A New York State of Mind
New York City: it’s either a beautiful, awesome melting pot of sounds, lights, cultures, and great food…or a nasty cesspool of all things crazy and/or awful. Despite the latter, I love it no matter what. I was born on the Upper West Side of Manhattan during one of the most intense blizzards to hit NYC (circa 1996). I was thrown into a whirlpool of “mass hysteria…[which] New Yorkers seem to escape…by some tiny margin…” (701) before I could even open my eyes. I can’t recall it from my own memory, but from what my parents have told me, they probably had to dodge about fifty thousand things bringing me back home from the hospital. I was barely sentient, and already I probably experienced more near-death situations than most non-New Yorkers do on a daily basis.
“I saw my life flash before my eyes!”
E.B. White’s Here is New York is a pretty close, if not a hundred percent accurate, account of the Big Apple. His categorizing of the “three New Yorks” is pretty amusing, which is “the New York of the man or woman who was born here…the commuter…[and] the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something” (698). He then goes on to elaborate how jaded the native New Yorker is, how the foreigners give the city drive and passion, and how the commuter helps oil this machine. I think I would place myself between the native and the person on a quest. I have all the attitude of a jaded New York City boy, but I also have the drive to make a name of myself the best way I can. The last thing I would want to be is the commuter: the one who keeps the city running, but can’t enjoy a minute of it. Why work the streets if you can’t see the fruits of your labor? Why be “desk-bound, and…never come suddenly on anything at all in New York as a loiterer, because [you have] no time…” (699). That’s part of the fun of being in NYC: stumbling across random things every day.
Excuse the title.
White’s description of music in the city is of “Another hot night…at the Goldman Band concert in the Mall at Central Park. The people seated on the benches…are swathed in music…It is a magical occasion, and its all free” (705). I had a similar experience when I stumbled across Strawberry Fields in Central Park. This particular section is a homage paid to the late ex-Beatle John Lennon, who lived and died in New York City right on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It was unusually hot for October, so I had taken my guitar out and went on a walk to the park. I was stunned to see a mass of at least 100 people gathered around the mosaic “IMAGINE” at Strawberry Fields all singing “I Want To Hold Your Hand” in perfect harmony. People had guitars out, music stands set up with Beatles and Lennon anthologies spread out upon them, and in the center, a beautiful rose petal display on the mosaic. Apparently, it was in celebration of John Lennon’s 70th birthday! I joined in without hesitation, and played through a few songs before taking a back seat and watching the spectacle continue to unfold. It truly was a magical day.
New York City is awesome. It really “is nothing like Paris; it is nothing like London; and it is not Spokane multiplied by sixty, or Detroit multiplied by four. It is the loftiest of cities” (700). Sure, it stinks of what we call “hot garbage” in the summertime, and the winter brings unavoidable slush oceans, but us New Yorkers are never satisfied! That’s what makes this place so wonderful and unique: we never settle, even when all odds are against us. Like E.B. White said, “It even managed to reach the highest point in the sky at the lowest point of the depression” (700). We’re the home of some of the greatest cultural revolutions: the Harlem Renaissance, the immigration through Ellis Island (which my father and grand parents were a part of), punk rock in CBGBs, and more. When the rest of the world couldn’t see any change, New York did. And frankly, I don’t see any of that stopping any time soon.
