Unreal made real

It's a vertical city, there's no doubt about it. Sometimes it's nice, when you're on the outskirts or in downtown, to pretend that this huge city is composed of 4 story buildings. Not in Midtown though. What was once a novelty for me when I was a child, to ride 23 floors up, is now just entirely normal. Everyday, I work on the 21st floor.

We were doing a company call over at Atlantic Records. To refresh, Atlantic is a part of the WEA group (Warner Music Group), W is Warner, E is Elektra (the Doors' label), and A is Atlantic. We were actually going over to the Asylum label, which is simply a name owned by Warner. Asylum was David Geffen's label in the 70's for such luminaries as Joni Mitchell, the Eagles, and Jackson Browne. Warner bought it and, in record labels' partial faith in luck over logic, set it up as an urban label. You can catch the Geto Boys' new release out now on Asylum records.

As our elevator went up, I told my superior that I had a friend at Domino records, a label we had talked about before. He couldn't quite remember what the label was, so I reminded him, and at that moment the elevator jolted to a stop. No floor was on the display, just two red x's. He said, "we're going to get off here" but the door didn't open. Before we could say anything else, the elevator started to fall, slowly, then a bit faster. Then it stopped again.

I wasn't sure what to do, and as usual, when I'm unsure I usually do nothing. Well, this time as the elevator descended I bent my knees for the impact. Fortunately, there was no impact, but the elevator was totally unresponsive to our button pushing. My superior especially kept pushing one button that seemed to do nothing. I looked at the same button that I had on my own panel of buttons. It said, "pull for emergency stop". I pulled it and the alarm went off. I remember a girl from long ago wanting to pull that button for less emergency and more explicit passions. Because it was an emergency and an odd situation, I considered my superior for what would be our last minutes with another human being. I figured we could hug or something.

The intercom came on and the maintenance man was hoping that we would be able to tell him what was wrong. He talked to someone who gave us very little news, and after that asked us to depress the pulled button. The elevator went up and let us off one floor sooner than we had selected. From there we took the stairs.

Since the elevator didn't crash and only a few people in the building noticed the alarm, no one really cared about our perilous happening. As events turned in the tri state area, a woman's car was struck by a train not far from a pharmacy where my superior's wife was buying drugs. So he didn't even mention it to his wife. As for myself, I forgot to mention it a few hours later at the German conversation group, but I think that was also because I couldn't remember the German word for elevator.

Elevators have such a place in Midtown Manhattan that I think they are never, ever even looked at as something fun or interesting. Put mirrors in one, it's everyone's powder room. Some even have TV's, like the ones at Atlantic Records. I watched the updates on celebrity and executive trials as our elevator stopped and stayed stopped. But if an elevator takes the plunge, that's it. The plunge begins, though, just as eerily as our little floor drop. Who knows what the next few seconds will bring? It left us with nothing but to think of our last seconds on earth being spent with the guy from work, he we left happily each day to return home to books or to a loving family.

Tonight I almost ran in front of a cab because I was exercising my jaywalk abilities while out for a run. I forgot that it was a two-way street. For the angel believers, there's definitely one tailing me these days, or for the occult, there's an ancient Indian Mahattan God who's trying to kill me.

posted by Wellsmus @ 10:06 PM