Episode 07 - Let Me Explain

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: Hilary Asare featuring Robin Virginie, Lee LeBreton, Anooj Bhandari, Anthony Sertel Dean, and Joey Rizzolo.

Our logo was designed by Shelton Lindsay.

Our sound is designed by Anthony Sertel Dean.

Léah Miller is our associate producer. 

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

Take Care!

Transcript 

Episode 07: Let Me Explain

Show Intro (0:00-1:23)

Bouncy alien instrumental music plays underneath.

Julia: 7. Let Me Explain. 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, wow hi! We can't wait to be within six feet of you! 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 recording while making chicken stock, we’re really recording while also making chicken stock. Like I am right now.  

Julia: And now, Hilary will Run the Numbers!

Hilary: Hi I’m Hilary Asare, a New York Neo-Futurist. In this episode we’re bringing you 5 plays by me–Hilary Asare, Lee Lebreton, Anooj Bhandari, Anthony Sertel Dean, and Joey Rizzolo. 

That brings us to 31 audio experiments on Hit Play. Enjoy!

Music winds down.

Play 1: When in Doubt, twerk it out (1:23-4:58)

Hilary: When in doubt, twerk it out GO!

Hilary: When in doubt, twerk it out, if that feels good. Bend your knees and rock your hips till you get back in your body–or move how you need to–I wish I could move for you right now because I know that my body knows how to state the fear that my words can’t. Quite. Parse. 

When in doubt, remember that your seasonal allergies are always bad this time of year. They are brutal and usually involve a cough caused by post nasal drip and you still have your sense of taste and smell and you haven’t had a pronounced fever and stop listing the symptoms because they comfort you less and less each time.

When in doubt, scream. Purge it. Right Now. Start 

Low static hum. 

When in doubt, try to use your words. Breathe. First, say, “I am scared. There is so much out of my control and that translates to a short temper because that’s how I'm wired and I am sorry I. Am. Sorry. I. Am. Like. This.” 

When in doubt, Remember everyone is doing their best. Nothing is normal, and trying really is more than enough right now so find and exercise some patience we could all use some patience with those closest to us we could all use some patience with ourselves, we could all use–

When in doubt, know what you need to but don’t feed the fear. 

When in doubt, listen, help if you can.

When in doubt, ask, let people surprise you in the ways they show up.

Percussive beat starts slowly building underneath text. 

When in doubt, cry, shake, shout–get it out of your body so you can replace it up with something less taxing, like comfort television, soothing music, a coloring app, or dog videos–I fucking love dog videos gimme that sweet sweet sweet dog content. My handle on most social media is just my first and last name and if you send me cute dogs I will probably send you cute dogs and forward the cute dogs you send me and then those people will forward them and I’ll get more voice memos like this one:

Robin: “I sent this to my mom and, in cla–whenever I send like a cute picture she’ll go ‘who is this?’ so she was like ‘who is this dog?’ and I was like ‘Oh I don’t know’ and she was like “You don’t–whose dog is this? You don’t know the dog?” and I was like “No it’s a dog from the internet that Hilary found.”

Hilary laughs.  

Hilary: Because that message made me chuckle for like 5 minutes and I did not know how badly I needed that laugh and I feel like maybe you could use some more laughter too so if we all keep sharing cute funny things maybe the ripple effect will lift us up. 

Hip hop beat is more pronounced by this point. 

When in doubt, increase your joy. Amplify it, reflect it, spread it all around, call the people you want to reconnect to, strengthen the ties to the loved ones in your orbit, share as much light as you can spare. Rest if that feels good, read if that feels good, make if that feels good, move if that feels good, turn up the music and have a pants off dance off gyrate, rotate, swing, dip, pop, drop and work it all out in whichever way feels right, freeing, centering, takes you closer to peace which means, for me–when in doubt, twerk it out.

Hilary twerks, she is her own hypewoman, mutterings of “get it, get it, oh oh ooh”. Hip hop beat crescendos. Music cuts out. 

Play 2: What I'd Beam Up to the Aliens... (4:58-7:10)

Lee: What I'd Beam Up to the Aliens If Asked to Explain Gender Reveal Parties. GO! 

Alien sounding electronic sounds begin. The alien noises interact with Lee's monologue, as if responding and reacting. 

