an assignment

I've got this long-term homework assignment I need to do over the next year or so for a photography exhibit my mother is putting together at a museum in New York City. The theme of the exhibit is New York at Night, and she's asked me to write a piece about music. I don't know whether this is her way of throwing me a bone - surely there are better writers than me to do something like this - or whether she's genuinely interested in what I mihgt have to say about music in the context of nighttime New York. I guess it doesn't matter one way or the other. It doesn't feel like a bone because I really wouldn't care if she asked somebody else to write it. It almost feels like I'm doing this for her instead of vice versa. There would have been a time when I'd feel ashamed of doing something that might be construed the result of nepotism or whatever, but I'm so removed from my mom's professional life at this point that the only real question left for me is whether or not I want to write the piece. And I do, provided I can do it on my own terms. This is actually a big if because I'm not sure my mom is at all familiar with my writing style - my voice, as it were - at least when it comes to writing something like this. I have a sneaking suspicion that she would want me to write the kind of piece that draws attention to the confidence, well roundedness, and erudition of the writer, when, in fact, my style tends to do the exact opposite, not because I'm a sad sack or because I have some irritating need to wallow in my own frailty and misery, but rather because I find it easier and more appealing to be true to myself, as opposed to sounding like some overeducated asshole who writes for the New Yorker. At the same time, I don't want to write something that embarrasses my mom, nor do I want to recreate the mother-son dynamic I've worked so hard to eradicate from my life, wherein nothing I ever do is quite what she wanted or good enough to exist in the rarefied air she breathes on the upper Eastside of Manhattan. ...I think what I will have to do is tell her that I intend to write something that might be a bit different than what she'd expect, and she can use it or not. In the meantime, I can use the space I have here on my blog to work out my ideas. At the very least, I'll have something that I hopefully like at the end of it all. It'd be pretty cool if my mom decides to use it since there will, I assume, be a book for the show, and the piece I write could potentially be included. But that's getting way ahead of the game...

Some random ideas to get the ball rolling... The Velvet Underground were the ultimate New York at Night band. There's very little daylight in their music. I first became aware of them in 9th grade. I had a massive crush on a 10th grade punker girl, Ingrid, who wore a Velvet Underground pin on her herringbone winter overcoat. I was still strictly a Van Halen-AC/DC-Led Zep kinda guy at this point, probably late 1982 or early 1983. I had no ready-made entry point with Ingrid, but I was obsessed with her. I liked the way she always seemed to be alone. I identified with it, and it also made her seem available. I figured buying a Velvet Underground record might be a smart investment, one that would pay dividends if I really applied myself. So I went to the Tower Records on Broadway near NYU and purchased a reissue copy of The Velvet Underground and Nico. I think I want to build the narrative from here. Whatever my initial motivations may have been, hearing The Velvet Underground and Nico marked a definite turning point in my life, one in which my ear moved away from conventional rock - today it's called Classic Rock - and towards punk rock. The VU oozed an attitude I'd never really experienced in listening to the Who, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles... It was more detached, critical, cynical and arty, but it was all these things before they became the annoying postures they are today, where there's nothing but posture, nothing, as Baudrillard says, that isn't a simulation of a simulation. They were part of a much darker milieux, the flip side of the 60s I had known via Jimi Hendrix, Crosby Stills and Nash, and the Jefferson Airplane. It's hard to believe that The Velvet Underground and Nico came out several months before the Summer of Love. I didn't really think of things in these terms when I first heard it, but I knew it was a 60s record and that it was different from the 60s I had known and reverred growing up. Heroin, be the death of me... The record made me want to explore more, learn more, and become more conversant with punk. It also made me fall more hopelessly in love with Ingrid. ...I think that's a good start. I need to tie it in with New York at night. I also want to show the VU''s 'spiritual' connection to the New York punk explosion of the 70s. This will require some research.