick. His health declined. Performances became scarcer. Surviving in capitalism wasn’t one of his areas of vision.

One day, he asked if I could loan him $500. I started to worry. I wrongly assumed he was using again. I gave him the money and then ghosted him.

And so did most people.

We like our inspiring figures to pick themselves out of the hole. And then stay out.

His Mom died. I heard he lost his house and was living on the street. And I evicted him even further from my mind. I didn’t want to look. I had no clue how hard it is to survive outside of my bubble of shelter and privilege. I didn’t want to feel the pain … about the guy who taught me how to feel the pain.

My life went on. Years later, I was on a retreat and I tapped into something that reminded me of what he opened up in me as a kid. I felt profound shame for ignoring him.

“You can mask, you can hide you can evade, you can bug, you can sex, you can puff, you can push down your feelings way down deep into the bowels of your vessel. And some people do, man … they lock them up in a vault. They lose the combination, they pretend it’s not there. But those feelings, unexpressed, unrealized, internalized, it implodes, it doesn’t go anywhere. It eats away at the foundation of your spirit … your vessel.”

The retreat challenged us to set a goal that could be done in 2 weeks.
Mine was to reconnect with him.

I flew to LA and I went out looking for him. I found an article that mentioned a neighborhood he was seen in and I found him panhandling.

I’ll never forget the look on his face when he saw me. I’ll never forget the love and forgiveness he showed me. I put him up in a motel for as long as I could afford.

The best eulogy I’ve ever heard was “Ram Dass died who we thought he was when we first met him.” Scotty Rock also proved the thesis of his work in the battle for his life. While unhoused, he was run over, stabbed, robbed, had strokes and cascading medical issues, and never lost his warrior heart.

He would hang out near a Starbucks and people he met could tell there was something about him. Word got around and he miraculously was given a section 8 housing voucher. Then he had to fight for over a year to find someone to accept it.

On the day he got the keys, he invited me over to see his new place. You’ve never seen a human more grateful for unlimited access to four walls, electricity and running water. He dug himself out of the hole twice. And won the right to battle his health conditions with a little bit of a dignity.

The kids used to always ask me in the processing groups after the show, Mr warrior do you have any side effects from all the drugs & alcohol you abused? Thank God I said, I'm blessed that I really don't, but I wld tell them, you can't abuse drugs for over 20 yrs & not one day have to pay the piper, that's why I live every day as if I don't have many left to waste, why I cherish everyone I love, try to cherish eveyday, cause one never knows, I'm a perfect candidate for a heart attack or stroke, and sure enough I am now paying the piper. But I have been so blessed with so many incredible friends, 25 yrs of vision warrior, amazing parents who gave me an amazing upbringing, have traveled the world, had beautiful creative experiences and opportunities, have had great loves in my life, all in all I've had a beautiful life, so I'm truly blessed despite these last yrs being in such bad shape, sorry if I'm depressing anyone, I'm trying to be more positive of late, its been difficult when you have to face chronic consuming pain on a daily, I try to visualize healing and positivity, but its been a challenge honestly, hopefully I will have definitive diagnosis and can focus on whatever the battle ahead. Sending everyone all my love, congrats on your accomplishments and encouragements for those who need a lil Warrior love.
always yr Scotty R - his last post

His last act was becoming an advocate in the LA system in the midst of the city’s worst housing crisis in history.

I love you, Scotty Rock. Thanks for teaching me about the human condition. Thanks for being my mentor. Thanks for teaching me how to be Big Red. I’ll pay it forward.

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When I committed to solving the world’s smallest mystery, I wasn’t expected anything from you other than “detached amusement” or “mild curiosity” if you have one of those brains that needs to resolve the unresolved.

But some of you got your hands dirty and actually started doing the investigative work of finding leads! We’re cultivating some real “Don’t F*ck with Cats” energy here and I’m absolutely purring in delight.

Before I give you an update, I want to tell you why this mystery matters to me.

Why I care

I’ve been in New York City for twenty one years.

My first apartment was a luxury two bedroom that we converted into a four bedroom. This was not “cool” with the building so we smuggled in sliding doors from Home Depot by wrapping them as a Christmas gift. My room was the corner of an L shaped living room.

My second apartment had floors that were so uneven, bottles would roll off the tables. It was also above a brothel that primarily served the Orthodox Jewish community. The halls smelled like lubricant and men in payos would knock on my door while looking down in shame. “One floor down. But Good Shabbos!”

My third apartment was above a Murray Hill bar that went until 4am every night of the week and always closed with “Freebird.” The floors would rattle from the bass and several roommates moved out because their therapists told them to.

