Episode 04 - Duets

Thanks for Hitting Play and then listening to Hit Play.

If you like what you hear and want to support the New York Neo-Futurists, consider making a donation at nynf.org, or joining our Patreon. Patreon membership gives you access to bonus content like video plays! We’d really appreciate any support in these difficult times. Contributing to our Patreon helps us continue to pay our artists. 

Take care of yourself, call a friend, paint a painting, and share it with us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

This episode featured work by: Michaela Farrell, Anooj Bhandari, Yael Haskel, Shelton Lindsay, and Michael Improta. 

Our logo was designed by Shelton Lindsay.
And our sound is designed by Anthony Sertel Dean.

Hit Play is produced by Anthony Sertel Dean and Julia Melfi. 

Take Care!

Transcript 

Episode 04: Duets

Show Intro (0:00-1:25)

Bouncy instrumental music plays underneath.

Julia: 4. Duets. Hello hello—you Hit Play, a podcast made by the New York Neo-Futurists. 

I’m Julia Melfi—a New York Neo-Futurist. 

While our on-going, ever-changing, late-night show, The Infinite Wrench, is on hold for the foreseeable future, we wanted a place to keep making art for you. And thus, Hit Play was born!  

If you’re already a fan of The New York Neo-Futurists, or any of our sibling companies, hello hello! We hope to, you know, be giving you a real hug really soon. If this is totally new to you—welcome to it!

We play by four rules: We are who we are, we’re doing what we’re doing, we are where we are, and the time is now. 

Simply put: we tell stories, and those stories are our own. Everything that you hear is actually happening. So if we tell you we’re doing pushups while we're recording, we're really getting a workout. I'm not doing push-ups by the way. 

And now, Michael will Run the Numbers!

Michael: Hi I’m Michael John Improta and I’m a New York Neo-Futurist. 

In this episode we’re bringing you 4 plays by Michaela Farrell, Anooj Bhandari, and Yael Haskel, Shelton Lindsay, and myself–Michael John Improta. All these pieces are duets in some way. 

That brings our number of audio experiments on Hit Play to 18 plays.

Enjoy!

Music winds down.

Play 1: Musing without a Muse but with a Kazoo (1:27-4:31)

Michaela: Musing without a Muse but with a Kazoo. GO!

Note from a Kazoo.

This is life right now on Wednesday, March 24 2020

We are mandated by the government to stay home 

And also not get within 6 feet of other people 

For some, your sex life hasn’t changed, maybe you’re trying something a little freakier in the bedroom becuase hey, what else is there to do?

For others, it’s a different story

The single people

We have isolated unpartnered

And we are horny.

Harmony note from two Kazoos.

Oh what a world for the single people in a Pandemic

So much fear, so much lusting, so much energy, so little opportunity.

We find ourselves walking down the street, alone, looking at all the other people–coupled, throupled, with a dog, with lover and dog, with lover their child and their dog–

And then across the street we spot the people just like us–the lone wolves–they're looking at the same dog we were just looking at and breathing out and in at the same pace we are breathing out and in at and–

I personally consider yelling out loud to these people “I see you! I see you! I'm lonely too! Let’s do it together"

I don’t actually do this. I just follow the fellow loners with my eyes until I am alone again.

I’ll think, “When this is all over–”

And I can’t finish the sentence

Harmony note from three Kazoos.

My first crush, when I was 15, was bigger and fierier than most crushes I’ve had in my 20s.

Now, my social distance butterflies, I want you to think about your first crush

In elementary school? In high school?

the one you would walk the long way after class to run in to. The one you could barely form a sentence with because you were so fucking turned on around them before you even knew what turned on was?

Steady buzzing from kazoo underneath text, slowly harmonizing up the scale. 

Do you remember how hot your heart would get when you saw them? How punk rock it felt to truly desire someone like you only saw in the movies? The naivete, the simplicity, of realizing for the very first time what it would mean for your body to be close to another body? For your heart to feel that hot all the fucking time?

Kazoo stops.

When was the last time you felt like that?

Note from a Kazoo.

Yeah, we’re horny. And you might not get laid til June. Or maybe even longer.

But all this waiting and this pent up desire and this almost screaming at people on the street is setting us up for something groundbreaking, something energized, something we haven’t had in a while.

