Thursday, January 15, 2026

Only in New York

From the NY Times "Metropolitan Diary," January 11, 2026.

Dear Diary:

I’ve been obsessed with the Dirty Projectors’ song “Remade Horizon” since it came out in 2009. It’s one of the few songs I keep permanently downloaded on my phone, so I don’t need Wi-Fi when I want to hear it.

When the mood strikes — and it often does — I press play, and there it is: a strange, beautiful bit of art pop with a wild passage at the end where two women’s voices trade off notes so quickly it sounds like one instrument.

Some years after first hearing the song, I moved from Dallas to the Lower East Side. Not long after that, I was at my favorite neighborhood bar, talking with my favorite bartender, Kayla, when her two roommates walked in. They joined us, and I ended up chatting with one of them, Haley, who took the stool next to mine. I asked the usual New York question: “So, what brought you here?”

“Oh,” she said, “I moved to Brooklyn to sing with a band.”

“Would I have heard of them?” I asked.

“Maybe,” she said. “They’re called Dirty Projectors.”

I didn’t say anything, just pulled out my phone, opened my music library and turned the screen toward her so she could see the title: “Remade Horizon.”

“Are you on this track?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said, as if it were nothing.

It turned out that the voice I had been hearing for more than a decade leaping through that final passage belonged to the woman now sitting next to me.

We became friends, and I still have “Remade Horizons” on my phone. Now, when it comes on during a crowded subway ride, New York feels exactly like the place I wanted it to be when I moved here.

Steve Crozier

I'm sorry -- and I say this not out of New York City chauvinism -- but that is like the coolest story I have ever heard.

P.S.: Here's the song in question.

Heh.

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