Welcome back to If You Can Make It Here, a diary about New York and New Beginnings.
And hello from the main area of the Williamsburg WeWork. Sometimes I come here a little early, and get a little of this done. The poet Roger Robinson talks about having “a portable paradise” - writing is one of mine. What’s yours, I wonder?
I saw him perform once, in Hackney, 2020. You might lead a CV with that word, poet, of poems, but that might make you think of words on a page, a page in a book. To see him that night was to see the fullness of the man. Any poetry seemed incidental to his way of being.
It was wonderful — but we were vulnerable to wonder: we didn’t know anything other than, he’s won the T.S. Eliot Prize, this should be good. It’s different when you have a sense of someone before you meet them. Partial data in the present builds expectations for the future; anyone who’s been internet dating knows that.
Here’s a nice truth: if an artist of any kind has a world tour, or US tour, they will do everything they can to stop in New York. Nowadays I search for gig tickets to discover not if but when a band is coming. This past couple of weeks brought three of my big hitters, a trio, a tarot.
When I first met Nabihah Iqbal, she offered me some of the lasagna she’d made. We’d booked the same forbidding January 2020 at Cove Park, an arts colony off Loch Lomond notable for being a) absolutely stunning and b) within sight of Faslane, kennel for Trident, Britain’s modest nuclear submarine fleet. (We both saw one, in fact. They are longer, darker, quieter than seems possible.) She was working on her next album, I on the edit of a novel. Now in 2024, she was touring the album, Dreamer, And I was still on the same edit. Life happens, I said over pizza at Ace’s, Williamsburg. You’ll get there, she said. And she said it so matter-of-factly as though stating a natural law: if you keep doing the thing, one day the thing will be done. We’d danced this dance before. In Cove Park I’d been similarly histrionic about my progress: I was just starting the edit and there was so far to go. Just break it down into chunks, she said. I ignored this: that might be fine for the track-by-track of an album, but a novel is structure! I immediately spent the whole of those precious two weeks fiddling around with a bullet-point ‘outline’ that was itself five thousand words.
And now it was Nabihah who was here on tour, determined to try as many New York slices as she could, using the same strategy: one at a time. So simple. I gave her her first grandma slice. She gave it 9/10.
I am convinced that Robin Sloan is in the running for Internet’s Friendliest Polymath. Fiction writer, essayist, media theorist, game designer, app developer, two-time electronic album producer, olive oil farm-to-tabler. Sloan was the person who broadened my definition of artist from “really high-level practitioner of a specific medium” to... I’m not sure; he’s still broadening it. His newsletter is a rolling footprints-in-the-dust CV of someone following their interests, their curiosities, and seeing what they can reforged into. His body of work stands, walks, does cartwheels. His third novel’s just dropped, Moonbound, and his tour took him through Greenlight Books...a short walk from where I’d had the weird first month! Sometimes I look up at the tower, and I smile. Possibly the only person in Downtown to do so.
The interviewer, Dan Bouk, had a tough task: getting Robin to talk about the book he’d actually written, as opposed to the mountain of books he loved that he’d composted into his own work. Ursula Le Guin, Iain M Banks (the thrill, to hear my Scottish hero’s name in this place!), and of course Tolkien. All were in the book, he said. Lord of the Rings has a map, ergo Moonbound has a map. The Hobbit has songs: Moonbound must have a song. And we must all sing the song, in Greenlight books, each to a tune of our choosing, and right now. We sang his song, and he was delighted.
Which is what I said to him when I got to the front of the line. “Hi, you look like you’re having a great time!”
He spoke with such merry thumos. The books of his childhood had filled him up, he’d poured a little of that slow-brewed potion into a container of his own, and if we took a flask of it away, he’d sign it. The line had moved slow: people had a lot to say to him, and he wanted to respond to every word of it. In the moment I remembered that I had something to say to him too.
“You played my interactive fiction game! About going shopping in the pandemic?”
At the time, he’d been making a video game. I thought: why not me? And then, once I’d made it: why not show him? I put it online and sent him the link, he played it, he replied that he’d enjoyed it. He remembered this now. We talked about the novel I’ve working on: how do you balance all your interests. He told me: in the end, you don’t. And then, when he signed my copy of Moonbound, he included what he called a decree:
James: You MUST finish it.
-Robin
We all tried something new in lockdown. Some baked bread. Some started watching the YouTube channel of a man who claims to channel his 88 spirit guides, the Zees, in order to intuit what’s going with the energy flows around the planet. The Lee Harris Energy updates became something of a monthly event, and you can watch them like WWE: adopt the level of kayfabe that suits you that day. Perhaps Lee really does have the Zees on speed dial, and they’re bang on the money when they inform him/us that Volcano energy means October is a good time to channel your emotions into healing others. Or perhaps Lee is merely (merely!) a man from the UK who’s spent so long in the upper atmosphere of the mind that his intuition is razor sharp and ocean broad, and in the kaleidoscope of associations he swirls in front of you will be just the thing you needed to hear.
