Shuffle Synchronicities: Volume 1 - #117

Guest Post by Annie Rauwerda (@depthsofwikipedia) + "Leave A Trace" by CHVRCHES - 04/29/21

Hey everyone! I’m Annie (not Dave!).

And I’m excited to take over this newsletter for a day! I got in contact with Dave through my Instagram page @depthsofwikipedia where I share funny or amusing Wikipedia screenshots. I started it about a year ago and it went viral at a point in 2020 where it felt rather flippant to use the phrase “going viral” for anything less than a pandemic. Some posts this week have been ‘Josh Fight’ and ‘Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.’

Frank Sinatra’s ‘New York, New York’ just came on.

An immediate and visceral memory I have is from my very first full day in New York City when I rode my bike through thick August air from Bed Stuy to Central Park with a Spotify-generated ‘New York Songs’ playlist. My neck had both beads of sweat and a subtle tingle of self-awareness. I felt part-movie star and part-tiny, in the presence of both greatness and great mundanity.

E. B. White wrote in 1948 that there are three New Yorks: that of the commuters, who “give the city its tidal restlessness”; that of the natives, who “give it solidity and continuity”; and lastly, the New York of the settlers who “came to New York in search of something.” This song is an ode to the people in the last group, the starry-eyed transplants who give the city a distinct sense of drunk and hopeful passion. 

Start spreadin' the news, I'm leaving today

I want to be a part of it: New York, New York.

My First New York is a collection of essays by fifty-six of the city’s most famous residents in which they reminisce on their arrivals to the Big Apple. The stories are familiar— shitty apartments, rats, artistic friends, epiphanies in the booths of dive bars. Amy Sedaris used to throw used tea bags into her spare bedroom and watch them freeze. Gary Shteyngart said moving to New York was "equivalent to stumbling off a monochromatic cliff and landing in pure technicolor". Yogi Berra summed the city up in five syllables: “New York? It was big.”

It seems rather ironic that the anthem of New York dreams was written by a man born in Hoboken, New Jersey. Sinatra never dropped everything to chase a dream in New York— he just hopped on a 30-minute long train ride to the city. 

These small town blues

They are melting away

I'll make a brand new start of it

In old New York

Sinatra is remembered for his bigness: his personality, presence, charm, and performances all known for being distinctly big. He even was a massive baby, coming out of the womb at 13.5 pounds. Growing into a skinny adult, his bigness became associated with his personality rather than his body. Expelled from high school 47 days before graduation for “general rowdiness”, he started singing for radio and social clubs, sometimes accepting payment in cigarettes or supper. His charm carried him to bigger and bigger stages until full-blown Sinatramania had swept the nation. At twenty-six, his dizzying rise to fame coincided with the second world war. It was at this moment that his brawling bigness gave way to bouts of new conscientiousness to meet the sober tone of the country. When discussing his explosive popularity with teenage girls (called bobby soxers), he is quoted with: 

“Perfectly simple: It was the war years and there was a great loneliness, and I was the boy in every corner drugstore, the boy who'd gone off drafted to the war. That's all”

Sinatra’s staying power lies in his capacity for both splendor and sensitivity. He entertains with big band jazz and unmistakable swagger on stage, but he also has access to gritty self-reflection. The grand show of Frank Sinatra— the bravado and brass and bigness— is built on a scaffolding of melancholy. 

These vagabond shoes

They are longing to stray

When I weaved my bike through the skyscrapers and yuppies and pigeons, I wondered how I could have possibly lived my whole life without knowing what New York City was like.

The song might be overfamiliar and schmaltzy, but I love it. I can’t get sick of it. My favorite part of it is the way it evokes a wistfulness for the future. I have yet to discover people and things that will make me wonder how I lived my whole life without them. So many fresh starts to come! What an exciting thought!

I'm gonna make a brand new start of it

In old New York

I found a few of my favorite music-related Wikipedia articles which (perfect for a rainy-night Wikipedia rabbit hole!!)  

2001 Clear Channel memorandum: Following 9/11, radio stations stopped playing “lyrically questionable” songs like “Leaving on a Jet Plane” and “Smooth Criminal” and “In the Air Tonight”... really anything with a vague reference to airplanes, flying, violence, collisions, etc.  

"My Way" killings: Karaoke bars in the Philippines have seen a number of “fatal disputes” following performances of “My Way” by Frank Sinatra. Karaoke so bad people have resorted to violence!!

List of music considered the worst There’s a shockingly thorough analysis of the worst songs ever. Wikipedia integrated the responses of music critics, radio stations, composers, and public polls to put this list together. A few songs on the list are “Ob-la-di Ob-la-da” by the Beatles, “Who let the dogs out” by the Baha Men, and “Baby” by Justin Bieber. 

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Thanks, Annie! What a lovely post!!

It made me think of my first time driving into California. I had also never been there before and had no idea what to expect.

I wasn’t listening to this song, but I listen to it a lot now when I drive to the beach.

“I Love L.A.” by Randy Newman

I had left cold, damp New York in the middle of January 2008 and dropped off two friends in rugged, windy Chicago, before driving the rest of the way.

Hate New York City
It's cold and it's damp
And all the people dressed like monkeys
Let's leave Chicago to the Eskimos
That town's a little bit too rugged

It’s apropos that my memory is of driving while yours is of biking. Modes of transportation being one of the many defining differences of these two cities.

And yet the unifying feature is music and “riding.”

