Yearning on an MTA Shuttle Bus

by Evan Crommett with art by Aleah Black

Yearning on an MTA Shuttle Bus is an ode to NYC and, specifically, the version of the city that I experienced when I was growing up here. I was an imaginative, bookish kid, and would often conflate the urban chaos of my surroundings with the epic tales of dragons, prophecies, and old gods that filled up my interior life. I've always ached with the sensation of floating between worlds––between midtown streets & magical forests, and also——as a half-Latino——between two different cultures. This group of songs aims to bring the listener into the joys and pains of blended identity/reality, and to reveal the ways that these distinct forces aren't actually so far apart. Ultimately, everyone in New York is on their own complex, mythical quest for meaning. Sometimes, that journey just entails getting stuck on a shuttle bus.

Aleah's companion piece is styled as an old spellbook or grimoire to honor the current of magical realism and deep-lore that runs through this project. It proposes gritty, modern notions of alchemy and magic such as an invocation to Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson, and the NYC subway map in the style of an ancient manuscript. Enjoy ~leafing~ through it, and do imagine that you've discovered these pages inside a weatherbeaten tome on a dusty bookshelf in a once-buried library.