The magnolias gave way to the cherry blossoms, which though not quite as ornate still brought a lot of vibrant color to Park Avenue. On Monday and Tuesday, before the rains came, all of the office workers took long lunches and had flashbacks to more hallucinogenic days of college.
The views to the north were more defined but a little too harsh to be pleasing, which is why everyone faced south. Too much detail can be a distraction when you're trying to immerse yourself in an otherworldly beauty that feels completely divorced from anything you might see on a computer screen.
Nothing could distract us from the red tulips, however, not even the strange construction project (visible above) where each day trucks pour endless streams of asphalt and cement down a small hole in the sidewalk. Just as we're building several new subway lines, we're apparently filling several others in.
On Thursday evening, after the rain stopped, I went to my old neighborhood in Brooklyn to attend a party. I didn't quite make it to Park Slope, because the event was in Gowanus, which wasn't even a neighborhood in 1998, when I moved to Washington Heights.
It was a little disturbing to step off the F-train and take in views that were so familiar to me but no longer part of my routine. As many have noted, time seems to accelerate as we get older, and I felt a little numb as I thought about what it would be like to come back in fifteen more years.
The neighborhood, which used to be known as an industrial warehouse district -- something like you'd see in the Midwest -- had changed. It was now "residential," dotted with restaurants, cafes, and companies to design and build kitchens and bathrooms. As I walked to the bar, there were literally packs of (white) people running past me.
Back in Manhattan the next day, I joined the parade of tourists and office workers walking through Bryant Park.
I followed the river of tulips west to the subway uptown.
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05/03/2014
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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.