All I knew is that when he announced a North America tour, stopping in New York, I had to see it for myself.
You want to know: how many buttons did I do up on my Irony Shacket? Three out of five, I’d say. But I left the collar open as I walked into Symphony Space, a 700-capacity theatre on the Upper West Side. And it was full! With a more diverse crowd than you’d expect: mostly white, yes, but all ages. The pandemic and Chani Nicholas have done a lot for the next generation of chic spiritualists.
Unlike Nabihah and Robin, I didn’t meet Lee. But whether he was really channeling his guides or not, he certainly channeled himself to every one of us. He sang the songs he’d written: good songs, surprisingly great singing voice. Is that power available to all of us, when we fully commit? He led us through an exercise where we channeled our own guides — a kind of automatic writing. What I got back from my page was sharp, and clear, and kind.
And he gave us a theme. “For each stop on the tour, there’s been an energetic theme,” he said, in a slightly oo-er pantomime voice; he was very good at acknowledging the strangeness of what he does.
“I got the theme for New York from my guides, just 90 minutes ago. You’re all so electric, so excited to be here. So our theme tonight is: the firey heart in action.
Seven hundred New Yorkers absolutely lost their shit. We love being told we’re the best, and we love self-mythologising. We were, according to Lee and his 88 colleagues, full of energy, drive, and want. We were all getting ready to do something. A different something for each of us, and on different timelines. But for all of us, that time was coming. We all had something to give. And when we only let ourselves give it, we would change the world.
And then he sang his next song. And from his expression, the singing didn’t empty him out. It filled him up. As I waited for the Q train to take me home, these thoughts swirled around my head, kindled my firey heart.
Does Lee have literal voices helping him out? I don’t know — but is Robin Sloan literally getting worldbuilding advice from the spirit of Ursula Le Guin? All I know these people fulfilled the promise made by their auras, their symbols - and then some. Maybe they were still ‘on’, still performing in some way, but we all are. I don’t get to take these people in the fullnesses with me, but I get to take updated symbols: kind people, productive passionate people, human people. A trio of guides for what to do next — or at least, how to do it.
Break it down. You must finish it. The firey heart, in action.
It is the first of July. Today, we tip into the second half of the year, and the second half of this newsletter: issues 14-26. As we stir these three new ingredients in, I wonder what spice, what fragrance they might add.
The Miscellancy
But I forget myself - let’s celebrate these wonderful people’s work!
☞Nabihah’s album, Dreamer. As Sloan, she’s playing with what she loves until it’s something new. I can hear three genre-strands twining around each other in this album, but I’ll leave you to decide what they might be. Listen and buy here.
☞Robin’s tap-essay-story-app, Fish. There are so many things I could put here, but the Sloaniest thing is the thing I don’t think anyone else would have made. Fish will take you five minutes to read. But years later, I’m still thinking about it. Read(?!) here.
☞Lee’s song, All Who Walk The Earth. Watch here. This… is a tough share. You don’t have to like this. I’m not sure I like it. But you cannot deny that he puts everything out on the table here: the message, the song, his singing, the video. It’s so sincere. As are the comments - and part of experiencing this is reading the comments, being in the room. I keep thinking about Lee as a born Brit who hasn’t let his Britishness define him. Whether he speaks the truth or not, he has let his practice reshape him. As far as I can tell, for the better. Do you hate the video, the songs, the whole bit - or do you hate him for doing it? And if you do… why?
☞Roger’s Poem, A Portable Paradise. His words are more important than mine:
And if I speak of Paradise, then I’m speaking of my grandmother who told me to carry it always on my person, concealed, so no one else would know but me. That way they can’t steal it, she’d say. And if life puts you under pressure, trace its ridges in your pocket, smell its piney scent on your handkerchief, hum its anthem under your breath. And if your stresses are sustained and daily, get yourself to an empty room – be it hotel, hostel or hovel – find a lamp and empty your paradise onto a desk: your white sands, green hills and fresh fish. Shine the lamp on it like the fresh hope of morning, and keep staring at it till you sleep.
☞My game, Eggs, Milk. If you’re still reading — yes, I made a little game, and I’m still proud of it. It’ll take you fifteen minutes to play, right here.
That’s it from me, that’s wraps Q2, H1 of If You Can Make It Here. Thank for sticking with this whole thing; it hasn’t always been easy for me. But you know what they say. Break it down.
I have high hopes for the second half of the year. There’s a couple of big rocks waiting to be put in the jar, which you’ll hear about soon. I’d love to know if there’s anything you want to hear about. Anything you want me to do.
Also, think about who your heroes are. Guides, heroes, real or not - I think we should have them, if they help us.
Finally, here’s a real thinker — you’re somebody’s hero, too.
As the year tips,
James.
Brooklyn, New York City.