138th Street & Amsterdam

This project is about me talking to everybody.

I’ve always wanted to talk to anybody and everybody. It’s true. Ask anyone who has ever met me.

But they always cut me off.

(Well, Renee never did or will. She has no quit in her.)

They do, because as much as I love their movie (and I REALLY love watching their movie) I like my own movie too. People only seem to want to be with people whose movie is almost exactly like their own.

People don’t like to interact with people who think differently than they do.

To me, this is very strange.

I think it is strange, because that’s where all the cool and really different stuff (different to you, because you’ve never been there – never considered it like you consider your own world) is located.

Can we be honest here?

What the fuck is so great about what you got? Does it really make you all that happy?

If so, then I’d REALLY like to meet you - because it’s almost like I don’t think that such a person actually exists. At least I’ve never found anyone like that.

(Well, Renee is like that. Meeting her was like me meeting me.)

People just seem to be so unhappy and insecure.

So they seem to try to stay in these tiny unfeeling boxes, where everyone thinks and feels the same - thus depriving themselves of all the nourishment and support that’s laying all over the place, just beyond the wall of their belief system.

Their gods (the belief in whom allows them to go on existing like this) are make-believe, happy and fulfilled celebrities. Make-believe, because if you got to know them as people, I’ll bet all those celebrities are just as unhappy and insecure.

It’s all because people never travel outside of their box.

But I have no box, and this project is about that. It’s about me physically going to ten completely different neighborhoods (representative of everybody) and using what I got to try to talk to anyone there.

I can then post my observations here - as a way of trying to communicate with everybody - everywhere in the world (coming one day soon).

So this day I went to City College.

I kind of know City College. I took some writing and literature courses there, once upon a time

This school feels edgy in a way. It has a very different kind of energy than, say, my experience at Columbia University.

People who go to Columbia are usually wealthy. They’ve been brought up in a world with lots of options and possibilities. There is a loose quality there. They have room to play in. They can more freely enjoy the imagination behind my project. The sophistication. The wit. The entertainment.

City College kids live closer to the edge. It’s like they had to fight, just to get this far. They are still fighting. Fighting to believe that they can actually make this work. It’s a lot tougher for them to believe such things – than it is for Columbia kids.

Still, that street energy is some cool shit.

There’s a feeling there that something really big is going to grow out of that street awareness - that hardcore realness – and that maybe that’s something valuable that those Columbia kids can’t buy.

City College kids respected my being on the street.

They could relate.

Maybe they could not afford to enjoy me as entertainment - but then Columbia people cannot buy the compassion and understanding exchanged in so much as a glance between City College kids and myself.

Day 8: Union Square