It will be pure, it will be like the first time. Get ready.

Cacophonous note from 5 Kazoos. 

Play 2: A Winter Lenticular (4:32-8:35)

Anooj: A Winter Lenticular. GO! 

Piano underscore.

Yael: Remembering... can be greyscale. Sends you downstream, props you upright. It’s cold in the past, when you remember. You talk to ghosts, these days, when you remember. Remembering makes a nest and the eggs keep hatching. Remember the icicles, the chronicles, the autobiography you’re not going to write, memory weighs heavy like shame. Remembering is the auto-population of text fields. The websites that save your credit card information for ease of purchase, that song that goes wee oh wee oh wee oh. The longest inhale you ever took. It’s the reintegration of then into now. Melting the narrative, re-sculpting the wax. It’s that night you can’t do anything about except remember remember remember. (sings) Time to remember the times of September (speaks) and it can take the shape of your lungs. Rough around the edges.

Anooj: Lenticular photography allows us to produce photos that change or move as the angle by which the photo is viewed shifts. Each step taken can result in a new image. A field of growing maiden’s hair, shifts to long curling locks and the smile you can’t forget, shifts to a moment you decided you would love how you show up in the world.  My first time installing lenticulars was on the eve of the winter nor'easter in 2018.  When I search for that image in my mind, me standing on a ladder in the dead of 2am winter, I am caught off guard by how cold my fingers become; by how my image has shifted in my mind to forget how my hands could not hold. Where does your memory catch your senses by surprise? 

Yael: Remembering closes the distance between ‘was’ and ‘is.’ It’s a promise you make to the ones before you. It’s a ball of yarn passed down over time. Remembering is ligaments, stretching and leaning and weaving and keening until the polaroid develops, the picture in your mind like a flower. You remember what it is to touch, don’t you? Remembering, synonyms: recollecting, reminiscing, reliving, recalling, retrospecting, reminding, everything that starts with “re” because you’ve done it before. Your ancestors live in the lines on your hands. My ancestors live in the lines on your hands. Maybe remembering is the space between synapses, the junctions of junctions, the recognition that the world opens up when we see across time. Remembering is resurrection, used wisely.

Anooj:  If you take a microscope up to a lenticular photo you’ll see tiny parallel strands, dissecting the photo into the various images that are seen alternating across space.  In essence, with each step you take all of the photos remain in the open, but what is visible to the eye shifts.  I slept on the A train that night.  From the Rockaways to Inwood and back again, dead phone and frozen fingers, the keypad to enter my apartment, busted by the icy air, I drew strands through the city. The cold doesn’t go away when I finally remember making it into my apartment.  But I’ll tell you this: there was warmth there, too.   

Yael: Remembering.

Anooj: Looking at photos. The ones you never feared losing because–

Yael and Anooj: you forgot they were yours in the first place.

Yael: Can be time spent loving the absence.

Anooj: What do you need to step towards or away from? 

Yael: Can be time spent mending your roughest parts with the gentlest nudge.

Anooj: What is demanding illumination? 

Yael: Can be rigorous meditation. 

Anooj: Things you can’t yet see.

Yael: Can be the magnetic force that pulls your insides to the world around you.

Anooj: The permission to be multiple at all times without a microscope–

Yael: And the world around you to your insides until you can’t tell which is which–

Anooj: Without scrutiny

Yael: Is which 

Anooj: Yet with discipline 

Yael: Is which 

Anooj: Yet with art 

Yael: Is which.

Anooj: It is a craft, you know  

Yael: Can remind you that you

Anooj: A craft

Yael: In fragments

Anooj: To be here, remembering, or

Yael: A mosaic of those that have forgotten

Anooj: Refusing to forget

Yael: May be your most brilliant form. 

Play 3: In which Michaela and Shelton have a chat... (8:38-11:20)

Shelton: In which Michela and Shelton have a chat about the current state of things, only Shelton can only speak in Celine Dion Song titles. GO!

Abstract version of My Heart Will Go On plays underneath. 

Michaela: Hey Shelton! How are you?

Shelton: I’m alive, a new day has come. 

Michaela: I hear ya. It’s freaky out there.