My fourth apartment was a rent stabilized two bedroom that I illegally sublet from an old Irishman fireman. The building figured it out that I was in fact not Kevin Monaghan and I got kicked out of days before my wedding.

I got my fifth apartment in my 30’s. It was real! Two floors and a backyard in a convenient location! I finally made it.

…Except that it floods sewage water into our bedroom twice a year. And we’ve stayed for seven years.

NYC is the school of hard knocks, baby. We make sacrifices to be close to something … that I have stopped being able to put my finger on. But the important thing here is that there’s more demand than supply and it creates weird incentives.

We sacrifice on where we live, and we also sacrifice on incompatible dreams. One of my deepest longings has always been to control a physical space where people can gather. A third place where I belong.

Community is a challenge in this city and community usually needs a physical space in order to thrive. I’ve had a few brief flirtations:

I opened up a conversation salon in Times Square for a month with a grant.

I had a production office for Third Street Blackout for three months.

Caveday had a partnership with Breather (RIP) that allowed me to tap into all their spaces.

But I’ve never been able to finagle it longterm. When I gave up my home office for my newborn son’s room, I rented a 10 x 8 windowless office for Zooms in a coworking space which I pay an embarrassing amount of money for. The unit economics of commercial real estate in this city are legendary. Even with its historically high occupancy rate.

So it really bothers me on some fundamental level that someone would leave a street level space empty for nine years.

I’d do something with that space!

And if I’m honest, there’s another reason I need to solve this mystery.

Somewhere along the way, my relationship to art and creativity got corrupted. I was given access to the possibility that I could do things on a grand scale if I worked really hard. And because it is so hard, that became the only kind of creativity that mattered to me. Exploring something because it interested me or I had an instinct about it was no longer a possibility unless I could see it ending in a noteworthy outcome. It became even more true when I became a Dad and time became even more elusive.

I lost the spark. It’s hurt my work.

Maybe there’s a surprise ending here that I can’t quite yet see. Maybe there’s some magic here.

But there might not be.

I’m proving to myself that it’s okay to follow my gut even if it doesn’t land somewhere. I’m reclaiming the permission to pursue. The question is the answer.

For every great piece of work, every artist has a ticker file of half ideas, flopped investigations, and things they could never quite crack. I’m rejection/failure sensitive. If I’m going to do my best work, I need to get better at finding value in the journey (Welcome to Or Maybe…)

Back to the show

Here are the leads ya’ll came up with:

-One reader looked up property records and found a mysterious man named ANTBON who may own the property management company and accepts summonses at a Mexican Tapas Restaurant on the LES (Promising - more later)

-Another reader discovered another store called Brocante Bed Stuy with an Etsy profile (Dead end: turns out “Brocante” just means “Vintage crap store” in French.)

Something that’s really strange to me is that it almost seems like the store never even existed. There are no traces of it online. No archived reviews or websites.

There’s a foursquare entry, but the only surprise there is that it turns out I have not eaten at any of the places on “Jer’s BBQ of List 2012.”

I decided to google info about the building.

And it turns out, it’s for sale!

They’re asking $4.5 million dollars. Which I think is a small price to pay to land this story in a surprising way. Who’s in for $4.4?!

I noticed they are pitching is as qualifying for a “Substantial Rehabilitation” credit which can be used to deregulate a building. It requires that the building be over 80% vacant and have at least 75% that need replacement systems.

Perhaps it’s as simple as that: it’s worth more in worse condition than it is in mediocre condition so they’ve let it atrophy for 9 years.

Because all I know about journalism ethics is from movies like Nightcrawler and Shattered Glass, I used my old AOL address to pretend to be a prospective investor.

Note: AOL is the butt of many jokes, but true power is being so unconcerned with optics that you never migrated away. I’d wager there are plenty of high net worth individuals still rocking the same address they started with their Steve Case floppy.

Exhibit A? They wrote back immediately:

Absentee Estate Ownership?!

What kind of person/family inherits a building in New York City and doesn’t care enough to extract revenue from it? I have to meet this person.

Only problem is, NYC has no record online of who owns this building.

So where do we go from here?

We’ve got three threads we’re pursuing:

1. The proprietor of Brocante. (Why did the store close? Why didn’t you take anything with you?)

2. The “absentee estate” owner.

   (Why would you not rent it out?)

3. The property management company. (Why did you not clear it out?)

I’ve been told I should be working with a thesis, so here it is:

There’s a sad, weird, moneybags Ewan Roy type who inherited this building and hates everything that it stands for. They couldn’t be bothered to move these things out or collect rent so they’ve left it for a decade. But now, they want to do something good for the rainforest and it’s expensive to borrow money so they have decided to sell it “As is.”

