The Arts in New York City
People have always said that classical music is an acquired taste. Personally, I never quite understood that. I have always liked classical music, even when I didn’t know who the author was or what the name of the composition was either. Most people when they think of classical music, a stuffy concert hall filled with extremely elderly, high society socialites, all listening to classical music playing ever so softly by a snooty conductor. However, nothing could be further from the truth. My first musical concert featuring a classical piece, Missa Solemnis written by Beethoven was very memorable and completely deviated from the stereotype.
The height of our seats in the concert hall put the height of our seats at the performance of The Elixer of Love to shame. Regardless, however, we could still see the performers. Looking around, the spectators were people of all ages which instantly debunked the stereotype. The lights dimmed and the performers walked onto the stage, followed by the conductor welcomed by a round of applause.
The concert hall became pin drop silent as the conductor picked up his baton. With quick flicks of his wrist, the orchestra began to play. Despite being seated in the back, we could hear every note crystal clear. Instantly I was drawn into this alternate world of musical notes and melodies. I could not tear my attention away from the performers. Each melody contained a simple face value appearance and complex inner mechanisms at the same time, smoothly transitioning into the next melody. I would try to follow along and predict the melody but each time I would try, there would always be a subtle yet noticeable change. The voices accompanied the music perfectly. What was really mesmerizing was the precision and unison which each section moved in. The violins in the string section moved in perfect synchronization. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my very first classical concert. It was nothing like I ever imagined it would be.
A couple of days leading up to the show, a question kept revolving around my head: What was to be expected? I looked online searching for answers. Had this show premiered before? I only found a brief description of what was intended:
http://broadwayworld.com/article/Roulette-Presents-SPELLBEAMED-With-Zeena-Parkins-910-11-20120817
I took away from this that a random assortment of possessions from the players, would be laid out for all to view. Keep in mind that I did not have the luxury of experience when I read this description (reading it now I find this description gives everything away). In class, Professor had informed us that the show would be Avant-garde. Avant-garde is the invention and application of new techniques to a certain field, specifically music in this case. Perfect, I thought to myself: No one was supposed to have thought of or tried what this group was about to do in less that a day. About an hour leading the anticipation had built up quite a bit. I entered the rather mundane building and looked around for a clue to what was to come. Walking to the front of the stage that was rather close to the seats before it, I found an odd and seemingly unrelated assortment of objects lying out in the open.
The performance, if that’s what it was, began with a woman reading into a microphone. Her voice came out distorted and impossible to understand. I found this rather annoying and pointless because only the people sitting close enough to hear the words directly from her could piece together a word here and there. However, I reservedly praise this part in regards to pushing the performance in the direction of Avant-garde music. At the same time, another woman dressed as a surgeon picked up random objects and used them to strum a harp. As expected the sounds were very dissonant and displeasing to the ear. The point, I feel/hope, of this part was not to push the boundaries of Avant-garde music. As expected, every object played on the harp created a different sound which implied that every object regardless of it was commonplace or not, was unique and “when its song was sung” its tale came to life so to speak.
Then the musicians began to play their respective instruments in a non-traditional way. The violinist would strum his violin with his fingers rather than with a bow; the pianist would open the piano and strum the strings and so on. The resulting music was very painful on the ears and the fact that it seemed that they were improvising did not help the music. In terms of Avant-garde, I doubt that this is was something new. Thinking back of all the performances, this has definitely been the one etched most clearly in my mind.
The lights dimmed and the orchestra tuned their instruments and I instinctively knew, in the words of Michael Scott, “Something exciting is happening.” I had never been to an opera prior to this. My preconceived notions of operas had always been of rotund singers in vibrant outfits holding notes long enough to crack glass. My uneducated paradigm quickly crumbled when the stage lit and Nemorino stepped to the forefront of the stage.
One thing I immediately noticed was the background set. Initially, I believed it to be two-dimensional, perhaps because my experience with the theater was generally limited to high school performances, so it was amazing when the actors started walking longitudinally through the stage. This depth to the stage really helped to emphasize the things going on the background with the extras and the chorus, while still keeping the main characters as the points of focus.
The actual music of the opera had me enraptured. The orchestra sounded great and the acoustics of the hall made it so that you could hear even the slightest nuances in their playing (I always liked hearing the creaking from the fingerboards of string instruments because it adds a natural element to the playing). I often found myself leaning in closer to see what was going on in the orchestra pit, much to the dismay of the person sitting in front of me. The orchestral accompaniments to the arias were pleasant and the vocalists weren’t overpowered by the instruments and vice versa.
Then the second half began. And excuse my vernacular, but the second act was dope. The first aria of Act II was a duet with Adina and Dulcamara, the quack doctor. The highlight of Act II, however, came afterwards and was Nemorino’s solo Una Furtiva Lagrimal. Nemorino’s grief and joy from his love for Adina are imbued into this aria, which gracefully picks up in intensity. Una Furtiva Lagrimal is the climatic resolution to our protagonist’s plights, as he finally has receives the love of the girl whom he has been chasing for so long. Though the opera still had its concluding scene to get to, a ripple of applause sounded after the actor’s solo as the audience and Nemorino alike rejoiced at our hero’s happy ending.
My trip to the Museo Del Barrio in and of itself was an adventure. What started off as an arranged 2pm meeting last Saturday between Paul, Patrick, Michelle, and I, otherwise known as the “Staten Island crew,” was clearly not going to go as planned when I woke up to a hectic morning in my house that didn’t end up clearing up until around 1:30 – a mere half hour before we were supposed to meet.
I was relieved however, when I found that at least one other member in my group was also running late.
I finally met up with Michelle on Lexington and 104th street at around 3:30 pm. Patrick had already made it to the museum about an hour earlier. Michelle and I set off down 104th street until we reached Central Park and eagerly entered the museum. The wrong museum. Thinking that perhaps the exhibit itself was what was named “El Barrio,” Michelle and I completely overlooked the actual museum, across the street, and instead entered the Museum of the City of New York. Reassured by the fact that this museum was listed on the back of our cultural passports, we showed our Macaulay IDs to the receptionist. She informed us, however, that the Museum of the City of New York was no longer affiliated with Macaulay, however we could still enter at the discounted student price of $6 each. We paid and picked up floor plans. We were eager to see an exhibit on Staten Island, being from the “forgotten borough” ourselves, however peruse the map as we might, we could not find an exhibit remotely related to the Caribbean at all. Walking back to the reception table, we asked the same receptionist who had admitted us previously where we could find the Caribbean exhibit. She thought for a moment and then realized that we were in the wrong museum. She told us that the Museo del Barrio was across the street and was kind enough to refund the money we had paid.
Laughing at our mistake, Michelle and I proceeded to the Museo del Barrio, imagining how angry Patrick must be by now for waiting this long. We found him close to finishing his notes on a painting. We proceeded to split up to find our own pieces to write about, agreeing to meet later.
