Sensory Overload
“Which of your five senses is most important to you?” Andrew asked.
We were hanging out at a late night rave (JACK댄스), hidden in the back room of a restaurant called China Chalet in Chinatown. After pushing our way to the front so I could get a blurry photo of their equipment, my empty drink contacted someone’s elbow and leapt from my hand to the floor where it surprised us all by shattering (not plastic?!). Sheepishly, I nudged the shards out of the way with my boot and we retreated to the back. This is where we started discussing the scintillating topic of sensory input.
Andrew’s answer to the above question was, of course, hearing. Andrew was a huge influence in the music I listened to in high school. He produced a runaway hit of his own in college (embedded below) and now he works at Spotify in New York. He’s a nights and weekends participant in the underground music scene. The last time I visited (almost exactly a year ago), we had a long conversation at a hookah bar about the genius production that was Kanye’s latest album. So that’s the sort of person Andrew is and, besides all that, he’s one of my closest friends that I don’t catch up with often enough.
If you know me well, then you might’ve guessed. The most important sense for me is vision. I need to visualize things to understand them (i.e. faces, maps, and data). I used to love portraits, tricking friends and family to sit in a facial expression for hours at a time so I could coax them into my sketchbook. In a parallel universe where I don’t attend a high school with “math and science” in its name and a university with “technology” in its name, I’d be an artist. (I know what you’re thinking: it’s not too late.)
Andrew and I spent some time debating whether music or visual art was the more pure form of artistic expression. He contended that music could trigger an emotional response in the listener without any context, whereas most visual art required some context. I’ve however experienced visuals (i.e. a breathtaking mountain or sunrise) that have compelled my brain to somersaults.
We thought through the other senses, too. Touch may be as important as hearing and vision, though I didn’t always know this (my family didn’t do much hugging). The reason I draw faces and handwrite notes is because the feel of charcoal and graphite on paper is what etches someone or something into memory. I have a habit of reaching out to touch my computer screen (coworkers are sometimes astonished that I can see through the fingerprints). Smell has the power to trigger lost memories and taste is similar to smell, though less psychological and more carnal.
Travel for me is sensory overload.
That weekend in New York, I hit the DUMBO Arts Festival with David and Angela and crammed a 30 minute visit to the Jeff Koons exhibit at the Whitney with Ravi (must be in the lowest decile of museum visits by duration).
I went to excessive karaoke. I consumed an extraordinary quantity of food and drink. After cocktails and dinner with Yecca, we managed to squeeze five in a booth at Angel’s Share with Melody, Alex and Andrew (you might know them for being sticklers about four max). The next morning, after dim sum with the RSI crew, I wandered to beer garden dinner with Paul and digested that on the way back to Manhattan for Momofuku with Stephanie and Brandon. I recovered from Saturday binging just in time for Sunday brunch in Brooklyn with Maggie.
I felt the air of a new city in my lungs. My senses embraced being constantly in motion, not sleeping, absorbing everything.
And here I’ll scrappily conclude the New York leg of my journey. After all, we have many more places to go!
I wanted to give a shout out to my friends in New York that I didn’t write nearly enough about: Yecca and House my designer friends (I loved visiting you guys at work and envy your jobs), Nancy the unlikely upper east sider, Molly the newest New Yorker, Frances who will be the only lawyer I know (soon!), Utsav, Alex, Melody pictured here, media mogal Maggie and banking baron Brandon, and the entire Dropbox New York office (all six of you guys).
