Tokyo beckons, and new paths to explore

Have you left New York yet? I hope this gets to you before the weekend. Exactly one week to go before my last day of classes at Carolina. Wow. The concept is deep.

So your time in the city has come to an end. Tokyo beckons, and new paths to explore. Instinctive travels are just around the corner, after a short trip to Indiana, I guess. For me, it's best anyway that you couldn't come down. Distractions are already ubiquitous, constantly watching for moments when I let down my guard. Lem, on the other hand, definitely wanted to see you. Oh well, sooner or later the crew will reconvene, perhaps learning to play their individual instruments in the meanwhile. The clarinet will be located after May 15th.

Here I am rushing this letter off because I wanted to give you a copy of my grant proposal. It outlines the sort of non-profit structure I'll create this summer. Got to have something to fundraise around. I'm applying for funds from both the Mary Babcock and Z. Smith Reynolds foundations, and looking for more dollars everywhere.

Both Charles McNair and Denise Matthewson are working for Community Self-Help in Durham. CSH fixed up that building in very styley fashion. I told you about going to the From The Hip opening. It was kind of sad, but still cool. This little community of twenty-something do-gooders has really developed over there. By the way, I think Ian Williams wrote a cover article in The Washington Monthly this week. Rush out and buy a copy. There's this one particularly positive woman in the office next to Chuck involved with some new group called S.E.E.D.S., some business about planting urban gardens, and she is so fine! She was giving me the eye the whole time.

Two a.m. is chillin' on the clock, and I'm surrounded by half a dozen supreme buzzkilling assignments to create for school. I'm so focused I've even given up music lately. But free deliveries of beautiful jazz CD's arrive weekly from BMG and Columbia House. Mostly addressed to motherfuckers I didn't even know lived in the Pink House. It's probably those damn raccoons.

Enjoy Tokyo, take care, and give a positive shout to my main man Daisuke. Send me a postcard with your new address when you get situated.

- Letter to N'Gai in NYC

From The Hip exhibition Sneak Preview

From the Hip

XTCian, 8/4/02

by IAN WILLIAMS ('95-'97)

(During) my vegetarian years, roughly 1991-93...I was besotted with the resurgence of community service amongst us Generation Xers, and got fat eating nothing but french fries. Part of that time I was dating Susan Comfort, and with that came no meat, relentless recycling, and repeated, horrified re-readings of Diet for a New America. I even wrote a couple of environmentally-themed songs at that time that were terrible. I mean, what the hell was I thinking???

One of the good things to come from those dioxin-free days was my involvement in a project called From the Hip, which was our little way of trying to convince the world that the members of Generation X weren't all Frito-munchin' scalawags with brainfuls of "Gilligan's Island" trivia. The project, of course, was doomed from the beginning.

We were never sure what kind of project it would be (a book? a video?) and though 280 young photographers scoured the country looking for "at-risk youths making a difference," only about three of them could take decent pictures. Most of our schemes in the summer of 1993 ended in humiliation at the hands of book agents and corporate sponsors, but none of that mattered to me: I was having too good a time.

It was then I got to know some fabulous people: Stasia Droze, who has since been like family; Lawrence Lucier, who became my confidante at CitySearch in 1996 and then my East Village roommate in 2000; even N'Gai Wright, who later became the character N'Wal in a little movie I'm working on called The Pink House. Our leader Tony Deifell, was an old Chi Psi buddy who always had a plan I learned a lot from his dogged determination, especially when we went to Washington D.C. to crack a few skulls.

Our project was a failure, as were most public service anthems dedicated to our generation (does anybody reading this remember Lead or Leave? At least those Third Millennium cats are still around). But like any project full of bright, intense young thinkers, we all have tons to say to each other even a decade later. That, and I really miss the "let's get together and put on a show" way of looking at one's career; we really did just rent an office in downtown Durham and hope for the best. These days, there's so much formality and structure that accompanies all our decisions - back then, if you had gas in the car, a paid phone bill and a place to get bourbon & cokes after work, anything seemed cool enough to try for a summer.

Life is hedonistic and lazy in Chapel Hill

Whassup wit you, homegirl? How's small town Rhode Island treating you? I am writing to you from Chez Pink, upstairs at my desk on a hot, hazy mid-summer Monday afternoon.

Or should I say I'm currently perched in the Tree House, since that's what the Pink House has become this summer. Passengers and fellow travelers heading in and out the doors, coming from all directions, at all times. Two-legged animals everywhere, new and different ones every day.

Jenny and I will be coming up north to Rhode Island for the first ten or so days of August. Jay has mentioned coming up there with Lydia around the same time. It would be fun if we could all get to do two things while we're there – hang out with you and go out to Block Island for a day, and visit Caroline in Boston.

And have you heard about the MTV Beach House that's in Hyannis, on the Cape? It's this big beach house that MTV has rented, and they're filming in it all summer long. Sometimes it's like an outdoor version of The Grind dance show, the one hosted by that obnoxious kid Eric from the first Real World. We want to show up there and crash the scene. As long as you look like a funky beach clubber, they'll let you on the show.

Life is hedonistic and lazy in Chapel Hill. Last night I went to the Power Company in Durham. On Saturdays this summer it has become the mecca for fun loving straight people who are down with the dance scene. I was hanging with friends who are working for ADF this season, and dancers from one of their visiting companies were there at the club with us, mostly beautiful gay men in half-drag. Cute women friends of my friends thought I was just the sexiest straight dance god they'd seen all night.

N'Gai has set about to fill the Tree House with mysterious music at all hours. He's bought a flute, cello, keyboards, and now congas and drums. Other miscreants drop in for sessions with trumpets, guitars, microphones and amps.

Speaking of N'Gai, he may or may not be headed for New York in August. The project he's working on with Tony Deifell (and Ian Williams, who signed on to do some editing) keeps generating job leads in different places. I hope that you'll still be working in Westerly by the time we get up there to Rhode Island, so I can find out where you'll be in the fall.

I've enclosed all your mail that's come to the house so far. In fact, it was the postcard you got about this tropical vacation cruise you've "won" that finally motivated me to sit down and write. Please send us a postcard from Tahiti.

- Letter to Kyle

Note to Clint Curtis

Dear Mr. Clint Curtis,

What's up, g. How's life in the chill woods.

What could your pal Erik possibly be writing to you about? Might it have something to do with a certain $75 in parking money (three months) that you owe him and his housemates?

No, probably not. Au contraire, this letter is mostly about wanting to give you a shout and say "what's up" and "how's life," since it's been a long time since we've talked.

I actually don't even know whether or not you're going to be in town for the summer. But I'll be here, cooling at Chez Pink, living the life. So if you are around, we'll have to hang out at least occasionally. Maybe you can come over some evening and hang with N'Gai and myself, cooking some food, you know the score.

N'Gai will be here until August. He's working with Dave's brother Tony Deifell in Durham on the overall design of a photo-essay book documenting young people doing community service. There are over one hundred teams of writers and photographers all around the country also working on this project.

Dana will be in D.C. starting June 1, working as an intern with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. It should be a cool summer to be doing it, with Ben Chavis the new NAACP director and Clinton chilling in the White House.

So give me a call, bitch, and let me know your business.

Love,

Your Friend Erik, Knucklelectics Grand Wizard responsible for diligent recruitment of Nipple Knotting Finger-Licking Boot Sucking Crack Smoking Undercooked Bunny Fucking Wooly Blanket Up the Ass Ramming "Pay Us Our Money Goddamned Motherfucker" Shouting Syncophants and Miscreants.