I originally thought I would be immediately attracted to paintings of serene landscapes, and although these were wonderful, I was surprised to find myself extremely drawn to a video piece. Walking past it, I didn’t initially look back until I heard a familiar crunching sound that brought me back to my summer in Egypt. The piece was entitled “Trata” meaning “Try” and was created by David Perez Karmadavis in 2005. The piece consisted of two videos. The first depicted a Haitian man peeling/shucking sugar cane and the second showed a Dominican man eating sugar cane. Each video was only a few seconds long and was placed on repeat. There was no dialogue, just the sound of the slice of the knife shucking the sugar cane and the crunch of the man eating it. Getting past my original nostalgia associated with my experience in Egypt last summer, I began to realize another connection I had to the piece. Thinking back to the limited knowledge I have about the region depicted in the videos, I realized that the two races shown had a lot of tension between them that is often fraught with racism. The Haitians in the Dominican Republic are often illegal immigrants, and hold low-paying jobs and often live in poor living conditions. It amazed me to see something like sugar cane bring the two groups together despite these racial tensions. It reminded me a lot of the period of time here in NYC when there were Islamophobic ads put up in subway stations. One of the counter-ads I saw had to do with halal food carts and said something along the lines of “how could you call the creators of such deliciousness savages?” Continuing to stare back and forth between the two videos in the set, I realized more and more that peace was attainable simply because as humans, we have too much in common: love, enjoying good food, etc. to continue hating each other.
My strong connection my home country, Egypt, is what also drew me to the second piece of art I chose. This piece was entitled “Pasaje Con Burro (Las Indians Occidentales Danesas)” and was a painting utilizing oil-based paints on hardboard created by Dutch artist Hugo Larsen in 1906. The painting was relatively small and depicted a man on a donkey and a woman balancing a tray of fruits on her head. Both subjects were dressed in all white: the man is wearing light-wash jeans and a white t-shirt and the woman is wearing a long white skirt, a white fitted t-shirt, and a white scarf wrapped around her hair. They both have a caramel-like skin tone. The scenery looks very dry and hot, and viewers can easily tell that the sun must be glaring down. There is a small line of what I take to be water shown on the horizon and a few very thin palm trees. The scenery reminded me very much of a scene I would see in the farmlands of Alexandria, Egypt. Over the summer, I visited this area and had the opportunity to ride a donkey and spend a day with a family there, learning that true happiness could be achieved with simplicity in the process. Staring at the painting, my memory took me back to those sunny days spent working the fields and learning the trade of life from the people of the land. The only difference, however, was that the scenery in Egypt was much more lush and green, and although it was hot and sunny, it wasn’t as dry as the scene depicted in the picture. Staring more at the painting, I began to grow thirsty, and thought about how the painter’s technique was clearly excellent because I not only saw the scene but could feel the warmth and dryness of the scene depicted by it emanating from it. The painter’s purpose could be an infinite number of things but the one that made the most sense to me was that he was just painting a scene he remembered on a visit to a Caribbean country. I didn’t see any specific symbolism in the painting, but merely a conveying of something he had seen and felt while on a journey. Taking into consideration that the painter is from Denmark, I realized the importance of conveying the temperature and sense of dryness through the paint, since his audience would be from a totally different climate. He did this quite successfully: the day I saw the painting, 106 years after it was created, was far from hot and dry, yet I could feel the climate, and I was awed by the skill of the painter in recreating perfectly every aspect of the scene.
Our day at the museum ended just as eventfully as it started when Michelle and I met up later. She explained that Patrick had left to get lunch so I suggested we do the same. Set on getting a gyro platter, we walked down Madison Ave in search of a cart. Thirty blocks later, finding none so far, we decided we might as well continue walking to Carnegie Hall for the performance we were seeing that night. And so we did. We walked about 50 blocks in total, and still managed to arrive at the theater early. So, we went to a Subway store nearby, settled for subs instead of gyros, and proceeded to watch a wonderful performance at Carnegie Hall with the rest of our seminar class.
The first play we have seen as a group, Ivanov, was also the first performance that I felt I could truly relate to and put into perspective. I could compare and contrast its execution with all the other plays, movies and television shows that I have seen, and, therefore, actually judge it. I could finally know whether a particular performance was good or bad, an ability that I lacked regarding Spellbeamed, Political Mother and Le Elise De Amore. Consequently, I was pleasantly surprised at how genuinely great Ivanov was, and how it shattered any of the expectations that I had held. The aspects of the play that appealed most strongly to me were the theatre venue, the acting performances, and the characters themselves.
The only word that can adequately describe a venue that looked, smelled, and felt like coffee, is intimate. When, in addition to the stated intimacy, saliva is visible flying from the performers’ mouths, the audiences’ relationship to that venue can be considered almost symbiotic. Ivanov was performed in such a venue, and the effect was dramatic. Unlike the performances we previously attended, I could actually see the expressions on the actors’ faces. This lent the play an entirely new layer, one that was not present in the other performances, and contributed heavily to my understanding of the characters’ motivations and actions. One felt as if he or she was a part of the performance itself, factoring into the decisions and resolve of the characters on stage.
What astonished me most about the acting performances was the sheer vastness of the gap between the abilities of Ethan Hawke, the lead and an established movie star, and those of the other actors. While the performances of the other actors were excellent in their own right, Ethan Hawke, in his role as Ivanov, exuded a sense of confidence that overwhelmed and overshadowed everyone else on stage. No matter where he was, he drew my attention; I could not seem to look away from him, even if he was simply sitting in a corner, playing with a deck of cards. The second most notable performance would be that of Juliet Rylance in the role of Sasha—the attempted martyr. I felt that she was really able to convey the bubbly determination that courses through her character, all of it directed towards “fixing” Ivanov. I also thought that those same two characters had remarkable chemistry together, easily making me believe how quickly their relationship progressed from admiration to marriage. This, perhaps, can be attributed to their prior work together, a film, “Sinister”, which was released in October of this past year.
What intrigued me most about the characters was how Chekov, in his imagining of them and their personalities, was able to so nimbly sidestep any clichés, with the one notable exception being the Count. It was surprising because most dramatic performances are steeped in clichés, since they are a useful device, which enables the audience to identify with the characters and their difficulties. I thought it was amazing how Chekov was able to avoid boxing Ivanov in with all the other neurotic, self-absorbed, Hamlet-like roles by making him mock that very same identity. Another intriguing aspect of the characters in Ivanov was how simply entertaining they were. The qualities possessed by Ivanov and the psychological torture he inflicted on his loving wife, made him one of the most unlikable fictional characters I have ever had the pleasure of detesting, right underneath Delores Umbridge. There is something oddly satisfying of being able to truly despise an imaginary person, and everything that he stands for.
It’s always nice to walk into a café and find out it’s a theatre.
Albeit our class had been forewarned, I still found the café to be quite a nice surprise. It added a very creative, “hipster” ambience to the whole evening, so much so that I felt in the mood for a cup of coffee.
As we walked into the theatre, we were greeted with another surprise: a small theatre with seats on three sides of the square stage, and so close you could see the actors spit (that’s how you know when they get really emotional).
And emotional they were. The actors, for the most part, played their parts fantastically, so that even when I hadn’t pictured the scene or character in a certain way, I find myself loving the production’s interpretation.
With one exception: Ivanov (Ethan Hawke). He was annoying, and a whiner, and unsympathetic. Which is bothersome because, quite frankly, I kind of like the written Ivanov. I suspect a fraction of my dislike for this Ivanov was due to the different interpretation of Anna (Joely Richardson); I had pictured Anna to be a passive, weak character, similar to Stella from Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. Yet Richardson played a strong-willed, bold, smart woman, making Anna more sympathetic and Ivanov much less so. Maybe their sympathy levels work in an indirect relationship? I’m digressing. Ivanov’s character was not unlikable solely because Anna was a strong character.
