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Two Views of the Empire State Building
Oct. 16th, 2015 10:50 amBB took me over to the old Brooklyn Navy Yard yesterday.
Is there anything more fascinating than old industrial equipment whose utility, long since forgotten or superseded, has metamorphosed into the sheer aesthetics of form?
I don’t think so.
I’m not exactly sure why the Brooklyn Navy Yard – prime location – hasn’t been snapped up by local real estate developers. There must be some kind of major contamination issue. Probably asbestos – old shipyards are inundated with asbestos as nothing’s worse than a fire at sea. No doubt, the hour or so I spent there shaved a week and a half off my lifespan. That stuff is friable; it floats in the air.
Tons o’ fun hanging out with BB, particularly after he brewed his killer coffee, and we launched into an epic talk fest. As I say, I quite enjoy my lifestyle these days, but one of the problems with a quiet lifestyle from the writerly point of view is that the best dialogue is always found dialogue, so if you don’t have a cadre of pals generating that dialogue for you, you’re kind of stuck making it up on your own. And dialogue is hard.
On the train back to the Hudson Valley, I alternated between reading Purity and typing dialogue notes on my smartphone. (Typing on smartphones may be easy for people with small hands, but it doesn’t work well for me.) I’m maybe 2,000 words shy of finishing Part 1 of Where You Were When, some kind of accomplishment though I’m not sure the novel is actually publishable (even assuming there still is a publishing industry.) It has a speculative fiction plot, but is written in my particularly baroque style. Phil K. Dick, Kate Atkinson, John LeCarre, Kurt Vonnegut, and John Sandford all contributed chromosomes.
Clearly, I need to organize a group of witty pals in the Hudson Valley so I can steal their dialogue.
Unfortunately, I don’t think there are any witty people in the Hudson Valley, at least in the sense I’m talking about.
I'm heading back to Greenpoint today for a weekend at the fabulous BB apartment while BB and the beauteous Claudia enjoy the splendors of the Catskills fall. My plan is to try and re-edit the Eleanor Roosevelt story and spy on the Bedford Avenue Hassids. BB gave me a useful editorial thought on that former during TalkFest.
Two views of the Empire State Building:
By day:
And by night:
Neither BB nor I could figure out why it was lit up all purple.
Is there anything more fascinating than old industrial equipment whose utility, long since forgotten or superseded, has metamorphosed into the sheer aesthetics of form?
I don’t think so.
I’m not exactly sure why the Brooklyn Navy Yard – prime location – hasn’t been snapped up by local real estate developers. There must be some kind of major contamination issue. Probably asbestos – old shipyards are inundated with asbestos as nothing’s worse than a fire at sea. No doubt, the hour or so I spent there shaved a week and a half off my lifespan. That stuff is friable; it floats in the air.
Tons o’ fun hanging out with BB, particularly after he brewed his killer coffee, and we launched into an epic talk fest. As I say, I quite enjoy my lifestyle these days, but one of the problems with a quiet lifestyle from the writerly point of view is that the best dialogue is always found dialogue, so if you don’t have a cadre of pals generating that dialogue for you, you’re kind of stuck making it up on your own. And dialogue is hard.
On the train back to the Hudson Valley, I alternated between reading Purity and typing dialogue notes on my smartphone. (Typing on smartphones may be easy for people with small hands, but it doesn’t work well for me.) I’m maybe 2,000 words shy of finishing Part 1 of Where You Were When, some kind of accomplishment though I’m not sure the novel is actually publishable (even assuming there still is a publishing industry.) It has a speculative fiction plot, but is written in my particularly baroque style. Phil K. Dick, Kate Atkinson, John LeCarre, Kurt Vonnegut, and John Sandford all contributed chromosomes.
Clearly, I need to organize a group of witty pals in the Hudson Valley so I can steal their dialogue.
Unfortunately, I don’t think there are any witty people in the Hudson Valley, at least in the sense I’m talking about.
I'm heading back to Greenpoint today for a weekend at the fabulous BB apartment while BB and the beauteous Claudia enjoy the splendors of the Catskills fall. My plan is to try and re-edit the Eleanor Roosevelt story and spy on the Bedford Avenue Hassids. BB gave me a useful editorial thought on that former during TalkFest.
Two views of the Empire State Building:
By day:
And by night:
Neither BB nor I could figure out why it was lit up all purple.