Shelton: Here, there, and everywhere. 

Michaela: The patriarchy got us into this mess. 

Shelton: That’s the way it is. 

Michaela: What are you feeling like after a week in quarantine?

Shelton: How does a moment last forever? 

Michaela: Do you think it will get better?

Shelton: I have to dream.

Shelton sighs. 

Michaela: The worst part is the not knowing. Not knowing what tomorrow looks like, not knowing when I will crash, not knowing when this will end. I feel–

Shelton: Misled. 

Michaela: Yes, but on the upside, the sleep!

Shelton: What a feeling! 

Michaela: Fuck I haven't had this much sleep since... Last year when I quit my job and I took the entire month of March off. In a way, I'm grateful because this quarantine is likely putting 3 years back on my life. 

Shelton: My heart will go on. 

Michaela: Also the reading! Some books are not subway books, they are books that you need to sit down for 3 hours and just READ. Happy to have the time for that now.

Shelton: These are special times. 

Michaela: Yeah I mean wasn't expecting to suddenly be like a fucking great cook, but here I am!

Shelton: Miracle. 

Michaela: Feels like it. But I am fucking scared. The idea of quarantine and self-isolation goes against literally everything that I am as a person. How does quarantine make you feel? 

Shelton: All by myself 

Michaela: Yeah. I’m scared that I'll go in on myself, I'm scared that part of me will crack in a way that can't be fixed. Also, I feel like this is a super Aries thing of always needing new distractions and fun things to occupy us so we don't have to think about the real issues. I don’t know if you agree, bday twin.

Shelton: If these walls could talk…

Michaela: Speaking of walls I just moved on March 1. 

Shelton: There comes a time. 

Michaela: And I am with one other person in a big beautiful apartment. I was nervous to see how this was gonna go at first, but last Friday night we watched Hairspray.

Shelton: Something so right! 

Michaela: and we each knew all the words so like... I think this is gonna be good. 

Shelton: The power of love. 

Michaela: Love you Shelton

Shelton: I love you. Sleep tight!

Michaela: Don’t let the bed bugs bite. 

Shelton: What a feeling. 

Michaela: Yes, I imagine this is quite the feeling. 

Shelton giggles. Music crescendos, key change! Fade out. 

Play 4: 2020 CD3: A Mini Moon Ballet (11:23-13:25)

Michael: The following play was created using found text from the New York Times article “A New Mini Moon Was Found Orbiting Earth. There Will Be More” by Rebecca Boyle. 2020 CD3: A Mini Moon Ballet. GO!

Michael: Hello, listener! Before we begin I ask if you are willing and able to stand, close your eyes, and dance with me. Place your right hand in the air where you imagine my hand would be, and place your left on your center. 

Floaty jazzy music begins underneath words. 

Michael: Now just a small two step, back and forth. Feel free to spin yourself if the mood strikes.

Earth gets a new moon most months. On February 15th, 2020 we got two. 2 dots moving against a static background of stars.

The solar system is full of primordial crumbs, orbiting the same space as us, the same space as us. Some will get nudged into a ballet with us. The same space as us. And then it’s like any dance: you do a couple spins together, and go your separate ways. 

How beautifully transient

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Musical interlude for dancing.

Thank you for dancing with me. 

Music fades out.

Show Outro (13:31-14:37)

Bouncy instrumental music plays underneath.

Julia: Thanks for Hitting Play and then listening to Hit Play. If you liked what you heard and want to support the New York Neo-Futurists, consider making a donation at nynf.org, or by joining our Patreon–Patreon.com/NYNF. Patreon membership gives you access to bonus content like video plays. And if this episode gets over 1000 downloads, we'll order one of our Patreon supporters a pizza on us. We’d really appreciate any support in these difficult times. Contributing to our Patreon helps us continue to pay our artists. 

Take care of yourself, make a tin can on a string with your across the street neighbor, do a dance, and share it with us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

This episode featured work by: Michaela Farrell, Anooj Bhandari and Yael Haskel, Shelton Lindsay, and Michael John Improta. Our logo was designed by Shelton Lindsay. And our sound is designed by Anthony Sertel Dean. Hit Play is produced by Anthony Sertel Dean and me, Julia Melfi. Take Care!