Listen, Ivanov, I understand you are depressed, slightly crazy, and possibly an unwilling existentialist, but that does not mean you rant and spit and talk faster than a New Yorker. You should have the normalcy crack subtly and decay; there should be a loud quietness. You, dear Ivanov, did not seem like a normal guy lost in a mysterious struggle; rather you seemed spoiled. Unlike J.D. Saligner’s Holden Caulfield, you did not have any reason for your depression, nor did you have witty commentary on the world. Unlike half the twisted cast from Narita Ryohgo’s Baccano!, you did not speak with conviction, which turned possibly meaningful speeches into unpleasant rants. I expected you, Ivanov, to be like Richard Corey, the titular character of A.R. Gurney’s play. Both of you lead lives with little reason to be unhappy (and illicit lovers), yet you both decay, showing that a “happy” person can become disillusioned with life and break.
Now that I’m done with my own rant, let me applaud every other interpretation. I have already gushed about the pro-feminist performance of Richardson. Misha Borkin (Glenn Fitzgerald) was less comical than I had pictured, but he was just wonderful. I almost wish he and Babakina had fallen for each other. Shabelsky (George Morfogen) was super wry and sarcastic and great! I would have directed Shabelsky as a more “big” character (such as this production’s Lebedev or a little less extravagant Dulcamara), but gosh darn it I simply adore Morfogen’s version of him.
There were other characters I would have directed differently, but enough of that; as I director, I am impressed with the entire cast and crew. In theatre, I have been taught to never turn my back to the audience; but when directing on a stage with which the audience is totally involved, that rule is defenestrated with force. Even so, I never became annoyed if an actor was not facing me, because the proximity of our seats made up for the odd angles we viewed the actors; the inclusiveness was kept, if not increased.
On to some miscellaneous thoughts:
Seeing the performance, I noticed details I hadn’t in the book: the owl being an omen of bad luck, the Hamlet parallels. I also noticed more French, which was a nice historical touch because upper class Russians used to speak French.
I believe they added baby powder to Hawke’s hair to make him look older. By the second act his hair was a couple of shades darker.
Uncle Shabelsky is a count… and if you would like to be a count too, you can buy such a title from the Principality of Sealand!
I like the play a lot. I hope to see or read it in Russian one day, after I have learned the language.
Spellbeamed, a work of conceptual music performed by Zeena Parkins and the Ne(x)tworks Ensemble with JACK Quartet at the Roulette Theatre, is a surprising, creative, multi-layered exploration of sound, communication, and people’s relationships to objects. The performance defies conventional understanding of instruments such as the harp and violin by rejecting their traditional production of classical […]
When many of us think of classical music, our minds instantly jump to a vision of a few violinists playing some unimaginably dull tune which inevitably puts all within earshot to sleep; this could not be farther from the truth in the case of Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique’s performance of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. The true success of this performance in my opinion was in its ability to be intricate yet accessible at the same time; not only did it remain true to its initial and intended form but it was performed so expertly that even those among us who lack significant experience in classical music (myself included) could tell based on its euphony that it had been well-performed and therefore could appreciate it.
The orchestra in its totality was a cohesive unit which never strayed from uniform perfection for as much as an instant. Gardiner, clearly having led this symphony with utmost precision, excelled at transitioning smoothly between rapid and powerful musical segments and more subdued expressions. While the orchestra as a whole performed phenomenally, I would be remiss if I failed to mention the extraordinary performance given by Peter Hanson in the role of first violinist. While he was spot on throughout the entire performance, his true violin acumen only became apparent in the few moments in which he was allowed to perform unaccompanied or with limited other accompanying instrumentation; in a word it was sublime and almost entrancing, far exceeding any expectations I had for the entire performance through his own individual merit.
This technical ability displayed by the entire orchestra—with Hanson in particular—was bolstered by the extraordinary acoustics of Carnegie Hall; rivaled only by the Metroplitan Opera, I have since learned that this venue was designed specifically to have excellent acoustic properties. This fact I believe allows for equal enjoyment of the performance regardless of where you are seated (which was very important for our group considering we did not exactly have front row seats). Moreover, this provided a greater level of clarity of that which the vocalists were singing (despite the fact that the language barrier still existed) as well as the contributions of each individual performer which may have been lost in a less-effectively designed performance hall.
My true appreciation of this performance, however, came not through the performers’ abilities but through the mental ease that this performance elicited within me. Coming into this performance I expected either to be lulled to sleep by the melodious nature of the classical music or to be utterly riveted and enthralled, waiting on and anticipating every note as it arrived. Ultimately, neither of these was the reality and I found myself somewhere in the middle ground between this active entertainment and boredom; I found myself in the realm of passive entertainment. The beauty of this form of amusement is that by neither completely demanding my attention nor losing it I was able to enjoy the atmosphere that the music provided while thinking about the current issues and matters pertinent to my life; I felt as though the music acted as a sort of means for the state of relaxation necessary for me to effectively collect my thoughts.
I can unequivocally and unabashedly say that I loved the performance of Ivanov that our class attended at the Classical Stage Company. I found it enticing, illuminating and fairly true to the story itself which enabled me to appreciate how this play can come alive when actually performed. This appreciation began with the intimate and welcoming atmosphere provided by the venue. At a glance, this theater seems to be just a simple café with a fairly pleasant and mellow atmosphere. However, when one proceeds inside and realizes the beauty possessed within this quaint theater, one is astounded by how unassuming the street-view is. Moreover, the fact that the performance took place in a venue that is as small as this was—seating roughly two hundred audience members—allowed our class not only to have excellent seats but also to feel almost involved in the performance based on the fact that we had almost no choice but cross over the stage in order to get to our seats.
Additionally, I believe the overall acting prowess displayed was good enough that while it was not extraordinary, it did not detract from the experience and those actors that excelled overshadowed the few shortcomings of those who were not as successful in my opinion. While it may seem unlikely—based on my expression of enjoyment of the play and the fact that he is an extremely famous actor whose roles in movies I have greatly enjoyed—I did not thoroughly enjoy the acting of Ethan Hawke as Ivanov; while I did enjoy the fact that he began his portrayal much before the performance began by sitting on a bed and reading to set the stage for the play, I found his acting in the majority of the first two acts to be unconvincing and not befitting the complexity of the character of Ivanov. However, by the third and fourth act I felt he had hit his stride and began to reach the levels of emotional expressiveness I felt were warranted.
There were also a few characters who I felt were adequately represented but not extraordinarily so; such characters include: Dmitry, Martha, Dr. Lvova and Sasha to name a few. The portrayals that I believe truly stole the show, however, were that of Borkin and Lebedev (as well as Anna to a somewhat lesser extent). Borkin was as lively and utterly sleazy, effectively causing you to at once detest his lowly actions and soon after envy his energy and vigor. Lebedev was portrayed perfectly as an old man who wishes for no more than peace of mind which is constantly out of his reach, causing you to feel a strong feeling of empathy for his struggles.
