Richard King and the Time Traveling Pop Star

June 04, 2024

Looking back, a lot of my teenage years can be defined by the pursuit of “coolness.” I remember an old friend telling me that “every music-loving gay wants to be like Arthur Russell,” after I told her that he was my favorite artist. I first discovered his music during a deep dive into YouTube recommendations when “I Couldn’t Say It To Your Face” caught my attention. I was hooked.

Driving down the 101 freeway as a teenager, I’d daydream about life in New York City, blasting Arthur Russell like we were the only ones who truly understood each other. In reality, his mystical existence spanned generations of "cool" kids, creating experimental pop music that metamorphosed through genres. Russell made music for a utopia, channeling the spiritual world through his Buddhist practice to tap into the collective consciousness of present and future youth.

By Joshua Kohno
Scans courtesy of publisher, Anthology

His work has been universally appreciated, sampled by the likes of Kanye West and Blood Orange and featured in the works of Philip Glass and Allen Ginsberg. In a way, his creative practice summoned multiple versions of himself through space and time. With most of his work being released posthumously, Arthur Russell’s identity somehow belongs to each individual listener. His work is often discussed more as a projection than as his own perspective.

Richard King’s new book Travels Over Feeling: Arthur Russell, a Life, guides us through the legacy that Arthur Russell left behind. Pieced together with clues of brilliance, the book explores the genius of his ephemerality and the spirit behind his creativity. In an attempt to bring Arthur Russell’s words to life, the book comprises multimedia pieces such as notes, posters, and even grocery lists archived in the New York Public Library.

Why Arthur Russell as the subject for your book?

I’ve absolutely loved his music, and I don’t think I know many people who quite like his music. Most people who have heard of him, love him. In the case of Arthur, people don’t dislike him, they just haven't known about him. His music has come out largely after his death. There’s an element that we can make him whoever we want him to be. He was relentless and unable to finish anything which only showed his genius. He can’t help but be mysterious, but I wanted to know if it was possible to present Arthur on his own terms rather than project onto him. I think it’s very hard when there’s so little existing material to not project a version of Arthur that we want. His music is so remarkable that it’s a human response to create Arthur into this Guardian Angel like character. One dangerous projection is that he was some kind of martyr because of how he died. I wanted to see if the archive could present Arthur in his own words. I wanted to try and bring him a little bit closer to the sidewalk than this sort of celestial figure.

Everyone you interviewed seemed to have their own perspective on him. I felt like I was reading a documentary script the way it was visually portrayed. I found it so fascinating that at one point his sister said she learned so much more about him after he died through his friends. Could you talk about the conversations you had with his sister?

There are photographs of both his sisters in the studio with Arthur when he’s dying and stricken with HIV AIDS. There are several family photographs of him on holiday with his family. He participated in family life. However, Kate suggests that he was very absent even when he was physically present. He didn’t talk about his sexuality to his parents until he was ill. He had also run away from home, so I assume there was a lot of difficulty for him in working out where he stood in terms of what a family was.

I think for Kate and for the rest of the family there are a couple of things going on. One is that their father was just so happy that towards the end of his life he saw Arthur have success in the way that Arthur hadn’t when he was alive. He saw the music getting the recognition that he knew his son had craved. I think the other thing that happened was through the revival of Arthur’s music, they got to meet several of his collaborators and close friends. They were able to share with them a similar experience of Arthur's diffidence and social ambiguity, if we call it that. That was sort of comforting as well. “It wasn't just us in the family that didn't always know how to get through to him. It was everyone.” I think that's what Kate's talking about when she says people bring him alive. They partly bring him alive as there's an element of discovery in this mutual experience. One of these defining qualities included not being brilliant at communicating.

It seems like he had a really big community of musicians that he was constantly working with in the East Village. What was it like connecting with musicians who were part of his scene and maybe other characters that you met along the way?

All of them were really remarkable people. I think some of them were maybe a little worn out of talking about Arthur. What was really rewarding for me and perhaps, to a degree for them was I was able to show them elements of the archive on screen. We could talk about the memories in front of us. I could talk about playing specific shows or chord charts. It allowed people to remember certain aspects of their relationship with Arthur, but it kind of made everything a little more specific as well. It brought me to sort of reorientate Arthur away from the myth through his daily life. For a lot of them, they could take care of their overheads by playing three shows a week or 10 shows a month in New York. Was that work kind of mutual aid, making 50 bucks of an evening, or was it a self supporting, shared creativity? I think it depends on what day of the week I was and what mood everyone was in.

