I realized recently that I have been using this blog for it’s purpose (to update loved ones on my status) but I haven’t been using it for it’s potential. I have a drive for entertainment, I have a readership that would like to hear about the experiences and unique stories I have about this city, why am I boring you all with the broad strokes when I could be entertaining you with the details? That being said look forward to more activity here and activity that is a bit more worth the read.
Whenever I hang out with my friend Crystal I always end up in settings that appeal to my inner punk noir sensibilities and having a damn good time while I’m at it. So when she asked me to go to a “suspension” party with her I jumped all over it. If you don’t know there are two ideas of what a suspension party entails. In the fetish world it simply refers to tying up scantily clad volunteers and hanging them from a rafter or some other weight baring apparatus...this was not that.
This suspension party entails piercing the back or chest of a volunteer with hooks, attaching those hooks to a pulley system attached to rafters and lifting them off the ground. I am sure you have seen something similar on riply’s believe it or not. Well believe it or not there is a subculture of performers and thrill seekers who live for this activity.
The night starts with me and Crystal waiting outside of the building for the (for lack of a better word) leader of the group to let us in. The entrance to this place was in possibly the darkest alley in Brooklyn and I am smoking a cigarette wearing a suit because I had just come from work...yes...I am a Sin City character.
We walk up the staircase, walk through a large metal door and enter an apartment I can only describe as being an artists loft. It was a large room that struck me as being a part of a warehouse. Blue wooden floors, high ceilings, the apartment would have been big enough to fit a skaters half pipe. I hesitate to even call it an apartment I only do so because people live there but it really was like a small warehouse space.
I watched the eyes of everyone as they tried to work out my purpose there. The people here were a mixture of technicolor raver kids and tattooed, pierced rockers who had no idea what to make of the 6’4” man wearing a suit with a red tie that just walked into their den. The entire thing cracked me up because these are the kinds of people who's company I preferred in high school and to be honest they looked like the kind of people I imagined most of my family hanging out with growing up. Still I understood the apprehension and it passed quickly once I took a swig of someone’s vodka, lit a cigarette and started taking part in the festivities.
I enjoyed meeting some new people and feeling out the crowd but as soon as people sat down to get their backs pierced I kept an ear on whatever conversation I was in but the majority of my attention was on the isolated sterile area where people where having large metal spikes shoved through the slack skin of their backs. I was at no time repulsed or grossed out just utterly fascinated.
I wasn’t just fascinated by the piercings but also of the professionalism involved. These are not a bunch of dumb drunk kids, in fact if you are going to suspend or help pierce you are sober the entire night. This also wasn’t about cheap thrills but about achieving a level of transcendence, pushing your limits, overcoming fears and physical barriers. I got to witness this time and again this night because the majority of people going up were first timers.
The first girl I saw going up was such a pleasant, lovely hippy girl. She made waffles for everyone and had a huge smile on her face the entire night. Getting pierced was no problem for her and I could see the excitement and fear on her face when they hooked the hooks up to the (I believe the technical term is) ring.
The man on the pulley rope pulled the slack of the rope and this girl was on her tippy toes trying to pump herself up enough to jump. I saw the pain on her face as her skin pulled away from her body, I saw her face flush and the tears start to well up. She gritted her teeth and listened intently to the positive affirmations of the man helping her. She stood there trying to get over the pain for a long time before she was ready. She stepped forward twice, back three steps, forward four, back five and than she jumped up and the pull man held on tight.
In that instant everyone watching started to applaud. She asked to be put down pretty shortly after and she tried to get off the ground again but the second go round was too much for her. Regardless she overcame something, she fought an inner battle and for a brief shining moment she won.
On the total other end of the spectrum I saw a second girl go up who dove right in and was dancing mid air like a ballerina on meat hooks for 15 minutes. I saw some of the regular guys do some performing and I got to see one girl go up by her knees. She made it but it didn’t look pleasant.
The way Crystal explains it these people will be feeling an endorphin high for the next week and I wont lie I was a little jealous of them. Not enough to do it but it takes guts to face the fear of pain, to face the fear of the unknown, to overcome that way. Not only that but it looks amazing.
My life here is continually filled with new awe inspiring experiences and it surprises me that I can still be surprised and delighted. I love doing something that I would have never had the opportunity to do otherwise simply because of where I lay my head. What I love more is the realization that this is not over, these things will continue to happen as long as I keep an open mind because new, inspiring, strange and different things happen here every day.
I love you all
KH
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Saturday, November 5, 2011
New York Yr1 Day 79 ...sup life...
Productivity, stability and serendipity. Those are the words that can best describe my life since the last time I updated you. In a strange turn of events my life has kind of come together. The evil troll known as hogell moved out (not without causing some physical damage to the apartment first of course) and I moved my things in.
