After 4 days of eating, spending and touring the city, one of my best friends and his wonderful wife have returned to the Land of Nebraska. Despite the fact that I have seen Eliot 3 times since graduating from college 12 years ago, he is my best friend and one of 3 people I would have to stuff in my suitcase if I was heading to a deserted island along with the books, movies and all those other "Top 3 Things" I'd have to take with me (I might be mixing my clichéd metaphors here). I could have easily spent the entire time hanging out in the cave, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes and talking.
On the other hand, Kat and I were excited about showing Eliot and Anna our Wonderful City in what might have been a defensive attempt to justify why we continue to live here despite the exorbitant rent and neurosis-breeding loneliness we regularly endure. It's also True that walking friends around New York City has always been a Botox injection of the Soul- it all looks fresh and New! I get to return to places I love but no longer visit, like the Brooklyn Bridge, the West Village, the Lower East Side, etc.. I also get to see a Vibrant, energetic city through the eyes of a newbie- I see it in that wide-eyed way when I first arrived. Like Botox, however, the feeling eventually fades (which is good because our lips don't look that good when they're poofy).
This time, however, things didn't play out the way I had expected. I never found that renewed sense of Pride in my City. Neighborhoods that I loved had changed. Punk and goth kids no longer ringed the Cube statue at St. Mark's Place. Long, glass-encased facades, featuring overpriced food and chain-stores lined a street that once choked with second-hand record shops, funky T-shirts and underground gothwear and videos. Gleaming buildings of million-dollar apartments towered over tenement buildings. I was pointing along streets that bared no resemblance to the artistic havens they once held. I felt as if I were an old man who pointed at where things 'used to be' and reminisced about ghosts of the past that no one could possibly recognize among the people who frequented those streets today.
I realized that I was living in this city, waiting for times long-lost to return. The revolutions of Abstract Expressionism, folk rock, street poetry, punk, glam, vaudeville, the White Way are long, long gone. And here I am, standing at the bus stop, adamant that one of those buses would realize that it had forgotten a passenger and come back to get me. As I get older, I don't want to be a part of a Movement or find immortality through my art. I just want my best friend to be able to drop in, watch a movie, and hang out... and that'd probably be all the inspiration I'd need.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
"As I get older, I don't want to be a part of a Movement or find immortality through my art. I just want my best friend to be able to drop in, watch a movie, and hang out... and that'd probably be all the inspiration I'd need"
I wonder if it's a generational thing. I'm about at the same point in my life too. I'm all about deepening my friendships and my ties with my (tiny) family.
Just today, on my metro ride back home, I was thinking that I couldn't wait to finally have a house of my own (next year), where friends could drop in for coffee or spend the weekend (for the out-of-towners), creating a central hearth of sorts, a warm, welcoming place to physically bring my loved ones closer to me, to give them back the safety and love that they give me.
Even though I used to think of myself as a loner, a misanthrope, I now find that my greatest ambition in life is love.
Egads, how corny I get with age! LOL And it gets worse with every passing year! (consider this a warning: it can happen to you too!)
I guess that I've finally realized that the cynical, "I can do it on my own" walls that I'd built around myself were just there to hide my insecurity (how's _that_ for pop psychology cliché! LOL). And as love and friendship have somehow found there way to me (and endure), I can build on those foundations, and find greater riches there than I could have ever hoped for. And _that_ is what I aspire to.
Who would have guessed: I'm a mushy sentimental after all!
What happens to cool vanishing spots/people, though? (was thinking about that last night)
Does this creative energy simply get channeled elsewhere, to other cool venues, or does it simply disappear, blandify into one big mainstream blob?
I was thinking about the little adventures I had as a kid in the nearby corn field/creek (scaring each other about the Eeeevil farmer, picking up snails and tadpoles, climbing trees, picking berries and stuff) which has now been paved over for roads and condos... this has disappeared for good, no other green space has replaced it.
Does this happen to creative spaces too? Do they get "paved over" by conformism/profit and never get replaced? Or do they evolve into something else (blogosphere or general Internet venues, perhaps)?
Is this what will happen to Montreal? Currently, there are innumerable cool/ethnic/casual/offbeat spots to be found everywhere (I know, I love my city but seriously, it really is fantastic), but will it turn bland too, in the name of profit?
Hmmmm...
I think that they ebb and flow like winding rivers. There's a great book by Mark Twain called "Life on the Mississippi". In it, Twain describes the life of a riverboat pilot of the 1800s. He talks about how the river would completely change from one day to the next. Sediment and rain would cause the river to carve a wide swath in one direction then completely change course days, or even hours, later. When one pilot met another travelling in opposite direction, the pilot could only predict what the river might look like a couple miles ahead. That's often the way I think of great, creative communities. Eddies of discontent and restlessness drive people to move to a certain place at a certain time. Someone starts a great bar, cheap housing attracts some artists, a few people start talking and who knows what becomes of it all? By the time most of us discover what has happened, it has already run its course and become something different.
When the underground moves enough people above ground, it's always in danger of becoming mainstream to the point that even the original players don't remember what they believed in. Not everyone, of course, but enough that the intention can be long lost. With so much money in a city like New York, it was bound to lose itself sooner rather than later. To extend your paving example, New York has paved it, then stuck a 40-story, high-income, residential building on it.
The hardest thing about life is enjoying a moment for what it is and recognize when it is time to let it go... like life itself. I'll be damned when I can practice what I preach, though.
I love so many things about the Internet, but I believe that we (human beings) really need that interpersonal interaction. The Internet is still a very narrow segment of the population. Most of my friends never read my blog (even the most avid book readers) because they simply aren't interested in computers. There are movements happening but we really need to find ways of taking this connectivity of the internet and pressing it into real-life contact.
Post a Comment