Time Warp Transient
Fog and light snow pepper the lower east side of Manhattan and I can’t sleep. I’ve got a fix for root vegetable chips and an inkling to research second hand records passed up yesterday over on Bleeker Street. Regretfully. It’s 4:15am and I’m tired. Tired of the dull passageways lined with mediocrity and the chess game that goes with it. I’m here on business with a layer of pleasure, although everything I do these days is business to the power of 10, and I look romantically back at the struggle I once had as Mr. Gypsy transient DJ wanderer of NYC and I miss it with all my heart.
Once obsessive treks to Greenwich Village climbing Fatbeats stairwell to peep the latest KRS 1 12″ single and DJ Premiers latest mix-tape on the wall behind the counter with it’s home-made cover teasing me. The legendary hideout replete with it’s wicked vids, mags and of course the reason to believe, vinyl. It’s thee historic spot in NYC Hip Hop history. Everyone has thrown down there at some point, GrandMaster Flash, Biz Markie, Beatminerz, Buckshot, Big Daddy Kane, Shante, Kool G Rap…the list is endless.
Suddenly in the time warp again only this time a different person, my old stomping ground lower half. Musing. High. Climbing stairs to find a poster at the top marker-etched with a line about a rap artist recently fallen, an R.I.P. turning on my heel, door now open to a front window wide February chill, two guys outside on the awning repairing a sign for the storefront below, leaving two Fatbeats clerks freezing their nuts off. I pass eyes across a wall of vinyl catching reflections of myself in plastic as a shadow of who I once was.
Along Avenue of The Americas strides become further apart, faster, lighter, perhaps it’s the boots I’m wearing that feel that way, reminded of feet that once ached from Timberland boots all over, up and down and around massive city blocks. I once covered nine large, upper east side brick city, glancing door to door in search of the legendary D&D Studios to discover that when DJ Premier took it over he changed to name to Headquarterz in memory of a fallen brother. Who could blame him. New digs same digits. Even though I never found it, still worth the walk.
Somehow today was different than the others and I could smell it, it seemed easier floating like a shroud weaving in and out of streets once hugged tight like my lover amiss, tall shadows comforting, pushing back with a different glow, a different outlook, shade. Is she the same mistress? I feel she is. This city. This beast. Chess tables huddled around edges of Washington Square Park, Union Square, the pretty girls still chirped at by shovel toting yellow-hat street workers, the structure was there, unchanged, solid, and the heartbeat is alive…only with silent hint of disdain and age. My disdain. My age. For a world I’m caught up in again, that time warp passageway to a former self, just for today I want to be that lonely sage struggling in NYC colours again, hanging on buy the very nails on my fingertips.
I really can’t leave you, I won’t leave you. But I have to. And you know I’ll be back.
