Blake Parker,
ART WHORE
Blake Parker is
hands down one of the most talented people I've ever met. Anyone who has ever met them would say that (and they all do).
Blake and I met through the internet, but the internet is not real, so we actually met in a members club in New York.
I was twenty the first time I heard Stupid Games, Bad Ideas while studying for finals over winter break (back when Princeton did exams in January). Something about it drew me in immediately. It was so unapologetic, in sound, in lyrics. I would later learn that Blake doesn't love the mix, even though it's one of their most popular songs.
We had drinks, them "a bev," me tea because it was Monday, and there was a third. A former best friend of mine. This was around the time that our friendship ended.
Blake and I hit it off immediately. They mentioned wanting to make music with a more feminine sounding voice, like Faye Webster. I mentioned wanting to get back into music. They told me they were making a movie. I told them I studied screenwriting in college. We left that evening buzzing with potential collaboration and the promise of a new friendship. They told me to come to their apartment in Ridgewood the following Wednesday, as the third, my former friend said that she wasn't really in the space for collaboration yet, and headed toward the train back to Brooklyn.
I laughed nervously. I knew such little about this person. Just one song that I really loved. Little mentions of preference that they'd dropped throughout the evening -- adoration of Frank Key, Spiderman. That they wanted to go back to school. Wanted to go ice fishing. That they moved to New York after losing their father. All these facts about someone, thrown out there in the open, but you don't really know someone until you spend time with them. Until you have experiences that bring you closer together.
Blake and I have been on a multitude of crazy evenings together.
It's hard to choose just 1 or 2 to describe them, or our relationship. And even if I could, Blake and I frequented the same spots, often in a boozed fueled fervor, blending one day, one night, one weekend into the next, and another, and the one before.
We'd go through phases with places. For some reason, Ray's is top of mind. Our Ray's phase was a winter one. I can't remember who'd suggested it first.
I'd been once before on a short first date. I knew I didn't want a second as he walked me home, telling me about a sickness he had as a child. By the time we'd got to my door, he was on the invasive surgery and I was cursing myself for not being able to fall for someone this nice. So I knew about Ray's.
And then I went with Blake.
I honestly can't remember the first time.
Once, I was at a dinner with friends guzzling red wine and suddenly I was standing outside of Fanellis with Blake's friend Jaden, then Blake was outside, cooly lamenting over a spilled beer that sweet Jaden would admit -- minutes later -- that he had accidentally kicked over and thought I had seen on my way up.
I hadn't.
We lifted our chin at Fanellis. Our friendship was built on counter culture. On being different. On being more real, or so I'd thought until one evening I got a rampage of texts from Blake on why individualism is the very thing killing us all. We only text each other in rampages like that.
We started a band last summer. I timidly sat in Blake's windowless Ridgewood basement showing them some progressions and lyrics.
"I can't wait to produce this for you" they said.
But I wanted to work with them. To make something together. A dog upstairs wouldn't stop barking. Blake said it'd killed a puppy the year before. And that you could see it in its eyes.
They left that apartment soon after. And went much, much further north. They had a window and a kitchen island.
It was my first time seeing a kitchen island in Manhattan, when I went to their new apartment. We got seltzers in brown paper bags. Drank then in the courtyard. Made music in smoke filled rooms. We vibrated on the same frequency.
We disagreed hard, too.
The tender moments of friendship came out in spurts. Buried between satire and digital posts that felt like performance, even if they weren't.
Blake Parker is one of the most talented people I know.
They're also one of the most guarded.
We went to Ray's once. There was a man in there who bought me a drink immediately. He had an accent and according to him, one other friend in the bar.
He bought Blake a drink. He tried to touch me. My shoulder, or rather, my hair.
I made a small motion with my hand.
"Don't touch me."
I am never loud. I am severe at times (Like my ballet mistress was).
"Why can't you be open, like your friend?" He asked me.
Blake would spend the rest of the evening fending this man off.
Blake Parker wears a mask. Is phenomenally talented. Everyone loves them, even if they don't know them.
Getting to be a friend of Blake's is like getting hand picked by someone who you're never really sure how to win over.
Blake Parker wears a mask. Perhaps in mourning. Perhaps in privacy. Perhaps in self-preservation.
We tired ourselves out on Ray's. Hit it too hard in the winter. Got sick of being the only Black people in the room.
Today, someone called me their "last internet friend."
I think Blake Parker is, was mine. They're a digital enigma. But in the real world, they are talent and life and love. They make beautiful music, with instruments, with computers, and yet the performances that are imprinted on my mind are in the basements of dark bars, with crowds of friends jostling one another and singing every lyric.
The performance in their living room with a single mic and everyone sitting criss crossed on the rug, on the couch, in mismatched chairs pulled from the kitchen island.
In a karaoke bar, where everyone is always passing them the mic based on their voice and willingness to do runs and harmonies alone.
In a karaoke room, just the two of us, in a bev fueled bliss, screaming, laughing, walking all the way home.
Blake Parker is one of the most talented people I know. My last internet friend.
They're one of the few people who deserves to really "make it."
Whatever it means, today.
But for them, I hope, I know, I believe it's truly something wonderful.
Blake wrote a list that is going out to our mailing list. Print only.
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