Saturday, February 6th- The BQE

I've been mostly on Long Island since the Virginia trip, doing work, saving some money, being somewhat unexciting. However, I have gotten to have some friends from back home or undergrad come by or go into the city to meet up. My friend Mike came down on his way to Maryland in January, and my friend Glen just left, coming out from New Jersey. These good people, along with work, a healthy dose of poker and chess, and an unexpected vacation last week due to snow, have been occupying my time as of late.

However, I do want to relate one travel-related story, from last weekend. My friend Phil and his wife came down from upstate New York to visit both her family in Washington Heights and his sister in Williamsburg. Phil, his wife, his sister, and I met up with Glen in Park Slope for a nice dinner at an Italian place (I don't remember the name, but it was right on 5th Ave somewhere around 2nd or 3rd St). Great homemade pasta and the owners gave us some free port to top off the meal.

We left to head back to Phil's sister's apartment to walk over to a bar, and we went via the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Now, the BQE is one of the most maligned highways in the New York metro area- barely engineered for 1960s traffic, never mind today. I've heard so many horror stories that I personally avoid it unless it's ridiculously late at night and I know there won't be any traffic. It's right up there with the Cross-Bronx expressway. Except....for one spot. Going toward Queens, right after the horrible exit for the Battery Tunnel, you emerge from the endless factory-esque architecture and plop right across the East River from the Financial District. You see how imposing, grand, and beautiful New York really is. As my friend Bobby said the first time we were in the city, there's no conquering it. It's too sprawling, gigantic, yet in its own way as infinitely gorgeous as man can make.

Perhaps the only access we have into comprehending it is through music. And great music since the 19th century is in some sense topographic, in allowing us to take a territory and render its fractal bustle and total confusion into the aesthetic. This doesn't just mean cheap name-checks ("Pasadena, where you at" or "The Little Old Lady from Pasadena" doesn't do much to describe Pasadena, for example)- rather that truly great music splays itself over the land to help you grasp it in some way. So right when we pass the Battery Tunnel exit, the iPod in our car turned to Animal Collective's "My Girls," for my money the only truly great song of 2009. (Not to say that other songs weren't amazing, but as for best song of the last year, the competition wasn't even close.)

There's just something magical about its opening, a cascading fence of motoric synthesized arpeggios. But there's something incredibly fitting about riding on the hideous BQE, motoring at 55-60 alongside untold others barely managing to keep some order without careening into one another. The song keeps building, and then you hit the beautiful view, still motoring along, and the chorus hits. Just listen to the chorus (which doesn't come in until the 3 minute mark!)- the cascading, motoric arpeggios don't stop, but there's a bit more reflection. I had a wonderful moment of looking at New York at night, skyscrapers illluminated through artificial light, riding in a metal box on a massive highway that is a testament to the insanity of modern movement. To quote the end of the chorus, Hooooo!

I then rejoined whatever conversation was going on, and enjoyed the rest of my evening. But for me, car music is not just background- it's an essential part of constructing the landscape. And when you have such beautiful synergy between the land and the sound, between visual and audio, it enhances both. Since my two passions are music and travel, that's the best possible combination.

And for more music about the BQE: http://asthmatickitty.com/the-bqe