I am so in love. Totally enchanted. Already missing my new love. No, don’t worry it’s not a new man so soon after the other! I’ve just spent a week in the US of which 4 were in New York city. The last time I was there was when I was 17, in 1973. I spent a summer there while my father taught summer school in Columbia University. I remember it being super cool – well that was an incredible time. I can’t believe that I haven’t been back since although I did quite seriously think of moving there while I was in my late 20s and I wonder how my life would have turned out if I had.
So I wasn’t expecting to love it quite so much. A White Bear recommended a hotel in Brooklyn and it was really exciting to meet my first blogfriend in real life. She was refreshingly similar to how I had imagined and we fell ridiculously easily into intense conversation. Highlight of the week was going to see John Zorn and friends perform crazy improv avant garde jazz which was so totally ‘New York’ it felt like I had actually planned the whole trip when in actuality I sort of gravitated towards all the things I wanted to do with a strange magnetism. I simply got out the map and guessed where it would be a kind of good idea to go and somehow it all worked out.
I did some classic things – walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and along the East River at night (thanks AWB and D!) and wandered round Greenwich Village and West Village looking at the interesting shops and cafes. I walked around Central Park in the rain watching all the runners panting their way past me. But it was actually the whole atmosphere which enchanted me – slightly haphazard, endearingly grubby and extraordinarily friendly. It was very familiar – partly I think because so much of New York has been used in films. Coming into Brooklyn the taxi drove alongside the raised railway and I half expected a car chase to ensue! But familiar too in the sense of ‘family’ – it felt like home, I could relax and put my feet up.
It was so much the perfect thing to be doing post all the madness of the last couple of months with Mum and the L.I. I felt I had time and space to process things – and the advantage of having AWB to talk to about it all too – and yet I was, at the same time, truly on vacation, away from work, from family responsibilities, from anyone who had expectations of me and the freedom was intoxicating. I honestly think the last time I felt like that was nearly 20 years ago. It’s a feeling I want to remember, to build more and more into my everyday life. I was a creative, imaginative and energetic free spirit once upon a time. I’ve spent too long feeling fearful and constrained and I need to be planning my escape strategy lest I forget myself once more.
Three days of the trip was also spent at a conference where I was presenting my work. It went down a storm with some very important people in my field and I feel incredibly excited by the possibility of my ideas becoming internationally recognised by my peers. I need to focus on my work more than anything else over the next few years because that is one area where I do have the potential to gain self esteem and the recognition I desire without it being bound to nonsensical fantasies. Better late than never!!
Here are some photos:
4 Comments
October 18, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Kudos on your success at the conference. That’s good to hear.
October 19, 2009 at 1:29 am
It was a wonderful treat for me, too! I’m so glad you had a good time and enjoyed the city. I also love that grubby wonderfulness, and the serendipity it creates. I think we were talking about how I came to feel that there is no such thing as a “bad day,” and I wonder how much of that is just being in the city. It can be so randomly terrible and beautiful that you can’t put a self-fulfilling narrative onto it.
October 22, 2009 at 8:06 pm
M is going there next week!
October 23, 2009 at 6:58 am
Jealous, jealous, jealous!!!!! business or pleasure?