Lee: Okay so there are these two flavors of human, and—well there’s actually way more than that, but most people are only interested in these two specific ones, these two categories, and so when they—they meaning the parent or parents—when they find out what the infant’s reproductive organs will look like ... so they find out by means of a machine? That can see through the belly? But not like we see with our eyes, like our ocular organs, it’s a machine that sees with sound? Anyway so they find out what reproductive organs will look like, and then because this information is very important to them, they host a gathering, and the climax of this gathering is … an explosion? Okay so, let me back up: So each of these categories has a color assigned to it, and the color is concealed inside an object or sometimes a food item? Usually a sweet food item, like a cake? Or sometimes a savory food item, there was a gender reveal lasagna but, I do not wanna try to explain lasagna right now—or sometimes it’s a balloon—a balloon like, a latex orb? Anyway, so the climax of this gathering is a … rending? Of the food item? Or a bursting of the latex orb? Or an explosion of pigment? In the appropriate color? And then everyone celebrates the knowing of the organs. And then maybe they all ingest nutrients together, like cake or champagne, and—so champagne, well technically it’s a poison, but like a fun poison? Anyway, 

Alien noises rise and overtake the speech as it fades out. 

Lee: So cake… how do you describe cake? So imagine a sweet, dense nutrient cylinder, made from eggs—unfertilized chicken eggs—butter, which is cow milk that’s been churned around…

Play 3: A Reminder, a Bite, a Bit of Silence (7:11-10:33)

Anooj: A Reminder, a Bite, a Bit of Silence. GO!

Piano and strings underscore begins. 

Anooj: There’s a generation of elders advising younger folks away from certain things like ten-day silent meditation retreats; who say little for their commitment to the silence that has overcome them is strong, but who with eyes closed can be imagined whispering wants for me, for us, to never stop feeling. And I wonder, as I begin meditating on the same sheets that have made creased playgrounds for the ones who left too soon, if these elders have fallen in love, deeper, with memories that they were attached to, if a hunger for love with detachment is really detachment at all if you’re still looking for something to fill what's been left behind by the words you’ve departed from.  

Anooj: (singing) If you’re gonna lose yourself in the loss of another 

If you’re gonna leave to the darkness just to shout with the river

If you’re gonna lose yourself in the loss of another

Breathe me in before you go

Breathe me in before you go  

Anooj: (speaking) A young man pets a dog at a street corner in Calcutta that looks like the one he had and passed away six months ago, and a bark, a bite, and a yell later I’m looking at my cousin in the eye asking what was on his mind as I distracted him from the blood. He says he was sure he saw his baby Lucky in that dog’s eyes, that he couldn’t understand why a dog he believed held the spirit of his own would ever try and hurt him. I pause before telling him something about how if we remember things, if we remember people, it might take those things and people a bit of time to remember us. That sometimes a reminder, a bite, and a bit of silence can all be from the exact same place. 

Anooj: (singing) If you’re gonna lose yourself in the loss of another 

If you’re gonna flee to the darkness just to shout with the river

If you’re gonna lose yourself in the loss of another

Breathe me in before you go

Breathe me in before you go   

Anooj: (speaking) As I meditate, I find myself asking to feel again. That if my alarm goes off and I straighten these linens before facing a world seperated from the person sitting on my bed, that I have permission to, midst the reminder, the bite, and the bit of silence, to miss the things I’ve left behind. 

Anooj: (singing) Breathe me in before you go

Breathe me in before you go

Piano flourish, music fades. 

Play 4: An Argument for 😬 (10:34-13:33)

Anthony: An Argument for Unicode U+1F62C: Grimacing Face. GO!

Plucky bouncy electronic beat underscore.

Anthony: Unicode U+1F62C is known as the “grimacing face” emoji.

Anooj: One round yellow circle: the head.

Hilary: Two dark circles staring into your soul: the eyes.

Anthony: And one horizontal pill-shaped oval filled to the brim with teeth: the iconic grimace. 

Anooj: Grimacing Face is the 87th most frequently used emoji in the world just behind “Glowing Star”, and just ahead of “Upside-Down Face”

Hilary: It was approved as part of Unicode 6.1 in 2012 with the description “May represent a range of negative or tense emotions, especially nervousness, embarrassment, or awkwardness”

Anthony: Sure, I am usually full of nervousness, embarrassment, and awkwardness–often all three at the same time–but I don’t really use the grimacing face for any of those feelings. 

Anooj: The last time you sent me a grimacing face emoji was actually two grimacing faces side by side in response to me complimenting music that you wrote for this podcast.

Hilary: The last time you sent me a grimacing face emoji, you explained why you like it.

Anthony: I feel like I have to explain that a lot. I know it’s not designed or intended to be a happy face or even a smiling face, but I like to think of grimacing face (or Grimmy) as someone who is learning how to smile and really just trying their hardest. They're not great at it yet, but who of us is deeply connected enough with their emotions to not question what a genuine smile looks like on their face? For me, there are teeth involved, and I’m pretty sure Grimmy knows that too. For some, happiness is all in the eyes; if that’s the case, what does that say about the most frequently used emoji “Face with Tears of Joy”, with its eyes shuttered, hidden from the world? Is there more joy there or in Grimmy’s cold dark eyes? 

