It took all my willpower to get out of bed Thursday morning. It was 11 AM before I rolled outside, but I rationalized that laziness and sleeping in were key parts of a vacation.

Day 2 (August 5)

• Met up with Matthew & Christina in Chinatown. We ventured over to Little Italy where we settled on Puglia for lunch. We got dinner size portions for lunch prices and it was all quite good!
• We walked downtown, past all the city buildings. I think it was the first tall, skinny courthouse I’ve ever seen.

• Since we were close, we set out for the Brooklyn Bridge but failed to realize we had stepped onto a ~1/2 mile, shadeless pedestrian walkway with no exit except to walk it back. The drink vendors parked under umbrellas along the way must have made a fortune. It was still so hot! We noticed a sun dog, which was like a beacon of hope in the sky. I swore, “Sun dog means rain soon!” They doubted me in the clear blue skies, but sure enough, within 15 minutes, dark clouds were gathered all around. Unfortunately, they didn’t drop any rain, which might have been one of the most disappointing moments in the trip. We made it to the first truss of Brooklyn Bridge, barely. We savored the shade for a little bit before heading back. I noticed some art that I really liked, so I bought it (a little disappointed to realize it was a print, not an original…I couldn’t tell at the time). It’s a nice scene, though, so no regrets.

• We took the metro over to Greenwich Village and walked through Washington Square Park. We sought refuge at Think Coffee on the edge of NYU’s campus. It was just the kind of cafe I like with a mix of comfy chairs and little 1-person tables. We were trying to find a place to sit when Matthew said, “This is ridiculous!” I had no idea what he was talking about and then he called out that every single person in there had an Apple laptop of some variety in front of them (I counted 11). I had to explain to him that this wasn’t a PC crowd. “They’re artists! Artists don’t use ThinkPads.” (*cough* Apple hater)

Even though it was only 3:30 or so, we decided to call it a day and head back to rest/clean up for the Andrew Bird show that night. A few hours later, they joined back up at my place to meet my host, since they were all Swedes. I was only 65% sure I was following the conversation. We had dinner at Luke’s Bar & Grill, a casual “dive” bar which had tasty sandwiches, before walking the remaining blocks to the Guggenheim.

Andrew Bird @ The Guggenheim

We arrived at the Guggenheim around 8 PM, when the doors opened for a private viewing of the current exhibit, “Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance”. I honestly didn’t get several of the pieces, but there were a few I enjoyed, especially the 3D projection of an old man sitting in a chair. That piece was setup so that you walked through a projection of each angle and it ended in the 3D version. I found it interesting. Mainly, I gained an appreciation for the vastness of the building. It doesn’t seem very large from the outside but walking the ramp of the spiral is a hike and large additional areas kept revealing themselves. Of course, Frank Lloyd Wright was a master of space.

We settled on watching from the 3rd row of the spiral. I was borderline euphoric when Andrew Bird took the stage just after 10 PM, despite my aching feet & back. He didn’t say a word but just set away at recording loops and building a kind of melancholy instrumental piece. It was beautiful. I got chills as the sounds echoed up from the 96 horn speakers. At the close of the song, he surveyed the room around him, paused & smiled in his sort of innocent, child-like way, and said, “Well, I’ve seen a few things…*smiles, everyone laughs*...but I haven’t seen this before. Hey, everybody, pleased to meet you. This is a show I’ve never done before.” Euphoric++. The instrumentals continued throughout most of the show and the few he sang were new to me. It was all Andrew Bird I’d never heard before. Awesome! He never fails to create such lovely sounds and I’m constantly amazed at how they all sound so different.

We headed for the floor during the last song. I bid farewell to Matthew & Christina and enjoyed the end of the show & encore from as close to the stage as I could get. It took about 3 tries for him to get the start of the encore song the way he wanted it. I love it when that happens. It’s rare that you get to see musicians analyzing their music so obviously on stage. I lingered around the floor until they finally kicked us out at midnight. I talked to a member of the crew who said Andrew was leaving for Europe the next morning so the odds of him returning were slim. It was an incredible experience, though, and I would have been upset if I’d missed it. I found this blog article which has some stunning photos from the show. Definitely check them out. Bird also mentioned that this was part of a project that was already in the works, so he jumped at the invite from the Guggenheim people. From the sound of things, we can look forward to future shows in this vein, focused entirely on the sound. Sign me up.

I took this short video of chirping crickets and interior, just after the show had ended.

It was only about 10 blocks to walk home, so I decided to take a midnight stroll down Fifth Ave and passed along the bottom half of Museum Mile. It was still 80-degrees and the locusts in Central Park were like a symphony following alongside me. It was another NY moment. I was amazed at the size of the Met and really disappointed when I saw that the Picasso exhibit had ended a few days before my arrival. Still, it was about as perfect of a night as one could ask for and I slept soundly yet again.

All of day two’s photos are on Flickr.