We awoke one April morning in the middle of a dream: for as long as I can remember, when I thought about America, I thought about New York. We were here! Not as the great adventurers; we hadn’t suddenly become 2016’s Andy Warhols or Patti Smiths, or even real-life Batmen… The chaos was assaulting us, nonethless: children were yelling in the schoolyard across the street, mixing their sopranoes with the honking cars straddling the intersection in the corner.
Among garbage bags, we made our way swiftly to the subway. Or the train, or whatever. The N Train took us from Astoria to Manhattan: just one letter after Smith’s train. I had read the book before going to NY: I had no idea why it was called The M Train — “M” for “Memory”? Turns out, its title is more NY than that. Patti Smith lived in Detroit for a long time: how could she be away from the Metropolis for so long? The only place that she could call “home” after Sonic died…
The equinimity of large places; the restfulness of anonymity. First impresssions are the strongest! Can I recapture that feeling, now, two months later? What good it would do anyway?
When still in Romania (a lifetime ago), I reviewed an installation intervention, entitled “I love NY”. Andreea Costenco had spent some time in the city that everyone wants to visit, and documented her immersion in this Mecca of everything (http://www.saatchiart.com/art/Installation-I-Love-NY/31447/118868/view). The pressure to love this place is huge: who, among the intelligentsia, can go to NY and say that they didn’t love it?! Blasphemy: you want to be a cultured person? Well, then: you’d better love Proust and NY!
The pressure minimized my experience: expectations upon expectations, built by years of daydreaming. I blame Woody Allen the most: “neat” is not part of my vocabulary, but I do have a mantra and black soap smoothes all wrinkles away.
Would the air have felt different on the skin if I hadn’t spent 8 years in Cali? I am an LA convert; my students tell me that my accent is laced with West Coast inflexions, layered on top of my Eastern European English.
Reflecting back on my NY experience, I allow myself to jettison the expectations. There were perfect moments, punctuated by my spontaneously breaking into song. When the inner critic was dormant, the inner self appreciated the tea houses, the MET, the eclair had at The Plaza…
But, if anyone asks: I didn’t love NY! A recognition of the opposite would almost feel like a betrayal: LA occupies prime real estate in my heart; there is no room for others…