And on the other end, there’s the proprietor of Brocante who couldn’t pay the rent and without notice, got locked of their own store. They moved away and don’t even know the store has been frozen in time. Locked inside is an object of insane sentimental value, perhaps a harmonica given to them by a dead parent, and they thought it was lost forever.

I’m going to introduce them, they will find common ground in hating the deceased Logan Roy type owner, there will be tears, we’ll return the dead parent harmonica, and we’ll all agree to get the store open for a one day for a tag sale where we’ll donate the money to the rainforest.

What do you think?

So here’s my plan.

1. I’m going to go eat at Mexico Lindo on second avenue where ANTBON, the property management company, accepts summonses. I plan to have enough margaritas to get up the courage to ask the staff about him. (Who’s in?)
   

2. I’m going to go to the NYC Housing Authority to see if I can get more history about the building.
   

3. I’m posting a flyer asking for neighborhood tips. Boerum Hill is full of old timers who love to share their knowledge.
   

   

The mystery continues…

Read Part Three here:

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Now that I have a baby, “The Society of Passerbys” has determined I’m no longer creepy and therefore now worthy of spontaneous conversation (Man + baby = less likely to attack?)

It’s actually making me fall back in love with New York City. As I go about my day, I brush up against strangers who I will likely never see again. Doesn’t that deserve a “hello, fellow earth traveler!” or a “Best wishes battling whatever it is you’re battling!?”

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There’s no cohort that loves to approach me more than fellow parents. And because we’ve been through the same hazing ritual, they skip the small talk and head right to unsolicited life advice. The younger ones all say something like:

”Enjoy! I miss that age.”

And the parents of grown children all say some version of:

“The days are long, but the years are quick.”

… and for some reason, the way they say this this trite piece of wisdom is really getting to me.

Their voice and face have this remarkable mixture of awe and grief that seems worth paying attention to. Like they can’t believe their kid’s childhood is now a database of like 108 memories. Like they’re trying to communicate from the future:

I’m you in 18 years. Even though this is hard, don’t take any of it for granted.

But how?

Before fatherhood, my experience of time felt like drinking out of a big gulp cup with unlimited refills. And now, it feels like I’m drinking out of a sippy cup.

If I’m honest, I want the big gulp back. But it’s gone.

The only healthy choice is to learn how to enjoy the hell out of every damn sippy cup sip.

This feels like learning how to expand the Z access of time. If I only have an hour from 2pm-3pm, how can I make it feel like more than an hour?

How do I remember to appreciate the fleeting and, ya know, experience an appropriately deep amount of gratitude?

I don’t know, man! It’s hard.

My brain doesn’t want to do this on its own. Because it requires dancing with mortality. And our ability to function requires that we are really good at forgetting about D-day.

I have to use my cognitive resources to override that ancient impulse.

From what I can gather from people who have swam in these waters before (Shoutout to my boy Marcus Aurelius!), this requires accountability and rituals.
So here’s what I’ve come up with:

Accountability

“Memento mori” is a Latin phrase that means “remember you must die”. The phrase is often used as a reminder to honor those who have passed by living life to the fullest. It can also be used to inspire, motivate, and clarify. 

The idea of “memento mori” has been central to art, philosophy, literature, and architecture throughout history. For example, Puritan tombstones often display a memento mori.

I’ve known about the concept of Memento Mori for many years, but it always seemed like an interesting bummer? Something dark people (Who are not me) gravitate towards?

My wife and I download WeCroak a few years ago which sends you notifications all day long reminding you in creative ways that you’re going to die. It got to be so frequent that it became annoying. (“I get it! But this client might actually kill me if I don’t get this script in by 5pm!”) WeCroak died a quick death on my phone. There’s a middle ground to find.

I was in Santa Fe recently and an artist was set up at a farmer’s market and this little statue rattled my bones.

It was kiln-cast in fire for several days by a rotating series of artists in the mountains of Washington. I don’t usually buy things like this, but I decided to bring it home and put it on my desk. Whenever I feel bored or depressed, I give it a good look.

I added glitter and stardust to the insides because I won too many participation awards as a kid. Also, I choose to believe that there’s something beyond that final layer of bone. If I’m going to think about my death, I might as well also think about how I want to live.

(A Memento More-y?)

Ritual

One of the things I love more than anything else is sharing a meal or a beverage with a fellow traveler. For me, food is love, and at the end of the day, what is there besides delighting in delicacies with people who bring you joy?

Inspired by Oliver Burkeman’s 4000 weeks, I started to wonder how many of those I might have left.

If I meet with an average of one friend a week until my eighties, I probably have 2000 more hangs left.