Overall, I must say that this production was a complete success not only for the sake of entertainment but also for the sake of representing the economic, racial and in many ways universal struggles present in late 19th century Russia. I feel that in this aim it stayed true to Chekhov while transitioning exceptionally well into New York City.
I approached my first destination, Highline Park, with a bias realized from Rem Koolhaas’ novel, Delirious New York. Throughout this book, Koolhaas provides examples exhaustively, trying to document “the symbolic relationship between its [Manhattan] mutant metropolitan culture and the unique architecture to which it gave rise”. Koolhaas gives the example of among others, Coney Island; an amusement park born of the culture and attitude of its neighborhood. The fate of the architecture of the park equally interlocked with its neighborhood: “the need for pleasure dominates…step up production of pleasure generates its own instruments.”
Because of this plethora of evidence for Koolhaas’ argument that individual architectural objects were permutations of their surrounding neighborhood, I did not even pause to consider anything to the contrary. However, as I traversed Highline Park, I found that this park was independent and even contradictory of its surrounding. The first contradiction I found was number of people on the Highline versus the lack of people on the streets of Manhattan.
At face value, this fact seems inconsequential, but it led me to realize that Koolhaas’ argument had some rather fundamental flaws. He did not realize that each structure, whether it was the Highline Park or Carnegie Hall, had its own individuality that represented itself in its architecture and attraction to people.
Armed with this realization, I began to look for contradictions between the architecture of Highline and that of the surrounding buildings. It did not take long to realize many of the distinct features of Highline, one of the only green patches left at this time of the year, were straight-edged and rectangular in its shape. However, the apartment buildings in the vicinity of Highline, all were irregular and weirdly shaped.
The most striking of examples I found was when I realized that it was far easier trying to flanuer along the tracks of Highline park than it was walking down Ninth Avenue.
I felt Quinn hit the nail when he described his goal of flanarie: “each time he took a walk, he felt as though he were leaving himself behind, and by giving himself up to the movement of the streets, by reducing himself to a seeing eye, he was able to escape the obligation to think, and this, more than anything else, brought him a measure of peace, a salutary emptiness within…By wandering aimlessly, all places became equal and it no longer mattered where he was. On his best walks he was able to feel that he was nowhere.”
There were several factors that allowed me to get as close as possible to the feeling of being nowhere. The continuous stream of new and unique images like rail tracks covered with plants, a wall covered with aluminum foil, and weirdly shaped benches, all which prevented me from doling on one point for too long. Furthermore, these images were so far removed from what I normally experience, I felt as if I was not myself. As I walked along the tracks I felt that I was “nowhere”.
My second destination served to reinforce the fact that all architectural structures are individualistic and are not permutations of their surroundings.
If one were to apply Koolhaas’ idea to the Empire State Building, it would stand to reason that the architecture of the ESB and its surrounding buildings should be significantly alike. However, I found a similar disillusionment as I had at Highline Park; the buildings in the vicinity lacked several features that the Empire State Building had. The most prominent was the desire to reach the sky that manifested itself in the pointed peak atop the building. None of the surrounding buildings had this desire.
As I reached the end of my meditation, I realized that each structure, be it a park or building, was almost human in its individualistic nature and ambition to be unique.
My first thought once the dancing of “Political Mother” began: zombie apocalypse. I would not be surprised if, after zombies took over and ate everyone’s brains, the human population would transform into one giant “Political Mother” dance. Interestingly, from what I inferred, the dance was conveying that humanity is already at that mindless stage, even without the brain-eating apocalypse.
“Political Mother” portrayed normally clad individuals (wearing dresses, trousers, t-shirts) moving on stage in a fluid, detached way, as if they had no solid control of their own actions. While this type of dancing was amazing to watch, it gave off a very primal feel. Aside from the remarkable dancing, “Political Mother” also had crazy lighting and music that all added to the hectic atmosphere of the show. Fog filled the dim room and lights flashed sporadically, pretty much like what would be expected at a rock concert. The live music is best described as angry heavy metal, with the singer periodically yelling out.
Throughout the dance, the performers copied each other, often times changing their dance after others changed. There was one instance where a dancer ran across the stage, arms flailing, and others would follow right behind. However, every once in a while a different dancer would appear running in the opposite direction, and a follower, running after the initial dancer, would pause for a moment in confusion and then turn around and run after the second dancer. This type of mindless following was apparent throughout the performance.
At various points, the band and singer would be foggily lit up in the background of the stage and all the dancers would stop and gaze up at him, as if he were a god, or Satan who had everyone under a spell. As he would rant and rave in a loud angry voice, the dancers would sit or stand with their arms waving above them, in total awe and submission to whatever he was saying.
This led to other instances that strongly resembled the holocaust. The dancers appeared in striped clothing, in a closed room, totally dejected and lost. They attempted to continue with the societal dancing, but many gave up and just slumped down. To me, this symbolized those individuals who are at the negative receiving end of this political frenzy, and even they, after being subjected to horrors, try to fit in and “live” as society would expect.
The zombie-like dancing combined with the dictatorial singer and angry music was successful in creating the idea that humanity is really a species of primal, mindless individuals who do what’s expected of them; whether it’s having sex or getting over a traumatic event. After all is said and done, we all end up acting the same way. As the performance concluded: “when there is pressure there is folk dance.” Life is strangely pointless, and maybe its best we don’t take it too seriously.
The performance is titled “Political Mother,” but I wonder whether “Social Mother” may have been more accurate; or perhaps the two are one and the same.
To be honest, I spent a majority of the performance “Spellbeamed” trying to figure out what was being conveyed. I would think I was getting somewhere with the interpretation, and then the performance would swerve onto a totally different path and I would be utterly confused once again. However, even in my hopeless attempts at dissecting the performance, I still managed to enjoy various aspects of the work simply for what they were.
The first part of “Spellbeamed” was the perfect beginning to a baffling performance. The vocalist Joan La Barbara spoke into some sort of voice modifier and read what I now know was Walter Benjamin’s essay on books. At the time, however, I had no clue what was being read and I could understand a word of it since Barbara’s voice made deep and unintelligible. The only reason I know what was being said is because in the Q and A session after the performance Parkins explained that the deep voice was meant to be Benjamin speaking from the grave. In hindsight it is a novel, thought provoking idea; I just wish I would’ve had a copy of the text or some sort of explanation while it was going on so I could’ve appreciated it.
The only thing I knew of “Spellbeamed” before the show was that it included an electric harp. This harp was “played” while Benjamin’s essay was being read. This was probably my favorite part of the performance. Parkins would choose an object, like a piece of bark or silver-foil, and would handle it to Shayna Dunkelman who was dressed in a lab coat and looked like a doctor performing surgery. Dunkelman would then take the seemingly random objects and create amazingly unusual sounds by using the objects on the harp. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing the unique sounds each of the objects created when used. Dunkelman used exact precise movements while playing the harp with each object, which, for me, explained the surgeon’s outfit.
The rest of the performance included chaotic instances of dissonant music (played by violins, a xylophone-like instrument, harps and a trombone) and random objects flashing across the screen. An impressive bit was when Barbara had a solo where she made noises that I didn’t think were humanly possible. Another enjoyable part was watching Dunkelman play the xylophone-like instrument. She was extremely passionate about the music and she would do this Jekyll-Hyde type move every time she was about to play, where she would jerk her body in a weird position and then slowly and precisely hit the note.
