I Enjoyed Your Peformance

A (trippy) premium edition of The Nice Times

Hi nice people, it’s nice to see ya- and welcome to a premium edition of The Nice Times.

Remember (especially if you lived in New York) when seemingly everyone decided to do mushrooms in the summer of 2020? C’mon, I know it wasn’t just me.

In honor of last week’s theme about magic, I’m sharing something I wrote after an experience I had doing (magic) mushrooms.

[Hold for eye rolls]

I know, there’s lots of possibility here for pseudo-deep thoughts. However, the idea of “performing for us now versus them later” is something I still think about all the time. And, unfortunately, I see this now more than ever- it seems to be encroaching on all kinds of live performance, not to mention the everyday occurrence of bobbing and weaving between influencer guerrilla fashion shoots from Williamsburg to SoHo.

And I’d be willing to bet that you’ve seen people performing while nullifying the present moment or in the name of vanity disguised as craft wherever you are, too.

It’s the kind of act that instantly distracts me from the world around me- which is to say, a kind of anti-magic.

Ok, enough of my pseudo-deep thought on all of this. I hope you enjoy this piece:

I Enjoyed Your Performance

There is a knoll between Pier 63 and 64 in Hudson River Park in Chelsea, and on this particular afternoon the scene has the trappings of utopia.

It’s a blue sky day, hot but not overwhelming. Atop a hill, I’ve found shade with my friend Brian and look out over the tapestry of the Saturday crowd. Farthest away, opposite us, is a Norman Rockwell-esque picnic: the women in floppy, wide-brim hats and sundresses, their counterparts in white pants and gingham-patterned button-ups. Next to them two men, a couple, lovingly huddle close and whisper to each other. A child from the picnic chases a ball down the hill and shares a smile with a young Asian woman who doesn’t mind the interruption from her magazine.

Given the state of the world — over four months into a global pandemic and saturated in a 24-hour news cycle of uncertainty and fear — this panorama feels like an act of resilience. Something larger is at play here, a statement of the New York spirit that despite everything, we can maintain a life of decency and even flourish. It’s an authentic snapshot of people enjoying nature, enjoying themselves, enjoying seeing others doing the same.

Down towards the water, pulling focus, is a wild flailing of hair and limbs. With the elevation, the woman is not completely in frame but when Brian and I walk to the waterfront we see the full reveal: she is performing for the rapid shudders of a Nikon camera lens. This is a lie, a manufacturing. She is not enjoying a day at Chelsea Piers — as the inevitable Instagram post will say — but staging one.

She is not performing for anyone here or for the moment, she is performing for them, later, whoever they may be: an empty mass of people who will double-tap the image as they scroll onto the next. There’s no way to know how many will, but it is almost certain that whatever that number is, it will not be enough- it will also mean nothing. She is doing something that means nothing that will result in more nothing.

There is no human interaction, aside from when the photographer sprinkles her with water to create a glisten. In fact, the nonverbal implication seems to be do not interact. Not as a COVID safety measure, or a violation of some kind of social contract, but as a measure of status. This isn’t for you.

And the obviousness of the act implies that there is nothing strange about it, this everyday celebrity is normal and nothing to pay attention to. This, despite the fact that this is clearly someone who yearns for attention — just not attention from you now, but from them, later.

There’s an interlude as she and the photographer look over the camera screen, and I wonder what would happen if I walked up and mentioned, ‘I enjoyed your performance’. In this context, one in which everything and everyone is merely set dressing, it would be rude or even voyeuristic — even though we are in an open, public space. She would probably think I was being highfalutin and ironic, which I suppose I would be. However, if asked to defend her perpetuation of endorphin-sucking, self-aggrandizing “like culture” I would not be surprised if she deified it by saying her online presence is, actually, high-art performance.

Beyond this to the south, halfway down Pier 62, is another woman. She, too, is dancing: a sort of rave in her own mind. Walking closer, she is across from a woman on a park bench, but there is no professional camera or even an iPhone out. From appearance, it comes off as one friend cartoonishly entertaining another, a kind of absurd moment where seconds before she might have turned and proposed, “What if I just did this,” and then started improvising. The woman on the bench smiles, amused, and after a few more twirls, the dancer declares, “Alright, bye!” and skips off towards the end of the pier. They are strangers.

At the end of Pier 62, Brian and I find a table. The dancer continues in the background, earbuds in, moving in a rhythm she can only hear and we can only see. She is not wanting but rather a kind of set piece, there for you to look if you want or even join in — and to her delight, someone does.

They twist and bend and wave their arms together. They are choreographed perfectly because they are creating something together, for themselves, without judgment. There are no moves to get wrong because they are their own.

Brian and I look out over the New Jersey skyline and he points to where political rivals Burr and Hamilton dueled because in New York the act was illegal, so they crossed the river. We check in with the dancer on occasion as she leaps, tucking her legs back behind her or salsas with her new dance partner.

There are no cameras, no documentation, this is a performance purely for the joy of dancing. It is of this moment, for this moment, and for anyone who wants to watch. Any onlooker or passerby could pull out their phone and snap a photo or video, a chance for likes or at least to commentate, ‘only in New York’.

But no one does.

Instead, we are just enjoying her performance.