Woah.

I thought there could be something interesting in forcing myself to commemorate each one of these in some way.

From passing thought to prototype

I started playing around with a design, but I immediately got stuck in a perfectionist loop. I literally wanted to spend too much time making a thing about appreciating the fleeting nature of time.

I made a deal with myself: spend 20 minutes designing something rough and then show it to someone. I printed one out on computer paper and gave it to my friend . His reaction passed The Eyebrow Test and that’s all the encouragement I needed to get 10 cards printed.

I’ve never been a letter guy, because it’s too much work. Now, I have a madlib.

It’s giving me the opportunity to see every meal as special and permission to say the things I want to say in case it’s the last one. Writing them is the first gift, seeing people receive them is a second one.

The singular receiving card #5

Or maybe … an umbrella?

I’m calling this project “This Will Fade.” which originally was a joke idea I had for a tattoo. I love finding new destinations for old nuggets. I could see this becoming an umbrella for projects that help people remember what an extraordinary fleeting gift this all is.

Now, who wants to grab a beverage? I’ve got 1990 glorious slots left.

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P.S. - If you’re looking for more, I recommend Hidden Brain’s Series on The Science of Savoring.

It’s a Brooklyn-y Brooklyn strip, full of fancy jewelry stores, rich lady boutiques, and a store called “Primary Essentials” which does not sell anything primary or essential.

But there’s one store that’s not like the others: Brocante. Vintage goods. Records. Posters. Old neon signs.

But the thing is, it’s never once been open.

One day in 2014, on the eve of the release of Beck’s “Morning Phase” they were set to return at 12:55pm, and they never did.

Rents on this street go for $3k+ /month. Since 2014, this landlord has forgone over $325,000 in rent to leave this store frozen in time.

New York City has some unbreakable laws of logic and this store has broken them.
I can’t get the store out of my head. I’m haunted by it. It makes no sense.

What happened to Brocante?!

I’m going to find out.

Read Part Two Here

On Resistance

I’ve been joking with my wife for 7 years that I’m going to figure out what’s going on here. We’ve even done a half-assed search once or twice over a glass of wine.

But I haven’t been able to get myself to follow through with it. Why?

-I assume the answer is probably not that interesting

-I have plenty of other things that deserve my attention

-I’m not an investigative journalist

And yet, I am conspiring with you to find a way to justify the investigation.

There’s something pulling me here and I can’t quite put my finger on it.

This is exactly why I created “Or Maybe…,” to give myself something permission to follow these kind of half curiosities and make meaning of the process, even if they don’t bare fruit.

I’ve learned that without a container, a collaborator or a conversation, I can’t really endeavor to chart new territory on my own. I wish that weren’t the case, but I’ve come to accept that it makes complete sense based on my childhood experiences. Experiences Beck spoke to on that very album:

I'm so tired of being alone
These penitent walls are all I've known
Songbird calling across the water
Inside my silent asylum

Oh don't leave me on my own
Left me standing all alone
Cut me down to size so I can fit inside
Lies that will divide us both in time

"Blue Moon" - Beck, Morning Phase 

Let’s see what that store has in store.

What do you think happened to Brocante?

Read Part Two Here

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I’ve never created anything new in my life or work without crossing a shaky bridge.

Once I start to explore the possibility of something new, things feel precarious.

It used to stop me in my tracks.

There’s risk: it may not work. I might be judged. I might not be good enough.

Surrender: I don’t have the answers. I don’t even know what I don’t know.

This is, of course, primal stuff. When we want to change/create/transmute, it doesn’t feel good in our “meat-suits.”

Some people never figure out how to get to the other side of that feeling.

Through trial and error, I’ve learned ways to trick myself through it.
But that strategy comes with noxious byproducts.

These days, I’m learning how to approach the bridge with curiosity. To see it as interesting, necessary, and worth sharing.

When I’m at my best, the approach sounds something like “Or maybe…”

And I suppose I’m inviting you onto my bridge. I’m not exactly sure why, but I have an instinct to and I’m going trust that there’s something in it for both of us.

I’ll be incubating things without knowing what they are yet. Sharing smaller nuggets and making meaning out of the process.

I’ve spent too much time pouring all of myself into giant creative missions. Polishing them to perfection in the hope that their transcendence and scale will make me feel extra … worthy?

There’s a place for giant, but giant also creates a giant place to hide.

I’m allocating time here to share my gifts and learn how to contribute to the cosmic melody of creativity. I’m here to challenge myself to be a better friend, artist, and human.

Let’s figure out better way to walk the shaky bridge. I have a feeling the world we’re stepping into will require that kind of fortitude.

Thanks for hanging.

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