Office by Alex Penny
where i go?
day 19 complete.
The morning meditation is becoming nearly automatic at this point. I don’t really question it, I just do it. Suppose that is what I’ve been shooting for. Now, patience. Staying the course.
This Burial track, “NYC” is hauntingly sublime. Not so much in a haunted house kind of way, but in an affecting and enchanting way. A few weeks back I listened to this on headphones, riding home from work at night. It was perfect. The route home is along a bike path that runs next to a cement river that drains to the ocean. Experiencing the quiet beauty of the urban environment on a moonlit night, softly lit and lonely, wind in my face, dark flowing water to my left, the wet grass of an empty baseball field in my nose, and this haunting Burial music in my ears. It’s what I’m here for. It just fits.
I’ve been going to urban runoff channels and drainage creeks since I was a little kid. Finding creatures surviving among the dirty effluence of the city makes it all feel undeniably alive. Not necessarily on anyone else’ terms of beauty and wildness, but alive and kicking nonetheless. Life’s refusal to let go of these gray passageways of societal neglect has always been a source of great comfort for me. Burial understands and celebrates this feeling in his soft and unassuming way. His music is a love letter to the forgotten waterways left to quietly slip through unfeeling industrial landscapes and sewers. Always rushing on carrying the silt of the city out and away.
