I have finally decided that real estate is really everything ( or a big part of what defines the current era.. it is a terrible market model) and that the reason Manhattan is so important it not that it is itself an important place but that it is easy to get to everything from there. It isn't where you are but were you can go, though that can come to define where you are. Manhattan is the empty center.
A couple of years ago I curated an event which dealt with this idea of the empty center. It was highly influenced by
the concept of the Mandala which is a a narrative or a bunch of narratives around an empty center. I think that sometimes
indigenous music can be a type of empty center. I did that event for personal reasons and I don't like to talk about ( though here I am ). Gerrit Whelmers of Baltimore's awesome " Future
Islands" did something which conceptually had a lot of closeness to what I did. There was a big gamelan called the Gamelan Kusuma Laras Invocation and then Mr. Whelmers played some stuff from his new solo project, which was really good, and danceable though people didn't really dance. This performance made my effort feel worthwhile. I really love " The Stone" as a venue, it so stark and still sort of feels in the mddle of nowhere. Even if that middle of nowhere sense if a like all of the East Village a bit contrived it doesn't matter, when you reach the center of the narrative there is nowhere to go the center of nowhere can become true anywhere.
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