Hampton’s Point of View: A day in NYC. To be read while listening to “All of the Lights” by Kanye West

I take my father’s AirPod out and toss it in the air.

As it lands in the palm of my hand, “All of the Lights” lyrics of Kanye West’s “All of The Lights” explode in my head.

I was still just counting out the moves on his most recent ‘get’, transmitted to me at yoga-beach this morning. Now this!

In a new interception, in a silent house after the sun has set, I just heard my father ask Alexa to arrange a chopper pick-up.

“I suppose…can work,” fools no one as to where he’s headed: Unprotected Forward Position.

Kanye’s “All of the lights” horns trumpet for the ominousness.

He’s going to Fotografiska. He is going to walk into my mother’s office, see her cleared desk, watch the office re-live her loss and then their sympathy will bleed them all out, group style.

I draw a line in the air with my finger tracing the azimuth from Southampton to Fotografiska and explode my hand on the landing. He’s a lone child soldier with a nuclear grenade walking straight into ‘Charlie’. In other words, ‘He is going Downtown’.

Rhianna sings to Kanye, “Turn up the lights in here baby.”

I’ll have to figure out E=MC² and at the same time get ahead of this one.

— -

In the quiet of the beach and the cooperating ripple of Atlantic this morning, I hear a whisper of Kanye crying, “Something wrong. I hold my head.”

I always feel like that and I quieten that noise out for now.

I’m sitting in sacred prayer pose, in quiet meditation, defying factors of gravity and the super-saturated salty mist of morning causing everyone to sweat but me, that style? Not quite, my hands are like that because I am literally trying to hold my world together.

— -

The turn-out to my walk-up yoga exceeded impractical. The class is stretched further than I intend to carry my voice. I break from a ‘fire element’ pose to walk through the ranks. With healing hands I gently trace corrective molds to the yogi’s stances. When I see the collective start to crack from the struggle of the hold, I skip back to my position and move to ‘relaxed child’ on my knees, torso bent and arms stretched out on the ground.

Like a vast robot army, the beach synchronizes, exhaling to my subserving flow. A sea bird rogues around us, looking curiously into our ritual and when its eyes meet mine, it shyly looks down. Now I’ve exhausted my interest and I stand up, turn to yoga-company and bow down to them from the waist.

My evacuation is swift and I respond to a steady stream of “Namaste’s” with each their own corresponding “Ditto’s”. My girls now following me at pace to our privacy in the dunes between the wild grasses below my house.

Moments later, I hear the words, “it’s limited edition and out-of-stock”. I curl my hand, asking the girls to catch up and follow me. There’s new business and I need to negotiate them into it. Let me be honest, this one is: Exponentially More Complicated, or more simply put, ‘E=MC²’.

— -

Getting ahead means getting to Manhattan before him.

Kanye’s “Fast cars, shooting stars” lyrics beat in my head.

I’m meditating while sitting small in the wide seat of the black SUV. The driver’s foot at the edge of my thought control. As I hear “shooting star”, the car bumps air over a rise and as traction re-takes, the driver floors it onto the Williamsburg bridge.

A police officer sees a flash of black mass out the corner of his eye and before he’s able to discern it, he’s already doubting it.

New York City on the approach under the bridge appears like a chessboard in 3 dimensions and in perpetual play. In this game, everyone is either a King or a Queen. In the 4th, my finger scrolls left on time and when I’m running up the steps to Fotografiska, his car is just pulling up.

I folded my bangs above my forehead and clipped them in. I replaced my usual cat-eye’s with rose colored pilot sunglasses and I’m wearing a black-satin short sleeved long jumpsuit. I’m using a perfume I never wore before. My lips are dry, broken and unkept, partly from being nervous recently. The perfect disguise.

I’m carrying just my phone with Bluetooth turned “Off’ and his AirPod which I synched to his phone before I left Southampton this morning.

The lobby to Fotografiska is my mother’s power and her precision like the change she stimulated and the constant she gave us. When I see her mermaid picture, I throw a golden javelin through it. I hate how people took ownership of her when she died. She was our apple and everyone is now biting into that pie.

I run through the hallway breathlessly. My Vibram rubber soled rugged suede ankle boots squeak in an alpha rhythm on the polished floor. When I reach the door to the management offices, I proverbially burst in.

I was not mentally prepared for it, at all. The entire office, all my mother’s friends turn toward me. I cave in to my knees and into my tears. It’s overwhelming. Exactly as I imagined my father, they all do re-live her loss in front of my eyes, cluster bomb style.

Office Manager, ”Hampton! Why are you here, baby, are you ok? What’s wrong?”

Another two of her friends collect me off the floor. I reconstitute.

Hampton, “My father is coming here, now. We cannot let him in. We need to close this door. Lock it and call security and have him turned away. Unceremoniously. Just have him turned away from here. Please. Help me. You see, he is still dealing with our loss.” I can’t stop my voice from breaking as I say “loss” .

The office is stunned frozen and unable to react.

I command them to action, “Now. Unceremoniously. Call security. Please. Help me lock this door.”

I push the door closed, slide a latch across and then stand with my back against the wood, my legs bent and the rubber of my shoes holding against the slip of floor.

Office Manager, ”Security? Hamish Westfield is making his way to the management office now. Please turn him away. We’re not here today and no one is supposed to be here. Absolute professionalism. This means no recognition, no autographs, no selfies, just make him leave. Thank you. Now!”

