I've been jogging at the gym for many years now, and for slightly less time than that have grown to detest the television monitors that are inevitably installed in front of every treadmill. At my present gym, which is on the second floor of a midtown building offering views of the sidewalk below, I much prefer to watch the ebb and flow of traffic (both vehicular and pedestrian) than anything I might find on daytime television.
You can imagine my pleasure when earlier this week I discovered that the gym had installed several new treadmills in front of a window and miraculously decided (at least for the time being) not to place television monitors in front of them (i.e., the treadmills), so that my view of the sidewalk is completely unobscured, perfect even. I didn't go running for the past three days because I've been trying to shake a cold, but today I went and ran three very easy miles, with Bedhead's first album What Fun Life Was (which btw I consider one of the most criminally neglected masterpieces of the 1990s) blaring pleasantly in my headphones. (I'm not a complete luddite, after all.) Oddly or not, I was the only person of the handful using the treadmills to choose a monitor-free model, which just goes to show that either a) I'm a freak, or b) most ppl like television present no matter where they are or what they're doing, even if they have views of the mutating city available only a few feet in front of them. (I was hypnotized by the brick pattern on the facing building, among other things.)
Running along at an easy pace I felt like I could have lasted forever, even though I wasn't going anywhere. The music, which only seconds earlier had been magisterial, grew quiet and contemplative, and the hushed lyric "just float and relax" had never sounded better or more appropriate.
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10/29/2010
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A RADICAL NEW MYTH ABOUT SEX, FAITH, AND THOSE OF US WHO WILL NEVER DIE
A young boy wanders into the woods of Harlem and witnesses the abduction of his sister by a glowing creature. Forty years later, now working as a New York City homicide detective, Gus is assigned to a case in which he unexpectedly succumbs to a vision that Helen is still alive. To find her, he embarks on an uorthodox investigation that leads to an ancient civilization of gods and the people determined to bring them back.
In this colossal new novel from the author of The Metropolis Case, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice collides with a new religion founded by three corporate office workers, creating something beautiful, illogical, and overwhelming. Part sex manifesto, part religious text, part Manhattan noir—with a dose of deadly serious, internet inspired satire—#gods is a sprawling inquest into the nature of faith and resistance in the modern world. With each turn of the page, #gods will leave you increasingly reborn.
Praise for #gods
“#gods is a mystery, an excavation of myths, an index of modern life, a gay coming-of-age story, an office satire, a lyrical fever dream, a conspiracy. One of the most ambitious novels in recent memory—and a wild, possibly transformative addition to the canon of gay literature—it contains multitudes, and seethes with brilliance.” —Mark Doten, author of The Infernal
“Matthew Gallaway’s #gods is a novel so brilliant, so funny, so full of strange and marvelous things, I couldn’t stop writing OMG WTF I <3 THIS SO MUCH in its margins. It’s rare to find a novel that so dazzlingly reinvigorates age-old meditations on faith and f&!*ing, art and eros. Luminous, enterprising, and sublimely cheeky, #gods tells the story, the myth, the dream of the human soul in all its glorious complexity.” —Suzanne Morrison, author of Yoga Bitch
“Matthew Gallaway’s storytelling manages to be both dreamy and serious; lean and luxurious. His words carry an incantatory power of mythic storytelling where beauty and savagery wrap around each other like bright threads in a gorgeous tapestry.” —Natasha Vargas-Cooper, author of Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America
“If the ancient gods were just like us, only more so, then the same could be said for this strange, wonderful book, in which the mundane sorrows and small triumphs of very ordinary lives glow ever so slightly around the edges, sometimes quite literally. At once an oddly romantic send-up of dead-end office culture and an offbeat supernatural procedural, #gods is terrifically weird, melancholy, sexy, and charming.” —Jacob Bacharach, author of The Bend of the World
'It’s to the credit of Matthew Gallaway’s enchanting, often funny first novel that it doesn’t require a corresponding degree of obsession from readers, but may leave them similarly transported: the book is so well written — there’s hardly a lazy sentence here — and filled with such memorable lead and supporting players that it quickly absorbs you into its worlds.'
-- The New York Times
Music: Death Culture at Sea and Saturnine
Listen or download songs and records from my indie-rock past with Saturnine here and Death Culture at Sea here.
Music Video: Remembrance of Things Past
Watch the rock opera Remembrance of Things Past written and performed by Saturnine and Frances Gibson, starring Bennett Madison and Sheila McClear.
Video: The Chaos Detective
The Chaos Detective is a series about a man searching for 'identity' as he completes assignments from a mysterious organization. Watch the first episode (five parts) on YouTube.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/technology/25brain.html
Possibly my favorite NY Times article of the past year for this part alone:
At least one exerciser has a different take. Two stories up from the main floor, Peter Colley, 23, churns away on one of the several dozen elliptical machines without a TV. Instead, they are bathed in sunlight, looking out onto the pool and palm trees.
“I look at the wind on the trees. I watch the swimmers go back and forth,” Mr. Colley said. “I usually come here to clear my head.”
Posted by: Brian | 10/31/2010 at 02:15 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/technology/25brain.html
Possibly my favorite NY Times article of the past year for this part alone:
At least one exerciser has a different take. Two stories up from the main floor, Peter Colley, 23, churns away on one of the several dozen elliptical machines without a TV. Instead, they are bathed in sunlight, looking out onto the pool and palm trees.
“I look at the wind on the trees. I watch the swimmers go back and forth,” Mr. Colley said. “I usually come here to clear my head.”
Posted by: Brian | 10/31/2010 at 02:15 PM
Whoa, nice--thats what Im talking about!
Posted by: Matthew Gallaway | 10/31/2010 at 05:45 PM
have you thought of running outside? lot of stuff to see there.
Posted by: alex k | 11/04/2010 at 12:34 PM
Thanks for the comment, smartass, but its not exactly feasible when youre on 34th Street and Park Avenue at lunchtime. I run outside all the time on the weekends though.
Posted by: Matthew Gallaway | 11/04/2010 at 12:39 PM