It was dirty, cheap to live, and the city was full of exciting people. Magic happens when a group of people don’t have to worry about money and live in a big city.

I remember reading in the book that Peter Gordon says they’d pass the same $50 to each other.

Exactly. It was easy to get work in Manhattan at the time in commercial music because they’re all obviously incredibly talented musicians. Arthur was different. He didn’t have a day job. Superficially, one might think that meant he was a bohemian, lazy guy who waited for the music to come, but nothing could be further from the truth. His colleagues said that he had a more pronounced work rate than any of them. He would be happy to live in penury, but he’d work on his music sometimes 18 hours a day. There was an element of them just playing together to get by I think as well. I showed Peter Gordon a setlist and he said, “Gosh, I saw that writing and chords too many times. We rarely followed what we wrote down. It was often quite chaotic.” Since they’re all really talented they knew what to play.

Referencing back to pieces from the archive seemed like an intense process. What was it like organizing the book?

I went to the archive four times, and each time it was about a week long trip, so I spent probably about a month in it. Each time I went I took a crazy amount of photos. I think by the time I'd worked out what had to go into telling the story I was trying to tell, it kind of developed its own internal logic. I spoke to most people three or four times. There were things that could be revealed about each element of his life that hadn't been revealed, so I didn't want to rush through his childhood or dwell on his death. When he released “Go Bang”, and “Is All Over My Face” he was also writing pop songs and writing an opera. Although that happened in 80 and 81, I didn't want 80 and 81 to not just be about The Loft, Paradise Garage and this mythical downtown New York, you know?

Yeah definitely. Speaking of his dance music, there seems to be a lot of synchronicity between Disco music and Indian music because of the drones and consciousness raising properties. Were there any other moments in the archive where his New Age experience came out or where he would use meditation in his notes?

When it comes to World of Echo, the phrasing and singing, but Arthur had singing lessons and his voice is extraordinary in World of Echo. He got to that place with his voice by breathing in his Buddhist practices. The idea of World of Echo itself is that we’re always changing and always the same. There’s a consciousness in World of Echo that feels almost divine. People seem to be drawn to this sense of secular prayer, and I think his music is a safe place for young people. In the book, he makes one last trip to the ocean to meet with his old Buddhist teacher, and his teacher refuses him. That level of rejection felt incredibly difficult for him. So in that sense, it feels like a presence in his identity. If I had wanted to I could’ve explored more about his practice, but I thought it would be anecdotal. People want him to be in the footage of Keith Haring's birthday at the Paradise Garage or at John Lennon’s apartment when he died, but I didn’t want to speculate how he could’ve been in the past.

What was it like seeing things from conception to end? From an idea to a fully developed piece?

I never saw anything as a finished song. There were two moments where he’s frustrated and wrote snarky stuff like “my dick is big.” You can just tell he’s really bored. Two of my favorite songs are “Keeping Up” and “Wild Combination” and I included a work in progress of “Wild Combination” to show its development. I feel like the composition of the song was often more rigorous and challenging than the lyrics. There’s one about East Village in the Summer, and it’s so evocative. Nobody had seen it before, and as I was reading it, I could imagine him singing it. There were no cross-outs and no edits, so I think part of his talent was always to conceive of something.

Is there anything that you learned from his creative process? Any patterns you noticed?

He worked incredibly hard. He embodied that talent is enough. He always had a pen and paper in his pocket. I think the thing I learned most of all is how unbelievably open minded he was when it came to being creative. I got an enormous amount of peace from him. He was frustrated constantly, but there was incredible peace when it came to his own work. I imagined myself in his apartment, and even spoke to Lucy about what it would’ve been like to be living there during his time.

Speaking of Lucy, I was kind of jealous when she said her NYC apartment was only $150 a month.

It was dirty, cheap to live, and the city was full of exciting people. Magic happens when a group of people don’t have to worry about money and live in a big city.

Culture

The Club Is Coming to the Stage

We enter and make our way to what is approximately front left of the DJ booth, where we’re accustomed to dancing at clubs in New York. “So is this a techno club or a dance performance?” yells an uncertain participant in my boyfriend’s ear. He laughs, bouncing along to Ben UFO, and yells back, “It’s both!” The club has long been a hot topic in European contemporary dance but it is only now making its way into New York performance venues, largely through transatlantic tours. R.O.S.E. follows recent examples like Michele Rizzo’s HIGHER xtn. at MoMA PS1 (May 2024), (LA)HORDE’s Room with a View at NYU Skirball (October 2023), and Gisèle Vienne’s Crowd at BAM (October 2022).

Do these performances compromise the club’s spirit — a space idealized for its anonymity, dark lighting, and thundering music? The notion of the club as a utopian escape is admittedly just that — an ideal — because of how its intense conditions can create barriers to entry. Still, the club remains sacred for many, a place to forge connections and embrace an alternative state of being. Looking at how performances transfer this spirit to new settings reveals what aspects of the club are essential and those that aren’t.

Sharon Eyal, R.O.S.E. 2024. Photography by Stephanie Berger, courtesy of Park Avenue Armory.

Eyal’s dancers make their entrance. The lighting shifts from roving blue to yellow spotlights as Ben UFO’s tracks transition to more melodic beats. Clad in deconstructed lace Dior lingerie with dark red tears painted on their faces, the dancers move cautiously in a tightly maintained pack, slicing paths through the horde with hoof-like steps and jerky leg extensions. After around ten minutes of this controlled choreography, the dancers vanish as the lighting shifts back to blue and Ben UFO picks up his dubby beats. The club, as we knew it, resumes. This cycle of tightly executed movements and free-flowing club-goers repeats several times, each time emboldening the dancers to plunge further into the crowd.

Clubbing in a building once built for the U.S. Army National Guard on Manhattan’s Upper East Side turns out to be surprisingly successful — at least for the audience. What starts as an awkward, scattered group searching for their non existent seats gradually gels into an engaged, bouncing crowd that erupts in cheers each time the dancers enter and exit. Performance patrons who might never step foot in a club find themselves swept up in its potential for communion, moving in unison with fellow ticket holders. But it isn’t until the very end of R.O.S.E. that the dancers finally break free from Eyal’s choreography and join the fired-up audience in a brief moment of improvisatory movement with the music. By keeping her dancers at arm’s length, Eyal seems more interested in the club as a backdrop for her signature movement style than wholly as a space with meaningful stories to be told.

Michele Rizzo, HIGHER xtn. 2024. Photography by Cameron Kelly courtesy of MoMA PS1.

Back in May, I attended Wire Festival, a multiday electronic music event at Knockdown Center that had no shortage of organically united dancefloors. It attracted a crowd of seasoned ravers who were eager to celebrate the start of spring as they danced alongside DJs who played well into the daylight. I left Wire in an afternoon daze to see Michele Rizzo’s HIGHER xtn. at MoMA PS1. My sleepless euphoria only deepened as the performance unfolded, starting with a lone dancer who looked plucked out of the festival.

The dancer, dressed in sneakers, baggy jeans, and a tight tank top, shuffled slowly into the gallery, perfectly in sync with the looping bars of an understated electronic melody. Soon, other dancers, clad in the same staple rave uniform, joined him — each having traveled from Europe for the U.S. museum debut of HIGHER xtn., which premiered at the Stedelijk in Amsterdam in 2018 and quickly became a fixture at kunsthalles and festivals across the continent. As the score’s tempo climbed, the choreography locked into a 16-count sequence, which the dancers executed with precise synchrony. They remained intensely focused, never making eye contact with each other, as they sought release in the endless repetition of synthesized beats. Once the dancers reached their limit, they stopped the sequence and exited the gallery, one by one.

HIGHER xtn. used the focused daylight of the gallery to highlight the meditative release found in the repetitive movements that dominate dark dancefloors. The performance’s restraint brought more consistency and intentionality than Eyal’s all-encompassing club construction in R.O.S.E. Yet both performances offer enticing entry points into club culture for those who may not frequent raves. Rizzo’s ecstatic, hypnotic repetitions reveal how the club can mirror other meditative practices, while Eyal’s interpolation of performance and clubbing helped hesitant audience members blossom by the end. Still, both works overlook one of the most underappreciated aspects of clubbing — its potential for individual expression. HIGHER xtn.’s pristine uniformity especially risks promoting the outdated techno trope that there’s a “right” way to dance to electronic music.

Maybe this shortcoming is, in fact, a benefit. For habitual ravers jaded by one too many sunrise sets, it’s a reminder to return to the club with more intention. If you pause and peer through the darkness, you’ll see hundreds of people moving to the same beat, each with their own subtle variations. This collective choreography is a ready-made spectacle that doesn’t need validation in a theater or museum. And when the music shifts slightly, you can watch the ripple effect sweep through the crowd while feeling the new beat in your body. Maybe this small bit of magic is best left on the dance floor.

Culture

Real Slick, Jack: Psyche Organic Arrives in New York

Shop Psyche Organic at Happier Grocery and Dimes. Coming soon to @citarellagourmetmarket @unionmarket @gourmetgarage @deciccos @fairwaymarket plus many more.

Culture

Porsche SCOPES Brings Art, Music, and Design to Toronto

The festival was a full immersion into Toronto’s dynamic creative energy. Day one set the tone with DJ collective Living Room, followed by an experimental performance by Claire Rousay that captivated the crowd. Jewelry designer Steff Eleoff unveiled her Porsche Taycan 4S art car installation—a bold fusion of automotive and wearable art inspired by her Sedona ring—while OVO Sound’s Naomi Sharon and DVSN wrapped up the night with powerful, genre-defying performances.

We witnessed SCOPES Toronto bridging underground and mainstream with day two’s lineup. DJ Korea Town Acid’s set paved the way for Angelphroot and Dameer’s debut of BASSMATI, a track blending South Asian influences with bass-driven sounds. Chippy Nonstop’s return to Toronto and Richie Hawtin’s extended set were milestones of the evening, proving that the city’s underground scene has a global resonance.

The final day featured standout performances from local pianist Harrison, Indigenous artist Tia Wood, and hip-hop visionary Sean Leon, who elevated his set with a live choir. Moonshine Collective’s film and musical performance explored themes of African utopia, showcasing art’s power to bridge culture and technology. Rising Toronto star SadBoi, who paused her tour to perform at SCOPES, further underscored the festival’s commitment to nurturing local talent.

Throughout the weekend, we experienced installations from artists like Mitsu Mitsu and culinary creations from Bar Mordecai, capturing the multifaceted creativity Porsche SCOPES brought to Toronto. This milestone 10th edition, open to all, allowed Toronto’s vibrant arts scene to thrive, underscoring SCOPES’ mission to celebrate local talent while connecting it to a global audience.

office had the chance to connect with rising star SadBoi ahead of the event. In our conversation, she shared insights into her creative journey and reflected on what performing and growing up in Toronto means to her and her work.

How are you, and where are you at right now? You told me you were traveling.

Um, I’m good, I’m feeling really good right now. I’m traveling back to Salt Lake City. I had a show yesterday in Seattle. I’m on tour right now with Coco and Claire.

How is touring life treating you? Do you like it?

I love being on the road. To be honest, I feel like I don’t know—like I’ve had good experiences and bad ones—but this time it’s really fun, especially with the people I’m surrounded by. It’s also the longest tour I’ve been on; I have about four more weeks to go. I’m trying not to think about how many days I have left.

Do you feel homesick?

Yes, because when I start thinking about how many days are left, I start to miss my dogs. I’ve just been trying to stay in the moment—I don’t even know what day of the week it is, to be honest with you.

Oh, sweet! What are your dogs’ names?

Jillian and Winston. I know, they’re crazy names.

You’ll be performing at SCOPES in Toronto, which is where you grew up. Do you feel like the crowd is different when you perform in Toronto compared to other cities?

Yes, I mean, Toronto just feels different because it’s home. Every time I come back to perform, something in my career has changed. The last time I performed in Toronto, people just wanted to have a good time, and I’m excited to perform back home again to see everyone’s reactions. I know it’s going to be different from the last time. It’s exciting to see your own growth. Toronto is a tough crowd, though. If we’re with you, we’re really with you.

So, they’re super picky? You have to gain their respect, or what is it?

I think Toronto people are in their own world, but when something really connects with them, they’ll lose themselves in the moment. But it takes something to bring them out of that. Toronto crowds are tough because even if they like you, they won’t show it outright until they’re really vibing with you.

It’s like a vibe check, right?

Exactly. They’ll enjoy your performance, but it’s hard to explain. When people visit Toronto, they often say, “Oh, you guys are so nice,” and I’m like, “I don’t think we’re that nice, we’re just polite.” Like, you can walk down the street, and no one will say anything, but it’s just our mannerisms.

You mentioned Toronto can have a moody energy, especially at night, and that the underground night scene there really inspires you. Can you talk more about what makes Toronto's nightlife so influential for you?

Absolutely, Toronto has this unique energy that comes alive at night. Similar to New York, there are the popular clubs everyone knows, but you need to find your niche—the people who know where the real parties are. I remember going to raves in high school yards, sneaking in because I wasn’t old enough. Events like Baby, Jerk!, and Yes Yes Y’all were pivotal, exposing me to DJs blending dancehall with EDM—something I hadn’t seen before. Toronto nightlife is moody and intense, but when everyone’s out, it’s like the whole city is alive.