By Jocedotcom

Moving to Brooklyn all of 3 months ago means I’ve yet to experience the places and things that other people act as if are played out. As an unpaid intern, I’m only just beginning a prolonged journey of exploration. Add in the fact that I am easily wowed and generally excited, approaching the notorious Public Records felt similar to visiting Lego Land when I self identified as a tom-boy at 9-years-old.

Everything was so… posh. The staff, the decor, the patrons, even the ticket link. All of it seemed to fall out of a novel I’d write for myself. In accordance with the wet dream of the average Mark William Lewis lover, my friends and I were led through a labyrinth of exposed brick and greenery to a “hidden” (read: side) staircase that led to the sound room.

I already had my ID in hand ready to present before the door-person could ask. From the furrow of her brows, the $25 cocktails on the menu, and the general vibe that everyone in the room had health care by way of employment and not parents, I could tell she does not see many ID’s with the year 2004 on it.

One long look later, and I was in the room, with Mark 50 feet away from me, nursing a cocktail while being smothered like a Renaissance Madonna.

I’m still not sure how or why I was here.

I guess my journey to the self-titled Mark William Lewis album listening party started months before moving to NYC. College Jocedotcom mumbled through party classics like Dreams and Nightmares by Meek Mill and stayed confined to the few albums that provided comfort. For a lack of better terms, my music taste was chopped. Completely un-unique and uninteresting. A mini-crisis about my lack of depth and a very urgent desire to look cool for my SoundFynd peers and audience hit all at once. The only artists I routinely listened to were the ones I had on CD. Amy Winehouse one day, Fiona Apple the next; my music rotation was limited to Virgo white women’s greatest hits (happy belated birthday to my GOATs by the way).

At this point, a few months shy of graduating college, I had fully committed myself to this “music industry” bit. I was wholly unsure of what that meant, seeing as I don’t make music, write lyrics, or produce songs. Hell, I don’t even DJ. I had yet to identify a single marketable skill before deciding my Finance degree could rot. But at least I could focus on the important things, like having good enough taste in music to talk to strangers for 49 seconds in a greenroom before they ghost me forever. Shocker: a 21-year-old girl wanted to be liked.

Long story short: a blog I followed posted about Mark William Lewis’s Pleasure Is Everything. The EP came out in 2022, and Mark had absolutely no reason to be in the press at that time. The post felt divinely targeted, so I took it as a sign.

Flash forward: my boss, knower of all things social and all things cool, casually mentioned to my co-worker/friend, knower of all things creative and all things niche, that he had 4 tickets to the listening party. He also apparently had better plans. So my friend inherited them. And so did I, by extension.

That and a 20 minute Uber bankrolled by my friend’s credit card.

Despite never really seeing what Mark looked like, outside of the MIKE Tiny Desk concert I watched a few weeks prior I could immediately identify which one was him. His stature is as lanky as his name suggests, his head even balder.

The room was small, or rather intimate. At every point in the room, the guest of honor was in eyesight, so I just looked down at the floor until I reached the bar.

I stood next to another girl studying the unfortunately pricey menu. I couldn’t blame her for the focus, as the cocktails had ingredients I was pretty sure weren’t FDA-approved and names that sounded like indie band B-sides. I knew I couldn’t afford anything before I read a single word. She looked up and offered me a faint smile which I appreciated. Despite the girl having arrived there before me, the bartender asked what I wanted first. I told him the cheapest thing I could find on the menu, which was their $17 glass of white wine. As I walked away, I attempted to give the girl a slight nod of acknowledgment, but but she was busy getting personally checked on by Mark himself. It wasn’t until the Q&A started that I’d realize I was quite literally rubbing elbows with the host of the event.

The aforementioned bar girl, aka the music curator Margeaux, and Mark William Lewis sat at the center of the room ready to offer conversation and insight into the album we had just heard. I finally tuned out my anxiety and focused on the event. I love an opportunity to hear musicians speak about the process of their art. And the $17 wine was hitttingggg!

Lewis and Margeaux marveled about his inspirations and process of creating the album. Margeaux made connection between the artistry of the new album and artistry of King Krule. Margeaux and Lewis bounced off each other and brought up some sick phrases like “Fragmentation of Self” and “the Ubiquitous you”. I am sure if this was based in music journalism and not the boils of my mind I could utilize that quote. But it is not and you are stuck with my thoughts.

The most poignant part of the conversation for me is when Mark William Lewis, the man for whom all of us were gathered, referred to himself as “just some guy”, plagiarizing the entirety of my identity.

Sickening. I should be able to have just this one thing.

Sobered from the identity theft I settled back into reality. My friends and I chucked ourselves into a corner and joked about being the youngest in the room. MIKE DJ BlackPower DJ’d the rest of the evening which we enjoyed until the ingrained urge to drink our Friday night away overcame and we left to split a $10 bottle of barefoot moscato while watching Pitch Perfect on Soap2Go.

What more could I ask for?

signing off.

just some girl