https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8yaVSLJVLA
Early fall 2011, I am studying for my SAT IIs, taken entirely too late. I find a cold, impersonal cafe up in Columbia, at 120th and Broadway, too far north for the hustle and bustle; it's enclosed, warm; it has food. But it has very high ceilings and large dangling sharp metal sculptures; the chairs are uncomfortable and the people are awkward. I sit there from 9:00pm to 12:00pm most nights for a week or two, studying; there's no internet for non-Columbia students. I go over old physics I really should have known; old algebra tricks, trig and some precalc, graphing by hand; none of it hard, but all worth a look. Occasionally I'll text someone, the human contact is reassuring. This is my music — like the environment, it is functional. It is of human design, but it exudes a sense of robotic efficiency, like a professional businessman in a cafe in Germany, perhaps — all business. I forget that my bed is just a few blocks away, and the isolation gets me to work.
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