There’s a distinct delusion in the air. You can feel it deep down as awareness drops below your neck and mingles in your blood and then from the seat of your heart opens out to the world. It’s in that moment you perceive more than you can articulate. You’re unsure of the difference between your dreams and the collective story you strive to be a part of, to keep up with; it has you flummoxed.
You start noticing these insights one afternoon in Bushwick, Brooklyn at the cafe Little Skips. You are sitting on a stool near the window while the cars pass by on Myrtle Avenue and the M and J trains screech on the elevated tracks above. Mellow, contemplative music flows down from the stereo speakers. A team of cashiers, baristas, and food preparers busily attend to customers and chat with regulars who place their orders. From your perch on the stool, you glance quickly at the people behind you as they talk, laugh, and make plans. Some are even looking at each other without speaking, communicating a youthful romance that beams out at you. You see them and you appreciate their soft attention to each other’s eyes.
You are in the fabled land of the hipsters and all you can think about in that moment is how tender it feels to simultaneously embody angst and confidence. At once you realize you are an inflection of an originally shared universal psychosis; you realize that you and close to seven billion other people the world over are hipsters too. With them you are humans bent on life – made of a spatial audacity that you cannot fully separate out from. All of a sudden you’re maniacally impressed by the unfolding elements of this super matrix, this fulminating communion with consciousness. You realize there was nothing more hip than taking a curious breath of fresh air in the morning. Even newborns had no choice but to be life-long hipsters.
You find that the ambiance in Little Skips is amicably focused and filled with the right sounds and aroma to keep you awake. You have only a regular coffee and keep it simple. You walk away from the place and decide it would be nice to speak kindly of it. You’re happy to an extent, even hopeful and idealistic. You let go of cynicism and postured effort, and you give it up to the mirrored images of lovers and haters embracing one another. You’ve sensed it all along: you’re earthbound, destined to be as unique as you are unceasingly and holistically interconnected. The hipster biological code somehow vibrates as a precise and shared confusion found in your limitless free-fall. What does it feel like as you notice the plummet?
