You know when you're very young and you've been looking at beautiful pictures in childrens books, and then you see an actual rainbow or roadkill or something grand like that for the first time in your life, and the impression it leaves on your brain is as enormous as the grin plastered all over your face for days? That's how I'd sum up my New York experience.
A constant dj vu from films and TV commercials suddenly hit me in 3D and I was waist deep in visuals that totally made sense, only so much more animated in 360 degrees and you can smell it, you can poke it, and it replies at your shy attempts at communicating. Like the afternoon before Zak's opening I was having a mid-afternoon tipple at a fancy bar off Bowery and the tramps outside on the pavement were just fabulous. A legless fellow wheelin past with 2 unlit fags sticking out of his teeth asked me for a quarter and told me to keep my ass down, whatever that meant, but I drew him in my scrapbook (below). NYC tramps have more style than all of London's council estates lumped together. I shared my change with quite a few egomaniacal poets and spent queens. I squealed at spotting a real shortbus - the magical vehicle for the gifted and the challenged. When you find a context in which even the ugly, annoying things appear beautiful, you know you found sheer style.
Maybe it's the days of extensive hangover combined with extra drunkenness that made my brain trippy... The lights are brighter, the graffiti more vibrant, the fire escapes on the facades of buildings and drinks in brown paper bags - they all speak to you although you're incapable of shopping or interacting over Mimosa breakfasts (sorry Tim if I was completely useless). ymonster you captivated me, sweetheart. We'd made and failed endless dates in London and Tokyo and yet you stood there patiently behind my shoulder waiting for my attention for eons at Zak's opening while I yapped excited nonsense with Spooky Booty and Mary Papers... who is a fantastic peroxide blonde asian doll and talks like Lil Kim, hence I was lost in her delish accent for eternity. New York was a constant unfinished conversation between people and objects. Incredibly poetic.
Meeting people from internet is always shocking: no one looks and acts like they come across in the pictures - Yours Truly included! I'm mostly grumpy and sarcastic unless something genuinely exciting happens, and then I get embarrassingly, puppylike excited about things that the locals have long grown to take for granted.
Like that advertising posters in the NY subway are actually giant stickers, which inspires hilarious graffiti potential:
Even seeing old geezers loiter on Brooklyn stoops all night might make me grin to an extent you wouldn't recognise my sneers... But I met a generous bunch of SGs in NY and you wouldn't recognise the real piece of ass from the photos either. They're so little. So shy. Not too shabby at all, it was awright 
Did I say? ZakSmith's show was just marvelous and you can still see the gorgeous painting of me in the most prestigious spot of the room until November 29th (Frederick&Freiser, 536 West 24th St). I urge you to check it out as it was the reason of me being in NY in the first place - it is that good! 
I've been forced to tag along on many other art gigs, thanks to dating an artist (Atomic is working on series of portraits of his favourite artists). In Chinatown I met a toy artist Sucklord. who later turned up at Zak's opening in a supervillain outfit (Vektar the Intolerable), consisting of a mask, a cape and a crew of sexy ladies; he got banned from the bar (they wouldn't serve aliens); we ended up doing sketching, filming, drinking organic beers and roaming around Coney Island together.
There are not enough artists who employ their imagination to create not only art but also a character out of themselves; I want to see the art world flooded with extroverted eccentricity, ridiculous names and bizarre costumes. And eventually this was why my last NY afternoon was the most magical of all.
I met Rammellzee.
To my disgrace I knew fuck-all about him. Jason had a portrait date with the guy at 2pm, I couldn't wait to "get it over with" and go shoe-shopping, and yet by 9pm (when we had to rush our arses to the airport for the flight back to London) I still couldn't make myself leave his apartment in siamese proximity to "Ground Zero". Maybe thanks to the vodka+cranberry drinks of flammable potency he ordered in via intercom, though I suspect it was his gritty, hoarse voice from the depths of his mystical Ikonoclast Panzerism hip hop hell that instantly rendered me weak in my knees. That and the surreal blue rings around his brown irises. The words in his speeches I recognised but could not comprehend, although they sounded most mystifying. I'm in love, again. Boy do I have a complicated taste in men.
Unbelievably, as soon as I set my foot in London, I get an invite from my cute-as-a-button and shy-as-a-virgin graf-art mate David Walker to come check out a painting 1.5metres high of my stupid mug in a poncy art gallery. The fabulousness of musehood just won't quit. Here is me jetlagged, unwashed for days and sipping champagne next to, well, me.
And then a friend in Tokyo myspaced me a link to these darlings from New York City, Semi Precious Weapons, and I sorta feel like quite a moron for haven't caught them in some trashy venue during my visit, but that's a proof of the old rotten bastard murphy's law that nothing is perfect in life.
Had I spontaneously got to rub elbows with SPW in a dingy backstage room, I reckon that my NY experience woulda been quite 100% perfect.
And since then... Albertine was in London and we shot a brilliant new set in rainy streets of Soho, but I've had enough of typing now. Gotta go book some Lucha Libre tickets. Next Wednesday will find me on the plane to Mexico City for Dia de los Muertos. Then a lil bit of LA, a lotta bit of the Cook Islands, another bit of New Zealand and a dash of Tokyo before I'm back in London in December, all broke and adventured-out.
That's what happens to you when you find yourself still living in your ex-dream city. London you twat, how awesomely old and pricey are you. We buy you like some high class escort yet can't wait to get away from your fragrant crotch.
I'll leave you with extracts of my New York scrapbook, if you can be arsed to go into it right now.
NYC trash:
