{"id":25867,"date":"2012-02-07T15:00:10","date_gmt":"2012-02-07T20:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=25867"},"modified":"2014-09-11T08:22:54","modified_gmt":"2014-09-11T12:22:54","slug":"happy-hour-with-gian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/07\/happy-hour-with-gian\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Hour with Gian"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

John Haskell. Photo by Ryan Field.<\/p><\/div>\n

John Haskell, Dec. 13, 2011. Sparks Steak House, East Forty-sixth Street.<\/strong><\/p>\n

John and I met for dinner at Sparks Steak House on East Forty-sixth Street. He was writing a piece on city restaurants where mobsters have been gunned down. Sparks has fine steaks but an even finer history of murder under its front awning. (Mob boss Paul Castellano and his guard were shot out front by mobsters wearing white trench coats and black Russian ushanka<\/em> hats.) I live on West Forty-sixth, so I walked through Times cytotec mexico<\/a> Square and crossed a few more avenues to the restaurant. I passed through the thirty-year-old murder scene out front, came inside, and a rambunctious party filled the reception area. John was already there, in the middle of the party. He waved me his way and we were shown to our table.<\/p>\n

John Haskell:\u00a0I was walking down the street, singing some Christmas carol, like a Nat King Cole thing …<\/em><\/p>\n

Gian:\u00a0Out loud?<\/em><\/p>\n

JH: Yeah, kind of singing, people walking around. The weather\u2019s nice, it\u2019s Christmas time, and I was feeling happy. Happiness is appreciation. I think appreciation has something to do with the fact that you\u2019re going to die. It\u2019s like, \u201cThis is life, and it\u2019s going to be over, but this is the moment now.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Talking around the idea of happiness is holy stuff. Its definition and how to attain it is what Aristotle would ask of Plato in a dusty Athenian salon thousands of years ago. But today, happiness is rarely a topic of discussion outside of a therapist\u2019s office or a sorority dorm room. To be happy, we have learned, we must also be naive. It\u2019s come to seem something corny, even cheesy. Personally, I tend to associate happiness with celebration, because I\u2019ve always thought people were at their best when celebrating. Woes are set aside, spirits are at full throttle, and people get careless and free. For John, it helps to go out the door.<\/p>\n

JH: I\u2019m happy when I\u2019m outside, maybe with people shopping or under the blue sky in the sunset.\u00a0You experience that more as a kid. You look at a sunset and go, \u201cWow, I\u2019ve never seen that.\u201d But after ten thousand sunsets you go, \u201cYeah I\u2019ve seen it.\u201d But it\u2019s good to go out there and say \u201cYes, that\u2019s nice.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

G: It\u2019s good to go out. It helps to be around people. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s the case for everyone though.<\/em><\/p>\n

We do a lot of our love and friendship through windows and screens. How unbothered by it I am is what bothers me most. People are growing more and more socially inept, and you can watch it. The faces of the increasing number of socially anxious people look like robots\u2019 faces in old movies when they go haywire with blinks and tics, swimming eyes and springs popping out. The presence of others seems to be key to living a happy life, but people are more often opting for isolation. I\u2019m afraid we\u2019re making it hard on ourselves.<\/p>\n

JH: I must say, I really like to meet people I don\u2019t know: bumping into someone or making eye contact, having that little conversation. <\/em><\/p>\n

Not all childhoods are happy childhoods, but many are. How soundly and long one slept, and what joy summers were, before we found out people were shit. Youth is precious because most of us look back on it kindly. It\u2019s consoling to think that no matter how unbearable our lives turn out to be, we at least had a couple of nice times before we sat up and looked around and figured out where we were.<\/p>\n

JH: I remember when I was a kid, out of high school, in Europe, I flew into Luxembourg and was going to hitchhike to Paris. I stood on the side of the road and stuck my thumb out, and I was scared, I was petrified, but I also felt \u201cOh my god, this is so exciting.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

If I had to choose a period of my adult life in which I was happiest, I\u2019d say it was during university. There was this one philosophy professor. I\u2019d always watch him walking near campus, alone, but with a smile on his face. This smiling intrigued me to no end. During his Phaedrus lectures, he seemed to radiate a strange joy into the classroom. He made you want to know what he knew. I was under the impression that there was some tidbit of information, a few words I hadn\u2019t yet heard, standing between me and a reason to smile when I walked alone.<\/p>\n

