Turning 30
I've been on a break traveling the past month celebrating my 30th birthday.
Tonight, I’m 30 years old and writing this month’s edition of the newsletter in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. The last edition that I was supposed to write would’ve covered my first weekend traveling in Los Angeles with my Dad and my brother on our annual family trip to attend new wave festival, Cruel World. We were so exhausted from the jaunt and planning to make our way to Yosemite National Park that I just wanted to let the trip roll along without making an entry. I apologize to any readers who wanted my thoughts on the New York Knicks making their first Eastern Conference Finals in 25 years.
I was attending an LA Dodgers game and watching the Knicks punish the reigning champion Celtics at MSG while donning my Yankeees jersey in a sea of Dodger fans. Luckily for me, LA fans had nothing to say (probably cause they kicked our ass in the infamous Game 5 of last October that I was able to witness live). It seemed like this team was about to make a special run against the Pacers but the tides haven’t changed yet and they lost last night while I watched the game in a hotel room up here in the Smoky Mountains. I’d predicted the team to make the Eastern Conference Finals earlier this season but not by beating the defending champs, and certainly not by losing to the Indiana Pacers. It’s the third time I’ve witnessed them losing to the Pacers since I’ve been watching basketball, a pretty miserable experience.
While the team would go down in lackluster fashion in the second half, I can’t but feel positive about my Knicks. We’ve continually improved since the 2023 season, and we’re just one step away to making that leap into the finals. Maybe that’s wishful thinking but it’s my team and I’ll go down with the ship no matter what.
The day following our victory on Saturday, May 17th, my family and I made our way to the Rose Bowl grounds in Pasadena for Cruel World, where I would bid goodbye to my twenties and enter my thirties. A slew of festival goers made up of goths, punks and aging dad’s stood in the grey, somewhat rainy day to hear an incredibly lineup consisting of New Order, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Devo, Orchestral Maneouvers In The Dark, Buzzcocks, Garbage, Clan of Xymox, The Go-Go’s, Til Tuesday, Madness, Alison Moyet, and more. I couldn’t imagine a better way of entering essentially true adulthood or what could likely end up being the peak of my life as I’d envisioned since I was a kid.
I’d always felt older than I look, always hung out with older kids, and always felt a nostalgia for times that I wasn’t even a part of. I revear the past and constantly feel an uneasy anxiety for the future, basically a fear of death. Over the past year or so, I’ve retired from the live music industry and started working a normal 9-5 in order to take advantage of my time, putting it towards my family and friends while investing in things I feel passionate about hence this Substack.
When Bernard Sumner and New Order walked out onto the stage that evening they began by playing a Joy Division track, “Transmission.” I remember instantly turning around to my brother and freaking out, absolutely enthralled that I was hearing the closest thing that I’ll ever get to Ian Curtis playing at a Manchester club in the 80s. While Sumner’s vocals were never his strong suit, the band’s songwriting and live visual presentation (LASERS!) were so overwhelming that I couldn’t help but be moved. Stephen Morris at his age is still one of the best drummers to ever play, and the band’s lyrics have been such an essential part of my youth.
While watching Ryan Coogler’s Sinners this week, there is a particular scene that displays the power of music and how an artist can capture time. There is a moment when an artist plays a song you’ve been dying to hear that makes you remember all the other times you’d heard those songs throughout your life, and how it brought you to this moment. Each note, each lyric, you shift through time and all the different shades of who you’ve become. I couldn’t have felt this more vividly than during New Order’s performance of “Temptation.” Sumner couldn’t hit those notes like on the original recording but the instrumentals were ethereal, as the video background featured fast moving city traffic scenes which for whatever reason seem to hit me. “Tonight I think I’ll walk alone, I’ll find my soul as I go home,” I screamed amongst the crowd instantly brought me back to winter nights in the city when I was 19, 23, and 27. That sentiment never changed, as I’m still trying to find out who I am and that’s why that song connects so strongly, it’s a universal feeling propelled by the band’s music.
New Order would go on to soundtrack the remainder of that California trip with my family. It was even playing in my head as the three of us walked through Yosemite Valley, a perfect day.
So, I’m 30, the Knicks lost the eastern conference, and I’m visiting the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee for the first time.
I can’t conquer time but I want to make all the memories while I can.
What Movies I’ve Watched Recently…
Wages of Fear
Minari
Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning
Sing Sing
What TV Shows I’m Watching…
The Rehearsal
Death Note
What Books I’m Reading…
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Death In The Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa
What Albums I’m Listening to…
Dolly Parton - Hello, I’m Dolly
Dolly Parton - My Tennessee Mountain Home
Stephen Whynott - Geography
billy woods - Golliwog
Nina Simone - Pastel Blues
New Order - Power Corruption & Lies
Please find a general list of organizations to support below: