Grand Central

Before the festival had a website, it needed a script, and I didn't know how to code.

Some context. In 1995 I was living in Manhattan without resources, a network, or much of a plan, having just decided not to go to law school. I worked the front desk of the New York Sports Club, and as a personal trainer there, and I ran an ongoing private survey from behind that reception desk: What do you do? How do you like it? I was trying to figure out what I was going to be. That desk is [Ian: confirm, also where you first met Andrew Rasiej?], and between shifts I was teaching myself HTML and living on the early internet.

Then came the festival, and "if you can make it happen, go for it," and suddenly I was responsible for making something exist that I did not know how to build. So I did what you did in 1995: I posted to [Ian: Usenet or UUNET?]. The world's first online music festival needs help, something like that. An email came back from akbar@mit.[edu? (.nu?)], a sophomore computer science student. He could write the script. He was also swamped, so it took weeks of back-and-forth to set a meeting: a specific afternoon, in Tribeca, near the Knitting Factory, where the festival was headquartered.

On the day of the meeting, the sports club scheduled a promotional "gym day," at Grand Central Station. My assistant manager, who out-earned me by seventy-five cents an hour, told me to show up or lose the job. I showed up, figuring I was already at Grand Central; an hour before end of shift I'd just hop a train downtown. I asked early. "We'll see." I asked at the appointed hour. "No, we need you here."

So I stood there in the middle of Grand Central (no cell phones, no way to reach him), recalculating departure and arrival times as the window closed, and then watching it close entirely. Weeks of scheduling, gone. I stood in the commuter river hating my life, hating the world, radiating do not talk to me at the entire terminal.

Despite this, one man made a beeline for me. No, I thought, as hard as I could. It was cinematic: the crowd opened a temporary gap and he walked straight through it, a book in his hand.

"Can I help you?" I asked, meaning the opposite.

"Can you tell me how to get to Tribeca?"

I looked down at the book in his hand. Written on it: 3pm with Ian, Tribeca.

Out of eight million people, the stranger I was supposed to meet across town walked up to me, in the one place I was trapped, to ask directions to the meeting we were both missing.

I'm still moved to tears telling it. It taught me the thing I've navigated by ever since: when you're following your purpose, the Universe will rise to meet you.

It doesn't promise the fortune. It promises the meeting.

[Ian: ending beat needed. Did you two sit down right there? Did Akbar write the script? One or two sentences to land the plane.]