Roll down the window put down the top
Crank up the Beach Boys baby
Don't let the music stop
We're gonna ride it till we just can't ride it no more

The first thing I remember when I rolled down my windows, put down my Honda CRVs sunroof, and cranked up the music was the smell. The state literally smelled like avocados and oranges to me ;)

When I told my native Angeleno soon-to-be-ex-wife that, she affectionately called me a “country bumpkin.” But I remember those smells vividly

And the sun!

From the South Bay to the Valley
From the West Side to the East Side
Everybody's very happy
'Cause the sun is shining all the time
Looks like another perfect day

After nearly two decades in cloudy Rochester, New York the of LA did make me so “very happy.” I didn’t realize it, but I likely had S.A.D.

I quickly learned that, unlike New York, where most fall in love with it immediately, like Annie did, LA is a city most people suffer at first.

I remember many fellow young college graduates saying things like, “I’m getting used to it, but it’s not __________.”

Whereas I loved L.A. from that first day. It didn’t hurt that I had great friends who took me all around and that my first apartment was blocks from the beach.

I love L.A. (We love it)
I love L.A. (We love it)

Of course, this is a Randy Newman song, so the lyrics are at least half-mordant.

It’s ironic that the classic NYC anthem is the one with the Hollywood schmaltz while the classic LA anthem is the one with the East Coast sarcasm.

To quote Wikipedia ;) like I often do too:

Despite its lively sound, "I Love L.A." also includes sardonic lyrics, specifically about the shallow and dark aspects of Los Angeles. When Newman is listing off various sites in Los Angeles, Newman is discussing how residents will talk about the lavish excess of the city (palm trees, beautiful women) in an attempt to hide the squalor (a homeless man begging for money).

Look at that mountain
Look at those trees
Look at that bum over there, man
He's down on his knees
Look at these women
There ain't nothin' like 'em nowhere

Nicholas Pell of LA Weekly noted how there were other parts of the song that serve as subtle insults to the city. He noted the Santa Ana winds in reality are very unpleasant, as the strong winds blow palm leaves and furniture around, and often bring hot dry weather. Pell believes the four streets listed at the end of the song were the four "must avoid" streets of 1983, due to gang violence and urban neglect.

Century Boulevard (We love it)
Victory Boulevard (We love it)
Santa Monica Boulevard (We love it)
Sixth Street (We love it, we love it)
We love L.A!

Pell ultimately described "I Love L.A." as a "paean to the moral weakness and intellectual vapidity" of Los Angeles.

But when journalist Timothy White asked whether or not "I Love L.A." was written as an insult to Los Angeles, Newman responded by saying he felt the lyrics were ambiguous. In a separate interview, Newman confessed an affection for his native city despite its imperfections: "There's some kind of ignorance L.A. has that I'm proud of. The open car and the redhead, the Beach Boys... that sounds really good to me."

Dear Los Angeles is a book that displays letters and diary entries from Los Angelenos from every day of the year. Here’s April 29th! from Jonathan Gold and it happens to synchronistically be about the street I live on: Vermont Avenue!

1992

The intricate framework of the neighborhood collapsed for a few hours. Drawn out onto the streets by a particularly nasty bit of apartment-house arson—not by any means a rarity around here— a crowd coalesced, moved to the the supermarkets and, barred from there, into the strip malls that line Vermont Avenue. From the stoop of my building, it seemed like a giant block party, a looters’ bacchanalia of new tennis rackets and boom boxes, then of liberated rental tapes from the video store, plastic-wrapped clothes from the dry cleaner and fake palm trees from the furniture store. On Vermont itself, I saw thousands of people out on an illegal shopping spree, cheerfully helping one another maneuver a sofa or a heavy Barcalounger across the busy street. One tired-looking cop drank a cup of coffee and tried not to look anyone directly in the eye. Men stood rooftop sentry with Uzis, outlined against the orange sky. It was the first time I can remember being comforted by the sight of armed drug dealers.”

And another synchronicity, this poster of Gold now hangs on my wall, the only one on Etsy at the time, and it happened to include a restaurant, Cosa Buona, by a chef I know:

I love LA!

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So what song did I shuffle to today? And does it connect to Annie?

"Leave a Trace” by CHVRCHES

The song’s title is what struck me. “Leave a Trace.” Because I feel like what attracted me to Annie’s brilliant work is what she’s doing with “traces” of culture. Of traces of Wikipedia. I feel like it’s somewhat akin to what I’m doing with “traces” of Spotify.

As one of the most influential writers on me, David Shields, says in his manifesto about copyright law and art, Reality Hunger:

“Value has shifted toward the many ways to recall, annotate, personalize, edit, authenticate, display, mark, transfer, and engage a work.”

In effect, we are all traces of the culture that has come before us, and we’re all just leaving traces of those traces, except our generation(s) is much more explicit in our articulation of the previous traces of the culture that is impacting us.

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Lastly, I thought, I’d combine Annie’s work with mine by shuffling to a random Wikipedia article by using their “Random Article” feature to see if we get a synchronicity ;)

OK, here we go!

And we got, LOL:

Which is hilarious to me, and feels like a synchronicity, because it is an “unlicensed” version of a talent competition (that appears to be mostly music).

Of course, much of my work, like David Shields’ calls for, is “unlicensed.”

The rest of his quote above is: “Art is a conversation, not a patent office. The citation of sources belongs to the realms of journalism and scholarship, not art. Reality can’t be copyrighted.”

Or as CHVRCHES sings:

And there is grey between the lines

Thanks again to Annie for taking over the newsletter today! What a joyous new voice in our culture!!

Check out more @depthsofwikipedia!

Okay, that’s the one hundred and seventeenth Shuffle Synchronicities.