The rhythm of the universe has finally caught up with me and one thing after another keeps falling into my lap. I found a job passing out flyers that kept my head above water just long enough to land myself a doorman job and a job at Godiva.
I was actually recruited for both jobs while either selling or promoting on the street. Apart from the practical, my life, my ego, my sense of self and well being have all been finding a kind of harmony. October came and went and I survived it, more than that I thrived.
I fully expected a heart wrenching month, the 1 year anniversary of my mothers death and the single most devastating moment of my life and it wasn’t impossible to get through. Tears happened but they were good tears. They were tears of healing and catharsis, they were tears of acceptance and understanding, they were the kind of tears that baptize you and bring a sense of emotional and spiritual salvation.
I am not one to believe that one “sticks around” after their passing but this October I felt the presence of my mother and it was palatable and I knew that while the pain will follow me for the rest of my life it serves no one for me to bare it like a cross. This is a pain that becomes apart of your skin and my mother’s memory is not honored by me cutting into this wound again and again in an effort to “not forget her”.
This acceptance and growth wouldn’t have even been fathomable without the friends I’ve made here. It’s like I just woke up one day to find that I had cultivated my very own NYC family. I have a real, honest to goodness home with a circle of people that honestly love me. This journey has made me a new person, I’m still figuring it out and I’m still in the middle of a metamorphosis but as of right now, for the first time in what feels like the past four years I have a moment to take a deep breath.
“But Kyle what about the reason you went to New York in the first place?” Yeah I know, all my posts have almost nothing to do with my acting or writing career. Well this year I guess I just needed to become the kind of man that could legitimately chase this dream. I had the ambition but not the tools.
Now I feel I have both. I am not auditioning, I have decided I will not be happy with the show unless I’m running it; so I have written a 20 min short that I plan on producing before the end of the year. I’m going to start fund raising for it in the next month so keep an eye out for that.
This project will serve as my acting, directing, writing, editing and production portfolio and with any luck it will bring me work I can really sink my teeth into. But I know I wont be sated by just making shorts and features and putting myself in them. This dream just got bigger and hopefully with the help from some talented friends both from good ol’ Rockford and from NYC I can put together a production company that is a resource not only for our own projects but something that is a resource for all kinds of filmmakers.
I feel like I finally have the know how, the ambition and the faith to get this done. All I needed was a few years of hell and a moment of clarity to make me see it all.
In short?...sup life
I love you all
KH-
The rhythm of the universe has finally caught up with me and one thing after another keeps falling into my lap. I found a job passing out flyers that kept my head above water just long enough to land myself a doorman job and a job at Godiva.
I was actually recruited for both jobs while either selling or promoting on the street. Apart from the practical, my life, my ego, my sense of self and well being have all been finding a kind of harmony. October came and went and I survived it, more than that I thrived.
I fully expected a heart wrenching month, the 1 year anniversary of my mothers death and the single most devastating moment of my life and it wasn’t impossible to get through. Tears happened but they were good tears. They were tears of healing and catharsis, they were tears of acceptance and understanding, they were the kind of tears that baptize you and bring a sense of emotional and spiritual salvation.
I am not one to believe that one “sticks around” after their passing but this October I felt the presence of my mother and it was palatable and I knew that while the pain will follow me for the rest of my life it serves no one for me to bare it like a cross. This is a pain that becomes apart of your skin and my mother’s memory is not honored by me cutting into this wound again and again in an effort to “not forget her”.
This acceptance and growth wouldn’t have even been fathomable without the friends I’ve made here. It’s like I just woke up one day to find that I had cultivated my very own NYC family. I have a real, honest to goodness home with a circle of people that honestly love me. This journey has made me a new person, I’m still figuring it out and I’m still in the middle of a metamorphosis but as of right now, for the first time in what feels like the past four years I have a moment to take a deep breath.
“But Kyle what about the reason you went to New York in the first place?” Yeah I know, all my posts have almost nothing to do with my acting or writing career. Well this year I guess I just needed to become the kind of man that could legitimately chase this dream. I had the ambition but not the tools.
Now I feel I have both. I am not auditioning, I have decided I will not be happy with the show unless I’m running it; so I have written a 20 min short that I plan on producing before the end of the year. I’m going to start fund raising for it in the next month so keep an eye out for that.
This project will serve as my acting, directing, writing, editing and production portfolio and with any luck it will bring me work I can really sink my teeth into. But I know I wont be sated by just making shorts and features and putting myself in them. This dream just got bigger and hopefully with the help from some talented friends both from good ol’ Rockford and from NYC I can put together a production company that is a resource not only for our own projects but something that is a resource for all kinds of filmmakers.
I feel like I finally have the know how, the ambition and the faith to get this done. All I needed was a few years of hell and a moment of clarity to make me see it all.
In short?...sup life
I love you all
KH-
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