all or nothing #28 - where do you belong?
table of contents
1.events 2.words 3.missed connections 4.horoscope 5.listen
»looking forward
passageways at SPRING/BREAK art fair
all street is taking a much needed vacation. with summer coming to a close, we’re skipping right on through the calendar and taking SPRING/BREAK by storm!!! from september 4-9, find aleksandra dougal and some of the squad posted up at 75 varick St, 10th floor, booth #20, and experience what many are calling a truly life changing installation, a passageway to enlightenment, some might even say. get your tickets here.
»looking back
katz’s bodega
they say the city never sleeps, so neither do we, and neither do bodegas. our city’s legion of honorable bodega workers serve the community day in and day out, 7 days a week, 12 months a year. their commitment is no joke and katz’s bodega takes the community's needs very, very seriously. however, all street does have to honor a sh*tload of other commitments throughout our calendar, so unfortunately katz’s bodega is technically hibernating until next august, when we’ll be back bigger and better than ever. so stay tuned. there might even be live cats at the next one!
words
+i might be listening to too much sampha+
Even in the lightest moments of joy and pleasure, I feel an intrinsic darkness that creeps up the back of my neck, tickling my spine as it slowly consumes my mind, and drags my thoughts back down into the abyss of melancholy and solitude. No matter how hard I try, the feeling never leaves. I am always and will forever be trapped, confined forever alone in my own head, like a prisoner perpetually tortured by the lurking truths of my own self-hatred. Every day, I am stuck facing my own reflection and I couldn’t imagine a bleaker life sentence. That is my burden. That is my boulder. I am Sisyphus. I am alone. Nah, I’m kidding. It’s really funny to me, imagining a bunch of people reading that first paragraph and thinking that was serious and stopping before it ends ‘cause they're so over-consumed by cringe they can’t continue and then they just think that’s genuinely the vibe. But, who knows? Maybe it is. And maybe I’m just using humor to shield my true feelings, basically testing that waters to see if anyone relates, but maintaining the defense of comedy just in case I get clowned. Guess you’ll never know. In actuality, it’s not that deep, though. Deadass. Sure, I’m not great at some stuff and I’m sad sometimes, but I'm also pretty good at some other things and also happy, at least for a couple moments on most days. Now, as an adult, in my present state of being, both things coexist. Ten years ago, though, apparently I had yet to discover concepts like nuance or multiplicity or string theory. Jk, I still don’t know about string theory. But I have unlocked access to new dimensions of my character, evolving from being just a brooding lothario who misuses vaguely academic words because he thinks they sound cool in the flow of a sentence into someone who actually values substance and not just aesthetics. A couple of nights ago, I was staring at my ceiling pondering the meaning of life, so I opened up the oak wood chest sitting in the base of my bedroom closet and flipped through some of my daily journals from the time of yore. I actually just scrolled mad far in my Notes app, but it’s kind of the same sentiment. As I perused the poetry produced by my adolescent self in fits of angst and an abhorrently limited vocabulary, I very quickly flung my already cracked and uncased iPhone into a dark corner of my room as my face grew hot in embarrassment. I found a poem which was really a rap song about a person who was like technically a real person, but didn’t actually exist in any of the ways I perceived them to because we had only one conversation and some probably coincidental eye contact across the room later that night but that one interaction was enough for me to write an entire mixtape about them. I created an entire fictional backstory based on things I had heard about them as well as social media research and it was all sort of like a new-agey Romeo and Juliet, i.e. West Side Story, but in the present featuring a fun blend of hip-hop and r&b and, of course, angst! So much angst! In the story/mixtape/play/piece of trash or whatever we want to classify it as, we were star crossed lovers, separated by none other than Central Park. They were from the Upper East Side of Manhattan and I was from the Upper West Side of Manhattan; how could we ever learn to love one another coming from such completely different worlds? Well, spoiler alert, it wasn’t the park that kept us apart. No, it was me being too busy writing an unhinged romance musical that no one should ever read for like ten consecutive weekends my junior year of high school rather than going out and trying to actually talk to them. You see, in my head, I skipped like twenty steps and assumed that there was no way for them to like me for just being myself, so I essentially self-ostracized and made some really bad art as a means of winning them back, even though I never had them in the first place? Also, I was listening to a lot of Elvis Costello at the time and I had plans to sample and rework a lot of his music with really intense 808s and then just spew some emo nonsense verses over it. I don’t know, it was obviously a weird time. But, anyway, I say all that to say that I was so concerned with being perceived that I decided I didn’t fit in anywhere without ever actually testing that theory. And I realized it’s all Holden Caulfield’s fault. I was in the sixth or seventh grade when I read Catcher in the Rye for English class. Now, I haven’t read it in over a decade, but I’ve read some other Sallinger stuff and I assume that it’s probably a good book rife with deeper meaning, layered double entendres, and complex metaphors, but I can’t say for certain. Although it certainly struck me as a kid, my tastes back then were obviously suspect. What I do know without doubt, though, is that Holden Caulfield f*cking sucks. Not as a character or literary device or whatever, but as a person. For years, I romanticized the idea of being all mysterious, introspective and misunderstood, I wanted so badly to exceptionalize my sadness for a greater purpose or story arc. I had experienced similar characters in mainstream media such as Lucas from One Tree Hill and Ryan from The OC, and various other handsome men on CW Shows (also I know The OC wasn’t originally on the CW, but like it’s the same vibe you get what I’m saying) and their apprehension to the phonies of mainstream society like Holden made them the interesting protagonists of their own stories. But, in reality, it just makes you sad and alone. So like Lebron said, “Stop trying to find a way to FIT-OUT and just FIT-IN. Be apart of something special! Just my thoughts.”