Plucky fun music transitions to spooky chords, then switches back. 

Those eyes, while not textbook happy, have a depth, something you can connect with, can understand its personal relationship with happiness. An honesty: WE’RE TRYING! WE’RE TRYING TO BE HAPPY, BUT SOMETIMES IT CAN BE HARD. YOUR KINDNESS FILLS MY HEART, BUT THAT DOESN’T ALWAYS REACH MY MOUTH… my pill-shaped mouth. Whether I can effectively show it or not, there is the intention of joy, even if what you read is the tension breaking through the facade. 

Anooj: Hmmm, you always struck me as more of a, um, party hat and noisemaker emoji kinda human.

Hilary: Ever since you explained your love for that emoji to me, I think of you every time I use it.

Anthony: You can’t see me right now, but I’m smiling.

Music motif and fade out. 

Play 5: Battleground State War Correspondent (13:34-17:57)

Joey: Battleground State War Correspondent. GO!

Speech sounds distant and tinny. Background noise. 

Joey: It is a nice day. I am in the backyard of my rural home, listening to the mourning doves. On a nice day, I will also hear gunfire. On a really nice day, like today, I hear it from three different directions. In New York, the sound of a gun means that someone is getting murdered. In Ohio, it means that it is sunny and warm and Saturday. Of course, every day is like Saturday now, but today it is, coincidentally, Saturday.

Two days after having moved to the buckeye state, a stranger accosted me in a hardware store and frantically explained that Chase Manhattan Bank was a front for a multibillion-dollar drug trafficking operation. In New York, I heard similar conspiracies broadcast during any subway commute, but safety (or it’s convincing counterfeit) comes when surrounded by the warm blanket of like-minded individuals, and it is very possible that I am the weirdo in this scenario. On my third day in Ohio, I met my next door neighbor, Jerry. We no sooner shook hands before he lectured me on the government’s lies surrounding the horrors of agent orange during the Vietnam War. Today it is the first warm, sunny, gun-y day after weeks of rain, and my other neighbor Jared drove his classic Mustang out of his barn, whereupon it sank into the mud. As neighbors go, I much prefer Jerry.

One of my senators is a leftist bulldog. One of my representatives is Jim Jordan. You can find a pro-labor rally anywhere, but you have to drive to a city if you want an abortion. Not now, of course, because my governor is a Republican, and abortion clinics were deemed non-essential once the pandemic was in full swing. 

I saw my first MAGA hat in a grocery store this fall. Not for sale – it was on somebody’s head. I didn’t know what to do, as though there was anything to be done. Even today, I still think my only options were to engage in a reasoned argument or punching. I feel condescendingly certain that he was incapable of the former, and I worry that I am incapable of the latter – I am 44 now, and I suspect that my punching days are slipping away from me. I’ve learned to avoid the grocery store on the first of the month, especially if the first is on a Saturday. Recipients of food stamps are white, obese, and smell like an acrid cocktail of cigarettes and body odor. Without a reliable means of getting to and from the store, they clog checkout lines with a month’s worth of groceries, two or three carts to a family. I am not proud of the lens of New York elitism through which I view this phenomenon, but I cannot seem to contain it.

For a city boy in a battleground state, the mandate of self-isolation has not affected my day-to-day experience at all. Spiders blanket my home in gossamer each night, making the prospect of opening the door the next day a nightmarish ordeal. When I flush my toilet, the waste is delivered into an underground box only a dozen feet away from the point at which it exited my body, and I find its eternal presence discomforting. Even today, after months of warm, sunny Saturdays, I jump at the crack of nearby gunfire. Still, I enjoy the air on my skin, I bask in the warmth of the sun on my face, and in the coincidental silence that manifests when a glock-9 and two AR-15s are simultaneously reloaded - I listen to the dolorous sigh of doves disappearing behind the song of frogs in the culvert.

Background noise crescendos and cuts out. 

Show Outro (17:58-19:13)

Bouncy alien instrumental music plays underneath.

Julia: Thanks for Hitting Play and then listening to Hit Play. If you liked what you heard, subscribe to the show and tell a friend!  If you want to support the New York Neo-Futurists in other ways, consider making a donation at nynf.org, or joining our Patreon–Patreon.com/NYNF. Patreon membership gives you access to bonus content like video plays. And if this episode gets over 1,000 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, call a friend, make a pillow fort, and share it with us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

This episode featured work by: Hilary Asare featuring Robin Virginie, Lee LeBreton, Anooj Bhandari, Anthony Sertel Dean, and Joey Rizzolo. Our logo was designed by Shelton Lindsay. And our sound is designed by Anthony Sertel Dean. Léah Miller is our associate producer. Hit Play is produced by Anthony Sertel Dean and me, Julia Melfi. Take Care!

Music fades out.