Episode 42 It’s a Sensation

Thanks for Hitting Play and then listening to Hit Play. This episode: colors, spices, songs!

Check out our monthly livestream show, CyberWrench, the first episode is tonight (August 29) at 8pm ET! More info on our website here.

If you like what you hear and want to support the New York Neo-Futurists, subscribe to the show, consider making a donation at nynf.org, and join 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, draw a line in the sand and call it land art, and share it with us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

2:00 - blues. by Julia Melfi featuring Annie Levin, Yael Haskal, Michael John Improta, Rayne Harris, and Rob Neill

3:19 - Aloo Paratha: A Recipe Play by Anooj Bhandari

8:32 - A Broadway of the Mind (with apologies to Messrs. Rodgers and Hammerstein II) by Cecil Baldwin

Our logo was designed by Shelton Lindsay

Our sound is designed by Anthony Sertel Dean

Hit Play is produced by Anthony Sertel Dean, Julia Melfi, and Léah Miller

Take care!

Transcript 

Episode 42 It’s a Sensation

Show Intro

Jammy electronic instrumental music plays underneath then quickly fades out

Julia: 40-10-2. What?? Oh my god. Okay! 

Jammy electronic instrumental music plays underneath again

42. It's a Sensation. Hi, 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 so we made this podcast!  

If you’re already a fan of The New York Neo-Futurists, or any of our sibling companies, hello! We can’t wait to braid your hair. 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 clipping our toenails, we’re really clipping our toenails. (Sound of toenails being clipped). Sorry. Sometimes you just gotta clip your toenails while you make art. 

One last thing before we get going! So if you’re listening to this episode the day it comes out, Saturday August 29th and you want even more digital neo-futurism, we can make that happen for you! August 29th at 8pm is our first endeavor into an interactive livestream show we’re calling CyberWrench! Head to nynf.org for tickets. And if ya missed it, no worries--you can still head to nynf.org to catch our next one! We can’t wait to see ya there!

Julia: And now, Anooj will Run the Numbers!

Anooj: Hi, I’m Anooj, a New York Neo-Futurist. 

In this episode we’re bringing you 3 plays. The first is by Julia Melfi featuring Annie Levin, Yael Haskal, Michael John Improta, Rayne Harris, and Rob Neill. The second is by me, Anooj Bhandari. And the last is by Cecil Baldwin.

That brings us to 161 audio experiments on Hit Play. Enjoy!

Music ends with a snap!

Play 1: blues. (2:00)

Julia: Sky blue

Rob: Navy blue 

Michael: Ocean blue

Annie: Robin's egg

Yael: Royal blue

Julia: Blues. GO!

This is a layered audio collage. There are Neos listing all the shades of blue they can think of under the lines

Julia: I like to find blue things especially. Blue sea glass is the rarest and you were always so good at spotting it. 

Annie: It makes me think of being under the sea, watching sunlight dance on the top of the water. Makes me feel like I can breathe. 

Yael: My family used to call me blueberry eyes and talk about how they thought the color would fade as I got older, but it didn't. Blue feels like depth. 

Michael: Blue makes me thing of my favorite things. Blueberries are my favorite fruit, and being out by a lake with blue below and above is a favorite. I own one set of heels and they are blue. 

Rayne: Blue is everywhere. 

Annie: My nephew's eyes. 

Rayne: the color of the crayon cerulean on white paper. It calms me and makes me feel young. I love seeing that color in the world - it feels like my own little secret sighting of happiness.

Rob: Blue is water. 

Rayne: It envelops me. 

Rob: Water is big for me. I am happier when I can be on water, on boats.

Julia: These blue things sometimes make me feel blue. 

Rob: I stopped counting the blue things around me--

Rayne: I love blue--

Rob: At 25

Rayne: In all its shades. 

Annie: I know there are so many more blues than that, but

Michael: That's all I've got. 

Annie: That's what I've got!

Play 2: Aloo Paratha: A Recipe Play (3:19)

Anooj: Aloo Paratha: A Recipe Play. GO!

Ambient kitchen noise/fluorescent buzz

Anooj: Recipe Version # 1: Nani 

He can nod his head in agreement through conversations on toxic masculinity as much as he wants but there is still an invisible line, electric fence, between the tiles of the kitchen and the dining room. I wonder if he (Uncle/Mama) imagines me getting shocked every time I walk through, or if he longs, craves, to know what it’s like to feel one’s self be relinquished to the burn of stove tops, places where I have watched the women in my family carve prayer space out of corners melting into the smells of fennel and mustard seed. 