At the end of the performance, an elderly man sitting behind me and some other students noticed our confusion and was kind enough to explain who Walter Benjamin was and how he felt about collections and the stories objects told. This helped clarify some of the more ambiguous parts of the show. However, even though I was confused during “Spellbeamed,” I was still able to enjoy little parts that made it special.
Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Where had I heard these words before? Then I remembered. I remembered the vast candle-lit altar; I remembered the overpowering silence; I remembered the priest chanting these same words. He often recited these words, which translate to “Lord have mercy, Christ have Mercy,” right before Mass ended. Hmm. And what exactly was I watching as I heard these same words? Missa Solemnis, or “Solemn Mass.” Interesting.
Ludwig Van Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis was performed by the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir at Carnegie Hall, which I must say, was as grand and magnificent as I thought it would be. I passed by Carnegie Hall before (often on my way to get Jamba Juice) and always wondered what it looked like inside. The concert hall was absolutely ginormous. It seemed perfect for acoustics. The seats were extremely comfortable and the view of the stage was perfect as well. I could see every single performer on stage clearly. Thankfully, this time we weren’t all the way in the back!
Although I’m not a musical expert, I loved listening to Missa Solemnis. The combined harmony of the orchestra and the choir sounded so sweet and lovely. I especially enjoyed the vocal ranges of some of the women in the choir because I seldom hear such heavenly high notes.
Missa Solemnis was engaging because its music kept switching from gentle and smooth to wild and harsh. There were moments when the performance sounded dream-like, and other moments when the music was overwhelmingly loud and eccentric. The two opposites complemented each other; when one became boring, the other would surface and again the performance would captivate my interest. It’s interesting that Missa Solemnis was composed during what is considered Beethoven’s Late Period, mostly because a few moments of the music were so dramatic and passionate.
What most stood out during the concert was how hard the performers were working. A few parts of the music were extremely fast-paced; I was shocked that all of the musicians on stage were able to move their hands and arms so swiftly and rapidly in accordance with their sheets of music. I would have never been able to withstand such a harsh workout, and I applaud all of the musicians for moving so remarkably to play such passionate music.
Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis was magnificently performed. It was a pleasure to listen to and watch. My only regret was not being able to sit in the front row!
Object 1: Untitled (1988,) Malika Cosme
As I strolled through the galleries of EL Museo del Barrio, I found many of the art objects compelling – but not in a way that I could capture in words. Their colors, rhythms, and symbols possessed an abundant and moving character. They spoke of a living culture and history that I could behold and appreciate, but not one capture and define – I who was looking in from the outside, a suburban New Yorker, little familiar Caribbean history and life . It was an untitled photograph by Malika Cosme that first elicited deeper reflection, whose wordless compulsion gave rise to words. Cosme was raised in a small, rural village on the Island of Puerto Rico. As a young girl, she taught herself photography, later emigrating to New York City and beginning a career as an experimental photographer. This work in particular was a chromogenic photograph from a series called “Dreams”. I felt that there was something significant to be understood, not only about Caribbean culture, but also about the human condition , in the “dream” that Cosme presents . Taken in Puerto Rico, in a place of her childhood, its double-exposure technique presents the dark, indistinct outline of some country woods contrasted with the bright white figure of a dog. The dog’s face is turned away, with features obscure, but its coat glows hauntingly in the pale moonlight. For Cosme, this photograph must have said something about the Puerto Rico of her childhood. For me its faint, resonant shapes spoke of no particular location, but of a condition of memory that we all share as human beings. The countryside is a remembered landscape, viewed through the prism of Cosme’s decades in New York City and a new language, culture, and pace of life. It is, in this, very much the like the countrysides that we all must carry somewhere in the dim and cavernous vaults of our memory. In the landscape there is the unmistakable quality of the dream, of the transient and insubstantial. In the featureless dog, there is a sense of moving away, of perpetual, unremitted loss. But in the radiance of the coat, in the persistence of the wood as contrast, there remains something indelibly moving. We see, in the simple outlines of the photograph, the way in which memories fade, yet persist, the paradox of memory that eludes all attempts to recapture the past, yet constantly animates the present. The work is a remarkable example of the personal in art becoming universal.
Object 2: Crop Time (Version 2, 1955), Albert Huie
Albert Huie, born to a poor family during Jamaica’s colonial period and raised in the town of Falmouth, Trelawny, was considered the “father of Jamaican painting”. Much his work celebrated the land and the people of Jamaica. Crop Time, which spoke clearly to me from across the room, presents a sharp contrast between artistic subject and artistic vision.
The subject of the painting is industrial degradation of the landscape and agriculture. Faceless laborers toil in the mud, stooped over, enervated, dejected . The bare fields are overshadowed by a complex of industrial buildings. A smokestack rises toward the cloudless sky, spewing dark clouds into the atmosphere . One sees a native people broken and bowed by industrial imposition, a landscape ravaged, a culture suffocated and nearly extinguished.
Yet, this is only the subject of the painting, and not its animating principle. The coloring of the work transforms and creates the possibility of redemption. The delicate greens of the landscape, the old spirit of land and people, radiate outward from the tree-lined mountaintops, infusing the bleak scene with a new visual life, permeating and transfiguring even the industrial smoke that mars the horizon. Pinks and blues brighten the tattered garments of the field workers, bringing out the subtle power of their gestures. The sky becomes a sensuous mixture of earthy green, ethereal blue, faint, tantalizing pink. The whole image is alive in light, deep, natural colors that do not obscure the the brutal subject matter of the panting, but reanimate it in the substance of a new vision. The scene is transformed, not by some starry-eyed hope or insubstantial vision of the past, but by the living culture preserved and nourished in the hearts of Jamaicans. Through the spiritual vision of this culture, any physical degradation can be redeemed. There is still dignity in work, beauty in nature. There is still unity, joy, and tradition, even as the weight of industrial servitude crushes the physical body – in the coloring of one’s vision, in the archetypal motions of the harvest.
The Brooklyn Academy of Music, or BAM, as people affectionately call it, was always a mere block away from Brooklyn Tech. I passed it by more than a million times on my silent trek to the Atlantic Avenue train station after school, wondering what was inside the massive building with shimmering lights. And now, for the first time, I was about to enter BAM to see Hofesh Shechter’s Political Mother.
The performance began with darkness. The curtain opened to reveal one man, wearing a suit of armor and wielding a sword. At first, I thought that the man looked like a samurai. My thoughts were confirmed as I shockingly watched the man reenact seppuku, the ancient Japanese form of suicide through disembowelment. The man cried out in agony. I could have sworn that it looked so real and I was afraid that the man had actually pierced his stomach with his own sword. But soon, there was darkness. The main part of Political Mother began.
I’ve never been to a rock concert, but Political Mother came extremely close. All the musical instruments were blaring and booming and blasting. The music consumed the whole auditorium. At first, the incessant noise was annoying because it was extremely loud, but I got used to it. The spotlight shined on a group of dancers dressed in informal clothing. They moved to the tempo of the music, which seemed to repeat the same few notes throughout the performance. It went something like “Da dun. Dun dun dun. Da dun. Dun dun dun.”