His push of the door jars me. His hand against the door and my body backed up against it. A one hundred year old piece of reconditioned wood between us. I’m scared he’ll feel my beating heart disseminate in waves through the fragile solid state that separates us. I close my eyes and breathe regularly.

We hear security turning him away, expeditiously and on-point. I sense his frustration play out in the quiet courtesy he returns to the guard and then I imagine him scooping up the entire island into the palm of his hand.

“Something wrong, I hold my head”, this time a warning from Kanye plays in my head.

I ask, “Where can he be going now?”

Office Manager, “Verōnika, Upstairs?”

She doesn’t hesitate, picking up the phone and then finding the host, “Hamish Westfield is on his way to the restaurant. He’s looking for someone. Let him go. He will go in and out. You are not to speak to him unless he speaks to you and then you know nothing. OK? Confirm!”

She puts the phone down and looks to me with questioning hand gestures, widened eyes and a frowning mouth.

I turn to them in standing prayer position, tears falling as I look at her cleared desk and then I recompose. I do a deep bow, karate style and leave.

“I’m on my way, headed up the stairs” lyrics from Kanye shout in my head.

Verōnika was a saint of some sorts and its also where my mother found her solace, sitting alone and working before the restaurant became the hectic lunch it is now.

By the time I reach upstairs, he is walking an aisle of Verōnika. I realize his anger and suspect he’ll kick the legs of the chairs out from underneath the diners as he walks through the room.

I watch him take out his phone and I quickly wear his AirPod. When I hear my mother’s voicemail, I take out the AirPod and then hide in the stairwell where I can follow him discreetly.

Kanye repeats, “Fast car, shooting star.”

My father’s driver is where I’ll go and now I’ll get in front of this.

As my father rides the elevator, my steps downstairs turn to leaps and then a final jump of eight, landing with a rubberized squeak.

The city is fire and ice compared to the frantic efficiency of my state. As I walk up to the driver he looks at my approach with guarded curiosity until I take off my sunglasses.

Hampton, “Hi Sonny.”

Sonny, “Miss Hampton. I did not recognize you. I did not know you were meeting us here today.”

Hampton, “Sonny, I am not here and you never saw me. I need you to wrangle my father in and get him home.”

Sonny, “Miss Hampton. I cannot do that. Why do you want that?”

In a charming fifteen year old cannot say “no” to deferring type of way, “Sonny, we’re arranging a surprise for him today. We don’t want to ruin the surprise, do we? Try to help us out. Pull him in and take him home, please?”

Sonny looks around uncomfortably until his eyes give up, “You’re not here? Then you better get out of sight, I see him. I’ll signal him to go.”

Sonny rapidly lifts his index finger to a circle above his head, roping him in to the ‘Rally Point’. My father’s response is tactically proficient, signaling the open fist of his hand, ‘hold’ style. He then appears to step-off again across the diagonal of the street.

Sonny looks to me with a scrunched up shoulder for, “What now? As he points toward him, I read his mind, “There’s Hamish Westfield walking off alone into the unconscionable streets of Manhattan.”

On that inclination he’s obviously headed to the New York EDITION hotel in the former MetLife Clocktower building. The restaurant most recently played out as my mother’s private members club. Framed pictures of her and my father are part of a curation of photo’s of Manhattan’s most esteemed and exploited plastered everywhere. Even I am featured in the belly of her stomach in a picture of them together at a photo shoot.

Hampton, “Sunny in the inside. Let’s go! Follow from some distance and please keep us in sight. I have a plan.”

“Copy that,” Sonny’s warrior past manifests as firm and fast.

The Clocktower is a kick away standing over Madison Square Park. My father seems to be marching in-tune to some esoteric beat in his head. Inside the lobby he takes a momentary stand and then runs towards a spiral staircase.

“Extra bright, I want y’all to see this.” Lyrics from Kanye’s “All of the lights,” play in my head.

Positioning myself between the elevator and the spiral staircase, I lift my phone and in my loudest New York voice to Siri, “I just saw Hamish Westfield at the EDITION hotel. He just ran up the stairs to the Clocktower restaurant. Hamish Westfield is here. Right now. In front of me!”

Heads turn toward me from throughout the lobby. Time pauses and then the lounging leopards return, apparently unfazed, to pushing into their phones and sipping from paper coffee cups while staring into oblivion.

I am confident however that energy has been transferred, their processes are repurposed. One-by-one, the not-so-sly foxes start to crawl their way casually to the elevator and to the spiral staircase.

I am left smiling and thinking how curiosity is the biggest killer of cats.

It is just a few frames forward before I see my father return, this time falling out of the elevator. As he pushes through the lobby, he evaporates the call of the room. He even winks at the doorman on his way out. Celebrities have a complicated affection for their fame, battled out as relevance versus anonymity.

My father walks into the middle of the decrepit city street, flashed by a swarm around him.

Kanye’s “I’m heading home, I’m almost there” lyrics plays triumphantly as Hamish Westfield quickly raises his index finger to a circle above the rest.

And me? I fall back into a fade away watching Sonny arrive and listening to Alanis Morissette‘s upbeat “We’re never gonna survive, unless we get a little crazy” with my father’s AirPod in my head.