{"id":761,"date":"2023-08-25T11:32:08","date_gmt":"2023-08-25T11:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/?p=761"},"modified":"2023-08-25T11:32:08","modified_gmt":"2023-08-25T11:32:08","slug":"brooklyn-renaissance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/2023\/08\/25\/brooklyn-renaissance\/","title":{"rendered":"Brooklyn Renaissance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

First Listen<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I really enjoy the new Beyonc\u00e9 album.<\/a> No work is perfect and neither is Renaissance but it’s beautifully crafted, infinitely danceable, and effortlessly fun. But until this week I\u2019ve been enjoying it primarily solo, putting it in my headphones while I walk to the office or clean my room. The one exception has been blasting it in the car while I was visiting my friend Lily in north Kerry, when we decided the lyrics were more appropriate as \u201cyou won\u2019t break Listowel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doppler Effect<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that has all changed as I\u2019ve been back in New York this week as part of a whirlwind trip through these so-called United States visiting friends, family, and all the places that still feel like home – despite no longer having keys to my own place. I had forgotten how New York, by which I primarily mean Brooklyn, is a place where you can\u2019t help but experience things collectively. There are so many people in this city that you can\u2019t help but passively absorb the lives of other folks on the street, notice what people are wearing, pick up snatches of conversation, and wonder where they\u2019re coming from, where they\u2019re headed, who they\u2019re waiting for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After walking and biking through these streets all week, I\u2019ve decided that the music of Beyonc\u00e9 is meant to be experienced collectively. I walk through Prospect Park and hear Virgo\u2019s Groove<\/a> pumping from the LeFrak center where a roller-disco is taking place. Waiting for the light to change at Church Avenue, a car rolls by playing Church Girl<\/a> with their windows down. Someone passes me in the Williamsburg Bridge bike lane and Grace Jones compels me to \u201cmove out the way\u201d<\/a> from the bluetooth speaker clipped to their backpack. It feels less like I\u2019m listening to this album than living in it, soaking it up in snatches of lyrics and doppler-effected drum beats from the collective breath of the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The phenomenon is familiar to me, I remember it happening in the early months of the pandemic before I left for Dublin. When the remix of Megan Thee Stallion\u2019s Savage<\/a> came out in April 2020, I was stuck in our apartment on Gates Avenue, but between the ambulance sirens, it was hearing Queen Bey belting \u201cTHEM JEANS\u201d from car speakers and apartment windows on our block that made me feel like we were all taking part in – instead of just getting through – something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems Beyonc\u00e9 knows that she can count on this collective listening experience; her releases are tailored for it. Instead of an extended PR campaign and a parade of singles and music videos, Mx. Knowles-Carter is fond of an unannounced release<\/a>. Renaissance has no music videos yet, just teasers and \u201ccliquebait.\u201d It\u2019s one of the refreshing things about the way she does music, I never feel like she\u2019s overhyped. I always listen because someone else who listened liked it enough to tell me about it, choreograph a drag number around it, or play it from the rooftops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reverberations<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Lena and I were talking this weekend, I kept thinking how New York, and other large cities, are full of gaps: spaces between buildings, unoccupied steps, abandoned lots, and empty parking spaces. These gaps are where the city really lives, where people intervene in the urban fabric like Lena\u2019s dad pasting prints of trees<\/a> to the mailbox outside their building, a vendor selling tamales from a shopping cart on a street corner, or a flock of pigeons perched on an NYPD security camera. Renaissance seems built for the sonic gaps, the spaces between car honks and the sounds of my suitcase wheels on the pavement. The 12 minute gaps between Q trains where crickets serenade us from the track.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First Listen I really enjoy the new Beyonc\u00e9 album. No work is perfect and neither is Renaissance but it’s beautifully crafted, infinitely danceable, and effortlessly fun. But until this week I\u2019ve been enjoying it primarily solo, putting it in my headphones while I walk to the office or clean my room. The one exception has… Continue reading Brooklyn Renaissance<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[22,20],"class_list":["post-761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digestable","tag-culture","tag-music","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=761"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":762,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions\/762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}