The dancers’ movements looked nontraditional and outlandish. They jerked their entire bodies into abnormal positions and twitched their appendages in random motions. It seemed as if every single dancer was having a seizure on stage. One particular movement that stood out was a zombie-like raising of the arms out in front and running around in a circle. I had never seen such a dance move. I would certainly describe it as Dionysian, which Friedrich Nietzsche describes in The Birth of Tragedy as a complete losing of oneself, and giving into one’s innermost emotions. The dancers definitely looked like they were losing control and letting their own bodies take over.
The title of the performance became more and more apparent as the production went on. Different spotlights focused on performers at different times; there was a line of drummers dressed in what looked like plain army uniforms, several musicians on elevated platforms playing stringed instruments, and a man shouting into a microphone on an elevated platform. The screaming man reminded me of a dictator, especially because of the performer’s stiff and frantic body language—the performer moved around while constantly shaking his fists and raging. The dancers seemed to respond to the dictator’s roars by facing the dictator and jerking their arms up in his direction.
Overall, the title Political Mother got me thinking. The dancers’ movements seemed to symbolize rebellion against control, particularly because the disorderly dance moves appeared to bend all traditional rules of dance. It was as if the dancers were demonstrating their freedom to do as they wished by presenting their crazy dance moves.
The performance was unconventional and interesting to watch. It was an unexpectedly enjoyable night for me, because I was able to experience a different form of interpretive dance in Political Mother.
“Flânerie can be understood as the observation of the fleeting and the transitory which is the other half of modernity to the permanent and central sense of self…. It is a way of going on precisely because it is so utterly futile” (Tester 7).
It’s hard to be a true flâneur when one is asked to be; that is, being assigned to walk around the city without purpose, it was at first difficult to let go of expectations and simply walk. Cameras in hand, I marched forward from the 1 train towards High Line Park.
The High Line
I had never been to the High Line before, although the concept of an “industrial” park interested me; I always imagined it to be very steampunk and gritty, with wiry metallic “plants” and shadows of its former function as a freight line. My imagination stayed just that, for the reality of the park is less eccentric and more of an elevated walk through the city, treating the buildings like giant sequoias in a large, abstract garden. The juxtaposition of painted brick building and vibrant grassy ground is a pretty collision of gritty urban structure and the freshness of nature. It adds more to the illusion of walking through the city as if it were a garden. The planners of the High Line were quite the innovative bunch; they succeeded in smoothly mixing nature with the city, and then implanting park-goers right in the middle of it, able to enjoy their surroundings without feeling much different from walking along a slow-moving city block.
A view from High Line Park, of High Line Park near 23rd Street and the brick “garden” that complements it.
Formerly a freight line, High Line Park reminds me of what Certeau says: “…New York has never learned the art of growing old by playing on all its pasts” (127). The High Line’s very being has been mutated from its original purpose; instead of being a freight line, or the rusty old remnants of one, it has become a park. Not only does this transformation reflect New York City’s ability to constantly update itself, but it makes for a unique park. A pretty awesome park. Sure, there were no metallic trees, but they still had the old lines running through the park. These were definitely my favorite part, as they showed the park’s history, and looked pretty cool, too. You could walk on tracks without worrying about the third rail!
Rails at High Line Park. My favorite park of the composition there
Chinatown
I take the F down to Chinatown, refraining from walking there only due to a time budget. The F lets me off near Straus Square, an area of Chinatown I am not much familiar with. I figure that will make my favorite neighborhood more “flâneursy” or “flâneurable”.
I love Chinatown. Like the High Line, it’s a blend, albeit a different type of blend. Chinatown is a mixing of cultures – those from East Asia and that of America; more specifically, that of New York City. Generally speaking, Chinatown is delicious B grade restaurants, quick walking, beckoning shop keepers willing to strike a deal, food carts selling simple sweets whose aromas fill the air, a lot of honking from the street, lots of talking incomprehensible to me. Chinatown is also a crowded place. It has not entirely followed Koolhaus’ proposals of continuously moving upwards (at least in the area of business), but does follow his notion of continuous crowding. It’s the perfect place for flânerie because it’s a good place to get lost in a crowd while still being important. Every vendor wants your business. Every passer-by wants their personal space, so you’d better watch where you’re lest you want glares or foreign exclamations. Even more conducive to flânerie are the streets; unlike the upper West Side, Chinatown is not numbered, so the streets are haphazardly named with tons of back streets and crevices to explore.
There are many artistic aspects to Chinatown. For one, the calligraphy is appealing, although maybe it’s just the linguistics nerd inside me squealing. The writing is like water, flowing in each character. It’s omnipresent; not just on business awnings but on street signs, too. Another beautiful aspect is the red. Red is a bold colour, a colour of passion and assertion and, in China, luck. As I walk through Chinatown, I notice the collective presence of red: red awnings, red font on signs, red good luck charms, red bean paste, and even red, East Asian style shades on the street lights.
Toto, I don’t think we’re at the High Line anymore…
Getting off the F train and walking into Chinatown. Red awnings, calligraphy, food, and crowds of people.
My feet take me someplace new during my travels. A little place called Kimlau Square. It is mostly grey and stony, with a statue of an imposing man, and a monument for Chinese-Americans who died for our country. Although plain and gray, it is as an aesthetic piece; it is simple, balanced, and noticeable in the city maze.
The simple, solid memorial in Kimlau Square stands out in the city.
Thank you to those who died for our freedom.
I continue to walk throughout Chinatown, eventually finding myself in familiar territory near Mulberry Street. It is past noon; my journey is coming to a close. There is only one thing left to do…
Dumplings and a Snapple for four bucks! Did I mention that when good Chinatown food hits your taste buds, it is the equivalent of your eyes seeing Paolo Veronese’s The Wedding Feast At Cana?
A Final Thought: Snippets
“The flâneur is the secret spectator of the spectacle of the spaces and places of the city” (Tester 7). I felt like just that: the hidden watcher of the city. I observed little happenings as I strolled through Manhattan blocks and the High Line, and even in the subway:
I’m on the subway and hear two men talking heatedly in French. I wish I did not have to get off so soon; I was hoping to catch some words or maybe gush over them.
As I walk from the station to High Line Park, I see a Batman painting on the window of a bakery. Big Booty Bread Company, to be exact.
At the High Line, everyone is staring at two window washers. I am staring at everyone.
A model poses for the camera. A group of friend converse. A young man sits, lonely.
A little boy uses a bench as a slide. Clever. I wish I were that small again.
People watch people as if they viewed are penguins behind glass at a zoo. But the viewers are the ones in the cage.
Too perfect to see while we’re discussing Beethoven in class.
(Funny thing: After all this, I have to say I kind of did escape my problems for the majority of the time I strolled, although more so in the familiar crowds of Chinatown than the new, less packed High Line.)
When I stepped off the subway unto a busy Manhattan street, searching for some telltale patch of green at the distant end of the block, I had no idea of what to expect on my visit to the Highline. I had always loved the sprawling oasis of Central Park and what it represented – the idea of taking refuge in nature when the city grew too loud and tumultuous, of escaping from the hectic pace of life into an “alien” world of trees, grasses, and flowers – but I had never visited the Highline and didn’t anticipate how little the park would betray its surroundings. Amid burnished storefronts and old street signs, one could easily miss the glass elevator that shuttles visitors to and from its second story overpass and the adjacent staircase. There was no pulsating electric sign, no magisterial grove of trees, no heralding crowd of tourists, rushing by one another to catch a glimpse of another New York landmark. As we entered the park on a cold, bright November afternoon, only a few people were strolling along the walkway, a converted freight rail track that that runs from Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District to West 34th Street on Manhattan’s Westside. The scene that opened before us was the same one we had encountered moments earlier, walking casually in the streets, and yet that brief flight of stairs seemed to somehow transport. The structure itself was a model of simplicity: a metal path, understated shrubbery, benches, a sparse, but striking array of art objects, brief plateaus, unexpected views, and a sense of reorientation of the familiar embodied in the very logic of the construction:
I had expected something more – intricate landscaping, bright fauna, crowds of visitors, perhaps some food and live music. There was none of that in the Highline. But there was something that in New York City can be as rare and invaluable as any masterpiece of art and architecture – a genuine sense of calm and perspective. It was an impenetrable calm that enclosed the thin stretch of track, unperturbed by the ceaseless, blearing traffic below and the imperious arch of the skyline above. The sounds were still there. The hectic pace of the city still rumbled below, visible with a slight glance over the railing. The shadows of skyscrapers were still bent fiercely over the horizon. And yet, twenty feet above the chaos, one could not help but feel, as much as De Certeau felt gazing down from the 110th floor of the WTC, that the agitation [of the city] is momentarily arrested by vision” Perhaps De Certeau captured this arrested vision of the City better than any other in his essay:
“The gigantic mass is immobilized…It is transformed into a texturology in which extremes coincide..paroxysmal places in monumental relief…one lifted out of the city’s grasp…one’s body no longer clasped by the streets that turn and return according to an anonymous law…its elevation transfigures him into a voyeur…It puts him at a distance…It transforms the bewiching world by which one was possessed into a text…It allows one to read it, to be a solar Eye…a God…this lust to be a viewpoint and nothing more.”
“Walking in the City” can mean stumbling into an endless procession of sights, sounds, and tastes, wandering the bright, buzzing labyrinth of momentary distraction and eternal enchantment that the streets of Manhattan offer. In the Highline, however, to walk is to walk, to be with people is to really be with them, to see is to see. Like all great works of arts, it is useless. It serves no immediate utilitarian or sensual need, and so serves a most important need for people of New York City: the need for tranquility, for understatement, for intimacy, and for a kind of bare, but essential beauty. The beauty of the Highline is always a minimalist beauty. The views are not grandiose or contrived. The design is not imposed upon the surrounding neighborhoods. Vegetation is designed to reflect the wild, resilient growth that persisted after the railway was discontinued.
There is, in this simplicity, a rich spectrum of possibilities for the the flaneur, the “voyeur…lusting to be a viewpoint and nothing more.” One can look ahead and allow oneself to be carried by the logic of the path, submitting to its gentle bends and strange offerings. Odd statues speckle the landscape, offering pleasure in their curiousness and unabashed superfluity. Zebra stripe buildings peek through the brown, windswept foliage, as if mocking some imagined safari, a fantasy of urban visitors. Benches invite visitors to rest, and talk, and absorb the scenery more completely:
Or, one can look to the side, and see the alleyways, decrepit and graffitied. And notice the the river peering through, feel it whispering the city’s secrets in the light autumn breeze. The people who live there speak in the elaborate paintings that decorate the walls of old, decaying edifices:
Or one can look down at the yellow taxi cabs and the bleak, gray sidewalks, with residents scurrying to destinations nameless and obscene, eyes downcast, shoulders braced against the crowd – and perhaps see oneself in the whirl of silver hubcaps and winter coats.
Or one can cast his gaze upward at the arresting grandeur of a skyline that speaks for itself:
One moment my eyes descend into a desolate urban canyon, the next they are drawn upward by the gleaming visage of steel and glass. At once the symbolic relief of a defiant street culture, the hard, steel lines of cororate office building, the sumptuous sllouhette of some temple of culture are all present in my shifting field of vision:
One can understand Quine when he says New York is the “Nowhere he built around himself”. But one also gets the sense of being everywhere, of being connected to everything. One is small, marginal to the city, but also inseparable from its diverse life. One is surrounded by Scruton’s ugliness, but also by beauty – and the boundary between the two is often not clearly demarcated.
The Highline seems to reflect the most ambitious, even starry-eyed vision of what a city, what New York City can be: beauty and degeneration in redemptive coexistence, various neighborhoods, cultures, and styles appreciated as distinct, living entities, but united in the narrative of walking, a celebration of the public that offers private joys, an anonymity that is also an implicit form of intimacy. What we experience at the Highline, more than the ‘Return to Nature’, is a return to the city, its organic patterning and peopling. As Decerteau observed, “Beneath the discourses that ideologize the city, the ruses and combinations of power that have no readable identity proliferate , without points where one can take hold of them, without rational transparency, they are impossible to administer”. At the Highline, we are able to experience the city as a complex totality, which for people who live there, is very much related to the totality of the self. At the Highline distance is no boundary to intimacy, as one is set apart from the city, while remaining very much a part its enveloping life.
Although I would like to claim that our next destination was selected after careful thought and deliberation, I have to admit that the Empire State Building chose us more than we chose it. Towering over the skyline, it immediately attracted our gaze and offered us so clear a contrast to the scope, design, and spirit of our present surroundings that all other options seemed to dissolve. “Empire State seemed to float, like an enchanted fairy tower, over New York”, Rem Koolhaas observed in his “Delirious New York”. ”A structure so lofty, so serene, so marvelously simple, so luminously beautiful, had never before been imagined.”
The neuropsychologist Julian Jaynes hypothesized that early language users, without well established relationships between the various regions of the brain needed for speech and comprehension, hallucinated the voices of the Gods and built monuments in the center of their cities to localize them. Drawn by the allure of the Empire State Building , traversing block after block in its shadow, it is not difficult to see the traces of such a primal relationship to structures. In a landscape of competing glitter and attraction, the Empire State Building attempts, like the Godheads of old, to seize the attention of its viewers, to inspire compelling interest and even awe in a city where interest is endlessly divided and awe is regarded as the most unforgivable sentimentality. As Koolhaas observed, ”The ESB is the last manifestation of Manhattanism as pure and thoughtless process, the climax of the subconcious Manhattan”. Beyond conversations about aesthetics and cultural context, there is man’s fascination with the tremendous – his universal respect for natural power, elegant functionality, and sheer height – and it is this fascination that is animated in the ESB.
While Highline attempts to fuse with a surrounding vision of the city, the ESB seeks to overshadow – it does not strive to elevate, but to surpass. The ESB stands as self-absorbed monument to its own vision, an aesthetic end-in-existence, a thoughtless charge against the vault of heaven. One cannot help but connect the building to Stillman’s Tower of Babble – “a form of automatic architect, a sensuous surrender by its collective makers – from the accountant to the plumber – to the proccess of building”, as Koolhaas puts it. There is something undeniably arrogant and extra-human in the building. But there is also something necessarily superficial:
Pure product of proccess, the empire State can have no content. The building is sheer envelope…The skin is all or almost all. Empire State will gleam in all its pristine beauty, for our children’s children to wonder at.”
