There’s a weekly, outdoor house-music night I like in downtown Los Angeles. The community is friendly, the music is good. Most people, especially at the beginning of the night, are there simply to dance.
Last Sunday, a woman my age, mid-dancing, complimented my jacket. I complimented her sneakers in return, a pair of bright, technicolor Hokas.
“Thank you, but check this out!” she said, spinning her skirt, which twirled around. “And look at this!” she said, pointing to a clip that grasped her hair in a short ponytail. “What do you think?”
I couldn’t tell what the clip was exactly. It looked to be made of clay, like homemade pottery, like something a child might fashion in art class.
The woman danced in place, staring at me, not blinking, waiting for my response.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a look!” she shouted and danced away.
Two weeks ago, western France, at a small village bistro, I heard two American women worrying aloud about what to do and where to go, when they visited Paris the next day. Ten minutes later, they finished dinner and passed my table. I said hello and offered recommendations if they wanted, which they accepted and seemed happy to hear a familiar accent.
They asked about museums, and I was describing one of my favorites, La Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, when one of the women interrupted and asked, in a whisper, “Hey, do you do it, too?”
“Do what?”
She paused and said conspiratorially, “Stare around a restaurant and wonder which person hates us most?!”
On a walk this week in Los Angeles, I passed a pile of nutrition and self-help books on the sidewalk near some garbage cans. Titles like Perfect Health. The Longevity Diet. The New Fit or Fat. The dump had several stacks, maybe twenty books altogether. Let’s Stay Healthy. Do You Have Adrenal Burnout? The books were neatly arranged, made to look attractive, as though someone wandering by might desire the self-help that the owner no longer desired. On top of the pile was Turn Up the Heat: Unlock the Fat-Burning Power of Your Metabolism. The book’s tagline: “The only nutrition book you will ever need. Throw the rest away!”
Two weeks ago, in France, in the Loire Valley, sitting outside at a fancy restaurant for a fancy dinner, there were maybe fifteen guests and twice as many staff. At a table nearby, an older American woman and her granddaughter were having a loud conversation – the grandmother speaking at high volume because of hearing issues, I guessed, and the granddaughter perhaps compensating for the hearing problem. Anyway, the grandmother wanted to talk about Julia Child. She remembered Child with great enthusiasm, her enormous influence on American cookery with all the wonderful recipes.
“IT WAS SO EXCELLENT. EVERYONE WANTED TO DRINK THE SAUCE.”
Unfortunately, the granddaughter had no comment to this, she didn’t seem to know who Julia Child was. The grandmother turned dour and stared at her food: an artfully arranged plate of tiny garden morsels.
“NOW EVERYTHING IS LITTLE BITES,” the grandmother exclaimed a moment later. “WITH EACH BITE, YOU DON’T GET A LOT OF FLAVOR!”
“AMERICA DOESN’T HAVE ITS OWN CUISINE,” her granddaughter suggested.
“WELL, PIZZA” the grandmother shouted, and they both laughed. “PIZZA!”
A friend sent me a song that a friend just released, saying he thought it was an absolute summer bop.
I wrote back, channeling the woman at the techno night, “It’s a bop!”
In Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport, Terminal Two, in one of the departure areas, a white grand piano was available for anyone to approach and play.
A few minutes after I sat nearby with my bags, a young man with long hair and neck tattoos approached the piano and began to play. Except he didn’t quite know how to play piano, and from the things he wanted to play – covers of pop songs by Guns N’ Roses and Rhianna – he only knew the chorus lines and didn’t know quite how to execute them, so he compensated by playing his attempts and sudden re-attempts more forcefully, loud enough in the cavernous space to mask the flight announcements.
After twenty minutes, he left the piano to buy something at the magazine stand. So a young woman in her teens, in a white sweatsuit, perhaps feeling inspired, sat down and did the exact same thing for fifteen minutes, but only Billie Eillish, one song, one chorus, with one finger, slowly.
Speaking of exclamation points: The winner of this month’s new subscriber contest is Diogo K. Congrats, Diogo! A copy of Everything Now is on its way.
For July, anyone who signs up (see the blue button below) as a new supporter gets their name thrown in a hat, and at the end of the month I’ll randomly pick a person to receive a signed copy of one of my books, title of their choosing, mailed to them or anybody else. (Another option: I’ll send them a book I think they’ll like, written by somebody else, based on their recent reading history.)
As ever, thanks to everybody for subscribing. I really appreciate your backing.
In tomorrow’s Sunday supplement for supporters:
Half a dozen favorite string quartets for summer
Beach-read suggestions if you’re shopping the NYRB Classics
Some new things to watch if you’re sick in bed with not-Covid, as I was this past week
What the what
Meditations in an Emergency is a weekly dispatch from author Rosecrans Baldwin about something beautiful. Paying subscribers receive a Sunday supplement with 3+ things to love, along with a monthly longer piece sent from the road, for some inbox wanderlust. ⛰️
Books mentioned in Meditations in an Emergency are stored in a Bookshop list.
I think you could have a whole newsletter documenting awkward interactions. I find the accounts of them very entertaining.
What’s the house music party?