missed connections
+8.15 katz’s bodega opening
You: wear your heart on your sleeve
Me: doesn’t really wear sleeves
Description:
admittedly, it gets cold in the winter, but it’s the summertime right now, so it’s okay. sun’s out guns out, baby. and who needs heart when you got muscles?
+8.23 reminders of existence opening
You: a reflection of my worst insecurities
Me: doesn’t even really exist
Description:
if you don’t look, then you’ll never find me because i’m not hiding, you are.
+8.22 so let’s go screening
You: looked at me like you knew me
Me: doesn’t know anyone, but the night sky above
Description
they don’t face me when i speak and they don’t say anything before they leave; it felt like i was invisible until i met you.
horoscopes
+Aries+
awaken your individuality. now is the time to lean into your impulses and urges because the only thing that truly sets you apart from everyone else is your feelings. no one else has ever felt the exact same way you’re feeling in this exact moment and that’s not just okay, it’s brilliant. your feelings round out your edges, sharpen out your curves, and give your mind and soul the shape that makes you uniquely you. no person, place, or thing will ever be the perfect fit, but hey - perfect is overrated anyway.
+Taurus+
avoid turquoise chevron. in the coming weeks, you mustn’t miss a fit. we can’t tell you why, but when the moment strikes, you’ll want to be dressed accordingly.
+Gemini+
yo! yoo! yooo! yoooo! listen up! we won’t be repeating ourselves, so don’t ask. take a deep breath and open up your damn ears. now hit the deck! quick! get down! all the way, no cheating. lower. lower. lower? good. now we can all take a collective exhale. sheesh. that was a close one. glad that’s out of the way, though. did you see what just happened? you saw how close that was? you nearly got hit square in the head. for real. it's true. and with what, you may ask? well, none other than the astral residue of america’s original ghost, uncle sam himself. you didn’t hear it from us, but he’s back and better than ever, here to widen the divide of America’s warring soul. he was less than an inch away from worming his way into your ears and lodging in the base of your fleshy pink brain. yikes. that would not have been good. anyway, you have a phone right? with iMessage? nice. well, go to your last conversation and screenshot it, then accidentally send the screenshot to that same person. then, when they respond, take a screenshot of that conversation and send it to them again. then when they respond, do the whole thing over and over until they stop responding. tt this point you’ll know what you have to do next. do it.
+Cancer+
when you’re feeling down, just remember that skinny jeans were once considered cool, so there may just be hope for you yet.
+Leo+
context is everything. a fit can be an outfit, the way a garment lays on your body, a spectrum of belonging in a certain place, how in shape someone is, or a compliment frequently used in the UK to describe someone’s attractiveness. so, take what you will, because nothing we can say will ever fit every occasion or person.
+Virgo+
how you stylize word documents says a lot about you. do you underline or bold important text? do you use bullet points or dashes to make lists? do you strikethrough or highlight? regardless, words are just words before you make them your own.
+Libra+
you’re a weirdo. this normie drag performance you’re doing isn’t fooling anyone. this is the part when you stop being who they want you to be and start being yourself.
+Scorpio+
a famous Canadian once exclaimed he was “transitioning from fitting in to standing out,” a very common sentiment most would like to believe they are moving towards when, in actuality, the harder they try, the harder they fail.
+Sagittarius+
everyone has an old t-shirt, hoodie, or fedora that has sentimental value to them. maybe it was a parent’s, or perhaps it was a matching garment won with a friend, but no matter what it is, one day you may not fit into that comfort blanket anymore and that’s okay, because sometimes we just outgrow things.
+Capricorn+
as long as you’re alone, you never have to worry about fitting in. or about peanut allergies. think about it: does anyone actually have peanut allergies, or is it just people they know that have peanut allergies? the more you know.
+Aquarius+
life is like a jigsaw puzzle. there’s a lot of pieces that are supposed to fit together but sometimes don’t, and that’s just how puzzles work. some are meant to be solved and some are meant to be thrown across your living room in frustration and despair. just because you couldn’t solve one puzzle doesn’t mean you can’t solve the next one.
+Pisces+
you don’t belong anywhere.
playlist
+Send us your writing, ideas, notes, observations or anything you want to gallery@allstnyc.com to be considered for future editions of all or nothing+
image credits
artworks by abby wang, eden chinn, milo hume, on view in the group exhibition reminders of existence through september 13 at all street’s east village location (77 east third street, new york, ny, 10003).