The lobby of the ESB is a museum of the myth of its own exterior. Reliefs of the buildings are carved into the walls. The famous image of King Kong scaling the side of the building is parodically recreated with an ape doll in one of the display cases.
The interior has its own beauty, but it is a different grade of beauty. The lobby, with its harsh, bright-dark textures does not welcome. It does not invite exploration. It seems to be cognizant of the fact that the utopian premise of the exterior is only a premise, that the interior of business offices and restaurants cannot justify the collective gesture of Babel-making any more than internal motivation can justify the poetry of sorrow in Ivanov. There is a sort of embarrassment in design.
The contrast between the Highline and the ESB is not only a constrast between two visions o f New York City, but between two visions of man and his project of civilization.
There are many places in New York City where people can go to find beauty and recreation. Of course New York City if known for its magnificent and towering skyscrapers that never cease to amaze me every time I look at them but there are also other places other than skyscrapers and tall buildings which can appeal to people’s senses with their own beauty and design. One such place is called the High Line. This public park that was once an old freight line but now its architecture has been converted into a magnificent park filled with plants and flowers of all sorts, grasses, benches, and walkways. Approaching the park near the 14thstreet entrance, I can see the overpass where the railway is situated as I walk toward the entrance.
When I reach the stairs of the entrance, I enter as if I’m at a station ready to get on a train. And yet when I reach the top of the stairs I’m in a whole new place, a place I thought I wouldn’t find as I walked around the neighborhood. I didn’t realize that a place like this was here, especially after passing many restaurants and nice stores full of clothes. I had the pleasure of seeing the High Line at night and during the day. At night, the place was really beautiful, with the lights from the surrounding areas pouring into the space. During the day, I walked around and saw the water of the Hudson River in the distance.
Like Central Park, the High Line is “as series of manipulations and transformations performed on the nature “saved” by designers” (Koolhaas 23). Here, nature has been transplanted and planned by designers. There’s beautiful flowers and plants everywhere. There’s a view of the Hudson River on one side and the hustle and bustle of the streets on the other.Walking around here, I can definitely understand the flânerie, “the activity of strolling and looking” (Tester) here at the High Line, especially when my friends and I went at night. We spent an hour or two just walking around the place, admiring its beauty. There were colorful plants and trees and leaves everywhere. I wanted to take pictures of all of them. I was transfixed by the spectacle of how beautiful the plants and the buildings surrounding the place were. I would really like to go back there when the weather is much nicer and warmer so I could see the flowers in full bloom and sit on a bench and just absorb the surroundings. I can also understand when Tester quotes Baudelaire saying, “The man who loves to lose himself in a crowd enjoys feverish delights that the egoist locked up in himself as in a box, and the slothful man like a mollusk in his shell, will be eternally deprived of” (Tester 2). I would have never experienced the beauty of the High Line if I did not actually go there. A picture is worth a thousand words, but I feel that the actually feeling of being there is different. I appreciate the park more for what it does when I was there; this natural beauty is able to exist with in the concrete jungle of New York City, which I think is great, since sometimes I am jaded by the tall typical buildings of the city.
One thing I really like about the park is how they incorporated the railway into the natural beauty of the park. The plants grow with in it and on the tracks which sort of reminds me of the country when the unused tracks are overrun with grass. This element brings a sense of wildness amidst the backdrop of the city. It’s like the concrete jungle meets Mother Nature. It was inventive to use a structure so ubiquitous in New York City as a place where nature can thrive and be seen.
Another thing I liked is how they used the tracks in an interesting way. They put some of the wooden chair benches on wheels that were placed on the actual tracks and could move. I thought that was cool how they used an existing structure to make such a cool object that fits in with the ambiance of the park to remind us that this actually was once a railway.
Another thing I also noticed while walking through the High Line were the benches. All of them seem to slope downwards at the end. It reminds me of how trains slope downwards when heading from higher to lower ground and how sometimes they must slope downwards to reach tunnels.
These wooden benches and the other wooden chairs and the stone where some of the plants lay also seem to emphasize the natural element of the park with in the frame work of a metal station and railways. It’s like a reflection of the city. Nature in the city is surrounded by the outer framework of concrete and metal buildings. Still, there is a unique beauty in that; such beautiful natural “wild” places can exist within that metal framework. It’s nice to have a natural element in a city full of towers and metal and cars, even if that means that nature had to be “transplanted” in.
Another place where people can go to reflect and find beauty is at the World Trade Center Memorial. Here, where the Twin Towers once stood, are two pools. These large pools have waterfalls that cascade down the sides into a center hole.
Around each pool are the carved names of people lost during September 11. It is very solemn and reflective place as we remember the tragic events that happened that day and the loved ones that we have lost.
These two pools, in place of the North and South towers, are sort of the opposite of the structures that are usually built in New York City. Usually we build upwards, making towers and skyscrapers that soar into the sky. From the height of what once was the World Trade Center, according to Certeau, we are “lifted out of the city’s grasp. One’s body is no longer clasped by the street that turn and return to it…” (128). We think of skyscrapers as placing ourselves above the hustle and bustle of the street, bringing us to new heights and bringing us new perspectives. However, I believe it’s not just skyscrapers can bring us different perspectives; these two pools bring us a new perspective as well. We stand at a height were we are also looking down, though not from a building, but from the ground looking down at the waterfalls fall into the center of the square. We see that there can be beauty in something other than a skyscraper. Looking at the pools we can reflect and meditate about our lives. In a way, the natural beauty of the cascading waterfalls frees us, if only for a moment, from the hectic hustle and bustle of city life.
Much more common to the scene of New York City, are the buildings surrounding the memorial pools. They tower over us and soar high in the sky. They are magnificent in height and sometimes I am in awe at how wonderfully tall these buildings are. Together, these buildings show the typical structures that are seen throughout the city while the pools offer a nice contrast to the metal framework of the city by offering space that includes the natural element of water.
What I believe that these two places have in common is that they both use natural elements within the context of New York City, which is the concrete jungle. The High Line uses plants and trees in a space were railroad tracks can be seen while the World Trade Memorial uses water in a space that once contained two buildings. These places both utilize areas that are ubiquitous spots in New York City. The High Line is in a place of a historic freight line while the World Trade Center Memorial is a site of the famous Twin Towers. Both these places are spaces that can be viewed as very beautiful. I know that I found the foliage at the High Ling very beautiful while I also found the reflecting pools at the World Trade Memorial site to be beautiful. For me, I think part of the beauty lies not only in the delightful experience that I have, but also that these two sites are able to exist in spaces of the city that are so occupied by metal skyscrapers, concrete buildings, and busy, noisy cars. It’s wonderful that while the city has the skyscrapers and buildings that we love to see, there are also some spaces were there is an element of natural beauty within the metal framework of the city that’s different from what we are typically used to seeing.
All these elements call us to be a spectator to the things that are in the city, like the flaneur, who is “the secret spectator of the spectacle of the spaces and places of the city” (Tester 7). We should partake in the places and areas that the city has to offer. We cannot be closed off to the world, rather we should explore what is right in front of us. We should experience the sights and sounds, the delights and joys of the city. After all, we do live in the greatest city in the world, why not take advantage of it?
