20201006
NEW YORK CLASSIC
NEW YORK CLASSIC is a playlist that is not only a reference to my roots, but a homage to the city that I love so much. A playlist of classical pieces ranging in music periods, we start with the energy of Gershwin’s RHAPSODY IN BLUE – iconically New York, building up your energy from day to night. Emerging when the sun sets, there’s a tranquility to the noise at night – a calm you only feel when you truly lose yourself in the city.
When I was growing up, my parents made me play piano, just like any other docile first-gen Asian American kid growing up in California. I picked up violin shortly after, and little did I know that those 10+ years of practicing and performing both instruments would be the framework for my work ethic today. Going to schools where sports were the superior extracurricular (2+2=football), I rejected this side of my life growing up, ashamed of something that was truly my identity growing up (along with many things that we can unpack later). I mean I didn’t listen to anything else, and my mom woke me up with Bach on my stereo, like what the fuck? Now, 20-or-so years later, I’ve graduated into the electronic version of classical music, which is basically house music and techno, and I’ve also made it to New York. Things are coming full circle.
I love New York. It reminds me of this song Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin. I remember my teacher wouldn’t let me learn the piece because it was beyond my level of playing, but for some reason this was the one song I fucking wanted to learn. I still made my mom buy the book, and after many failed attempts of self and guided learning, I realized that this song wasn’t something I could just learn and play alone – it takes a piano and an entire orchestra to illustrate Gershwin’s story. If I didn’t have the orchestra, it would be like buying boots and not having the right jeans to wear with them. You’ve just spent all this money on shit you’re actually supposed to wear but you literally cannot wear straight leg jeans with pointed-toe Saint Laurent boots. But also, I still do this, so own your outcome. But Rhapsody in Blue is New York. It’s a huge fucking orchestra, and it’s an entire collection of communities that contributes to the energy. That’s what makes it so special.
During the past few weeks of quarantine, I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about how people are refusing to take the subway because they’re scared or because they just think they’re “above” it. I never understood this pretense. Before the pandemic, the subway was one of my favorite parts of the city. A poetic mess of people, subway lines intertwining the paths of people from all origins. This is a part of what made New York for me. That energy of everyone going everywhere. The most confident I ever feel about myself is when I’m dressed up to go out at night and I take the subway to meet up. I’d much rather walk the four blocks from the station to my destination than step out of a car. It’s about absorbing the city’s energy into yourself – being exposed yet feeling so comfortable in your own. That is what fashion will always be to me. Not sitting in a fish bowl, but absorbing the magnetism and exerting it back out as your own contribution to the city’s energy.