G: What\u2019s the one time that stands out as happiest though?<\/em><\/p>\n

JH: I think it was the first time I rented a car. I flew into some airport in some town somewhere, went to the office and got the car. It was more like ecstasy than happiness. I was just driving a rental car, but there was something thrilling about it. Those thrilling moments don\u2019t happen as much to me now. The downside of those moments is that I was younger, so I also felt more anxiety. <\/em><\/p>\n

G: I think I confuse happiness with joy. I feel happy now though.<\/em><\/p>\n

JH: Well, I think there\u2019s happiness which is like Texas happiness, smiling and everything is good, a little bit with blinders on. And then there\u2019s more\u2014not so much a Buddhist happiness, but an acceptance happiness. If people get promoted, they\u2019re happy, but that\u2019s not happiness. They want the next one. They want the next big thing. <\/em><\/p>\n

John and I talked for three hours. We had martinis, steaks, bottles of wine, and grappas. We were lit already, and after hanging around in the air of the murder scene out front (John got down on the sidewalk, on his back, and posed for a picture as the corpse of Castellano), we went up the street to find another bar. We didn\u2019t want the next promotion, but the next drink was in order. The bar we found was a sad bar, and I remember feeling as if we\u2019d pushed our luck. We\u2019d had a great time already, but we were trying to hold onto it and it stagnated. We had our drink quickly and said good night.<\/p>\n

JH: But how much is happiness conscious? I remember one time as a kid in high school running across the parking lot, and I just loved to run, but I didn\u2019t think of it as happiness then. So what part of happiness is the awareness of it and what part is not even thinking about happiness, but just doing it? I think happiness has a little self-consciousness, but it\u2019s weird because it\u2019s enough to tell you \u2018This is a moment\u2019 but not enough to say \u201cI want to preserve it and hold on to it,\u201d because then it stagnates and dies. <\/em><\/p>\n

When I think of happiness, I see myself chasing ass, or being newly fascinated with a friend. I see myself either by their side, or constantly texting. A lot of those times I\u2019m drinking too much and eating too much or I\u2019m in the back of a cab at five A.M.<\/small> with a friend jawing on about something too much. There is often music. That\u2019s some of the time. Other times I\u2019m somewhere alone, with nothing. It\u2019s quiet, and I can see myself happy and thinking. I just can\u2019t see what it is that I\u2019m thinking about.<\/p>\n

But, when I think of happiness, I mostly see myself with others.<\/p>\n

JH: The thing about that is it\u2019s all about desire.\u00a0It\u2019s all about wanting to be with that person. I remember in Chicago, I fell in love with this girl. I remember being with her, but what I remember more than being with her was that it was the dead of winter in Chicago, snow coming down, and getting on the bus to meet her. Standing in the snow, wind in my face, waiting at the bus stop, the bus never coming, waiting to meet her. It was not so much about her as the feeling I had of being in the world\u2014the snow which I hate, the cold which I hate, but I could feel my face alive, I loved that snow and I loved that cold. So I think it\u2019s not so much the person as the feeling.<\/em><\/p>\n

Giancarlo DiTrapano edits <\/em>The New York Tyrant<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Haskell, Dec. 13, 2011. Sparks Steak House, East Forty-sixth Street. John and I met for dinner at Sparks Steak House on East Forty-sixth Street. He was writing a piece on city restaurants where mobsters have been gunned down. Sparks has fine steaks but an even finer history of murder under its front awning. (Mob […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[5861,1785,5863,5860,270,5858,5864,5862,5857,5859],"class_list":["post-25867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-aristotle","tag-buddhism","tag-john-haskell","tag-nat-king-cole","tag-paris","tag-paul-castellano","tag-phaedrus","tag-plato","tag-sparks-steak-house","tag-times-square"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHappy Hour with Gian by Giancarlo DiTrapano<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"February 7, 2012 \u2013 John Haskell, Dec. 13, 2011. Sparks Steak House, East Forty-sixth Street. John and I met for dinner at Sparks Steak House on East Forty-sixth Street. 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