She (Grandmother/Nani) looks at me. “Hi Munna,” she says, and I remind her that I wanted to learn more recipes; that I wanted her to teach me the things she has never been asked to pass down before. I point to the Aloo Paratha she has started to prepare. 

“You can’t learn this one,” she says. “It’s too difficult.” 

And with every inhale as I watch her cook, I feel sparks of the electric fence begin to whisper secrets behind me. 

Ambient street noise of crowds

Recipe Version #2: Street Stall  

Okay, so from what I understand they knead the dough into one large ball, not with any precise measurements, but rather until the consistency is where they want it, and then divide it into many smaller balls to make the individual parathas. This place not only had aloo, but paneer and gobi as well, each already cooked, spiced, finely chopped or mashed, and garnished. Each of the dough balls were roughly the size of a baseball and a big dent is pushed in at the top with the thumbs of these women at the stall. They take a palm of filling and push it into the indent before rounding the sides of the dough back to the top, and then flattening it on a sizzling pan with oil and letting the whole thing get golden-brown and crispy. There’s another young woman with a notebook taking people’s orders and this notebook has pages, I mean pages, filled, and the quickness by which they make these parathas is like an intricate machine of fine art. I don’t understand how all of the filling doesn’t fall out, and I wonder if that’s what Nani meant when she told me it was too difficult.  

Ambient nature outdoor noises

Recipe Version #3: Chitra

The earliest picture of Chitra Didi and I is from when I was three. She is holding me up as I cling to a tree in front of Nani’s apartment in Calcutta. 

When Chitra Didi has me over for dinner twenty-five years later there is a kind of unsurmounted elation that exudes from her. She makes me aloo paratha and raitha (thinned yogurt with cucumber, salt, and cumin), and before I have finished one plate, another one appears. Food tastes different when it’s made with this much love. Her son, now six, sits next to me and watches as I eat. 

My Mom calls me the next day to say that she talked to Chitra Didi on the phone. She told her that making food for me is like making food for a god, and I know it is meant to be endearing, but many parts of me, including those that imagine the pride through which he (Uncle/Mama) would respond to a comment like that, start to run laps from the dining room to the kitchen, and back again, melting into the shocks from the electric fence until I am brought back down to the ground. 

“I don’t want to be a god,” I tell my Mom. “I want to be a tree.”  

Recipe Version #4: The Internet 

I will not look this up. I  have learned to protect myself from certain secrets. There is a joy in not knowing. 

Recipe Version #5: Mom 

When we eat Aloo Paratha at home at my parents’ house in the suburbs of Cleveland, they come frozen out of a sealed bag bought from the place that we refer to as The Indian Store. I have never asked my Mom if she knows how to make Aloo Paratha from scratch, nor do I know if I am all-too-interested in the answer. 

When my Mom tells me to “just to be happy,” I don’t question it or call it out or tell her it’s not that easy. When she says it, it feels like truth, feels like she is passing on to me what she had to do, and between the dreams of Calcutta and a life spent raising kids and working and feeding the dog and building a kitchen as sacred space in the suburbs, the rip of a plastic opening to the pack of frozen aloo parathas feels a rip in space and time, and I wonder if it really matters how something is made if there is a love of feeding somebody cooked into its process, and right before the frozen food hits the sizzling pan I wonder if my Mom wishes she could crawl into that opening back into her mother’s arms. 

When I walk from the table to the stove in her home, I am not a god. I am not a tree. I am just a child. When I walk from the table to the stove in her home, I hear no whispers.

Play 3: A Broadway of the Mind (8:32)

Cecil: A Broadway of the Mind (with apologies to Messrs. Rodgers and Hammerstein II). GO!

A layering sound experiment of the following:

• Ambient sound of Times Square, Broadway

• A performer (Cecil) humming the song My Favorite Things on the street

• Rainstorm

• Cat sounds

• Tea kettle whistle

• Heavy brown paper

• Baking

• Geese

• Horses

Cecil's humming of the chorus is the last sound standing

Show Outro

Jammy electronic 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 post-livestream hangouts. And if this episode gets over 1,000 downloads, we'll order one of our Patreon supporters a pizza on us. Free pizza. 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, draw a line in the sand and call it land art, and share it with us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

This episode featured work by: Julia Melfi featuring Annie Levin, Yael Haskal, Michael John Improta, Rayne Harris, and Rob Neill; Anooj Bhandari; and Cecil Baldwin. Our logo was designed by Shelton Lindsay. And our sound is designed by Anthony Sertel Dean. Hit Play is produced by Anthony Sertel Dean, Léah Miller, and me, Julia Melfi. Take Care!

Music plays out with a snap!