Is there a song more nostalgic to me than Myth by Beach House?
No.
I don't think there is.
For some reason Myth seemed to be playing quietly in the background for what felt like 5 straight years of my life. It makes me think of steaming hot subway rides, sweaty summers on the roof , 40's in paper bags. It punctuates New York in my blossoming adulthood.
It feels like shitty 2am's at the Blarney Stone or crying in the 49th St F train stop. It makes me want to eat a hot dog at Madison Square Garden or black out from sheer lack of food on the Queensboro Bridge.
It feels like the recklessness of scaling a fire escape because a couple of boy geniuses forgot their keys or the blast of AC from the ATM vestibule near Orchard and Grand at midnight. It tastes kind of like a hot toddy at Rintintin.
It makes me think of blurry nights, crying on the stoop of a random apartment building, working hungover, sleeping in, quitting my job because I had a bad breakout, feeling like a big bad grown up and a little baby all at once. It feels like walking blisters, and the electricity getting cut off because you never paid the bill.
It feels like fragile friendships, missing the simple pals of childhood who knew every little thing about you. It feels like running down a snowy street in the middle of the night in ugly wedge heels.
It feels like comparison practicing his thievery, like an Hermes Clic Clac thrown in a fit of rage. It sounds like heels pacing up and down Laight St at all hours of the night oscillating between I'm going home! and No, wait come and make me stay.
It feels like letting a friend get you a little too undressed on the sidewalk outside of Queensbridge whilst dangerously lost in the middle of the night. It sounds like cab driver arguments and penny board wheels rattling over cracked, pukey cement.
It looks like red lipstick always, Black Milk Liquid legging or shiny disco pants. Out of place Lilly Pulitzer Prints or a balayage that never hit the way you wanted it to.
It makes me remember the knots I had to twist myself into trying to fit in with all the people in my world. Broke college kids snacking on dollar pizza between retail shifts, 40 year old bartenders with arrested development or children of billionaires toting the newest designer splurges through Goldbar. It feels like ending up in any and all situations you didn't belong in.
It feels like New York but also strongly like running away to New Hampshire because you just don't know what you are supposed to do or be or want. It sounds like my Mum reminding me that being confused at 20 means you have the gift of time before you.
It sounds like garbage trucks collecting trash to keep Tribeca sparkling at all times or a friendly doorman letting you know you should not be out in a blizzard in such an impractical coat as if your frozen eyelashes hadn't told you first.
It tastes like lunch break Europa salads filled with Mandarin segments, sesame seed bagels lathered in cream cheese or pierogis from Veselka at 5 am. It tastes like everything red velvett, Georgetown cupcakes or endless Bellini's, Cafe Prague on a random Wednesday night or Mexican RadiW always. It's Uncle Boon's.
It an emergency McDonalds fry purchase at 2am because you needed access to a bathroom, it feels like the pride of refusing to pee between parked cars.
It sounds like the quarter machine at the laundromat and devoting hours running back and forth swapping bedsheets to dryers and dreaming of the days when you would once again have a washing machine under your own roof.
It feels like a spur of the moment helicopter ride, like getting propositioned by Pennsylvanian swingers or bottle feeding a strangers baby on the AMTRAK.
It's a homeless man asking you to breast feed him.
Myth feels like wondering if anybody feels this sad and confused so often.
Myth is walking from midtown to Queens in a storm. It's the MTA being shut down. It's Hurricane Sandy.
Myth is days spent wandering the West Village, spending hundreds of dollars on Jo Malone or weekends in a suite at the Eventi.
It's renting a pet goldfish at The Roxy.
Myth smells like a tattoo shop and sounds like scratching your boyfriends car whilst he was post op in the passenger seat.
It looks like the silhouette of mice claws scaling my sheer bedroom curtains after lights out, like my roommate taping her bedroom doors shut to keep them out or desperately calling a recent one night stand to come over and empty a mouse trap in the middle of the night.
Myth is a busted open fire hydrant drenching neighbourhood children. It's the sound of an ice-cream van I thought had died in my mind when I was 6. It's the smell of New York City hot, sweaty and a little gross, mixed with expensive perfume and of course, Nuts for Nuts.
Myth is the Niagara Photobooth. It's a backroom at Sing Sing. It's meeting up with my brother for dinner on a Friday night.
Myth is an accidental date with an Ed Hardy wearer. It's Maisy the Cat or Lola, the very male dog called Lincoln.
It's roommate wars, ripping routers out of the wall or strangers having sex on your couch.
Myth is long days at Brooklyn Fire Proof listening to my roommate lament with the bartender about the fear of his upcoming 24th birthday (He will be 37 this year....should probably check in and see how he is holding up with that one...)
Myth is a Halloween party with the New York Rangers or back to back visits to the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. Myth is dropping out of college, on more than one occasion
Myth reminders me of Astoria, Roosevelt Island and the Lower East Side. It takes me back to Bushwick and Tribeca at the same time.
It's a 4th of July party turned roof melting fiasco of 2012. It's blacking out on whiskey drunk straight from a flamingo shaped cup on an empty stomach.
Myth is the great Hamilton war of 2015. It's laps of Central Park, strolls along the High Line.
Myth is the fear of being carded, of not knowing how to order a drink. It's the growing confidence of cutting lines at a club.
Myth feels kind of euphoric, especially in hindsight.
At the time my life felt sad and confusing and fun and hectic and not what I wanted yet maybe kind of exactly what I needed, and for some reason....completely encapsulated in the sound of Myth.
I felt inferior at all times, yet brimming with blind confidence. I was braver than I am now, bolder...the stakes felt impossibly high but non-existent at the same time.
No time in my life, before or since, have I lived so brashly, simply for the plot of it all. I collected memories like romcom subplots. If something sounded too dumb, or cliché or risky....I was first in line to participate.
I spoke to strangers a lot, made drunken friends often and had more flower deliveries than I think I ever will again in my life.
I was noncommittal to a fault. I blew up more than one relationship over the thought that there is something better....no, not better...just....something other on the other side.
Myth takes me back to a time that does not exist anymore.
It's a world full of bars and restaurants mostly shuttered by the years. It's full of people who no longer call New York home. People who ran back home to Florida to live a more stable life, or who left to find greater success on another coast, people who returned to Europe to raise children and learn how to relax a bit more.
Myth sounds like all these lovely people frozen in time. Dreading turning 24, wondering who they will be when they grow up.
The true joy of being a nostalgic person is that you're naturally inclined to soak it all in, you are living for now and for later.
I wish I could go and spend a night out with her, give her a hug.
I don't want to be her anymore, but I'm so glad she existed and I wish I was nicer to her.
annnnnd most importantly I really, really, wish I hadn't drunkenly thrown my phone out of the window (I presume) prior to ever being responsible enough to back up my pictures because man, this nostalgia burst was so fun but I know that missing iPhone 4S held some real classics!
