Thursday, March 5, 2009

New York missive no 45 - Uptown moments, David Foster Wallace

Am digesting lots of sushi and a blowfish saki. JB and I just went for a meal at a Japanese restaurant in mid-town following a consultation at the UN. Very Japanese, in that at first we were led to the upper floor even though there wasn’t a single person eating there, and then to the far right-hand corner of the upper floor, presumably because we didn’t blend in with the clientele downstairs. We manoeuvred our way back down though.

So before they’re layered over with more downtown images I’ll record some of my uptown moments (not that I won’t be still be going up there sometimes!). There was the first McCain-Obama debate in the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. Its walls were draped in history in the form of photographs of jazz musicians who had played there, and the auditorium thrilled with the flush of history in the making.

There was a night of music, when Ch, Sa, L and I had planned to go to Smoke jazz bar but found it full for the first session. Instead we went (through a friend of L’s Mum), to a free Brahms concert performed by Russian musicians in an old hall somewhere in the W 70s. The violinist and pianist both had paunches and ill-fitting suits. They gave their brows dramatic mops with handkerchiefs between each movement. The pianist’s pile of hair flopped about as he swayed on his piano stool. The page-turner was a teenage boy with a prominent red polo logo on his shirt. There were quite a few fur coats, big hair-dos and smartly turned-out Russian children in the audience. Yet these visual details were just a merry accompaniment to the music itself, deep and dreamy and oh such a relaxing way to spend the first part of a Saturday night. That was followed by wine at the French Roast on the corner near there (I had thought the one on 6th Ave and 11th was the only one, so was disappointed to discover it’s not unique). Sa then headed home to his Thai lover and Ch headed home to sleep as she was running a half-marathon next day, and L and I went back to Smoke to catch the last set. It was a celebration of the drummer Jimmy Cobb’s 80th birthday. He played, and played good - after all he was the drummer on most of the Miles Davis albums - but this was clearly the third and final set. At midnight on the dot he and the band laid down their drumsticks and trumpets and made a beeline for the bar.

Other uptown things...English conversation classes with mother tongue Spanish-speakers from Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Mexico in Washington Heights (an excuse for me to practice Spanish as much as help their English)…a fascinating talk at New York Public Library’s Countee Cullen branch on Jacob Lawrence’s Migration series…and a stunning walk one morning down from 145th, after turning up at the swimming pool in Riverbank State Park to find it closed (oh where oh where are the good big open and affordable Manhattan swimming pools?!). The sun was just rising as I walked through Harlem, gently kissing quiet streets awake.

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I've come across several examples of privatization-of-public functions gone crazy recently. Which is a little ironic in the midst of a financial crisis in which companies are being bailed out and bought out by governments all over the place, though both are symptoms of blind faith in the market. For example in Dan Baum’s new book about New Orleans he apparently describes how “the Superdome turns into a Dantean circle of hell. The coroner can’t figure out why no one is bringing in bodies. Soldiers aren’t allowed to pick them up; neither are state police. Eventually an outside contractor arrives, and the coroner says bitterly: “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Dead people rot on the streets of New Orleans for a week and a half so the feds can sign a private contract.” Or there’s the court case underway at the moment in Pennsylvania. Two judges have pleaded guilty to taking over $2.6 million in kickbacks from two private youth detention centers in return for sending teenagers there - some of them for minor, first-time offenses. Apparently one of the judges sentenced over 5,000 juveniles since the kickback scheme started in 2003. Everyday I’m immersed in cases of business behaving badly. It’s easy to become a bit numbed by them, to let my sense of outrage get worn down at the edges, until a case like that electroshocks it back to life again.

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A strange, intense appreciation has come over me, naff as that may sound. An overwhelming sense of privilege and being awed by the tiniest things.

Is it because Spring’s coming? (Albeit in fits and starts via the occasional disruptive snowstorm, like last weekend's which is now melting in heavy splashes from scaffolding and windowsills).

Is it because of the crisis-recession-downturn-or-whatever-we-like-or-dare-to-call-it? Out for dinner with PK the other night we got into talking about how "it" is making us reassess priorities and value the things we have. Which of course was easy for us to say, who still have jobs, and who had just emerged from hearing Jesseye Norman speaking at Carnegie Hall (she’s as charismatic a talker as she is singer, her conversation sparkling with vivid anecdotes). I doubt most people who have lost their jobs, houses, healthcare, pensions, or all of those are savouring a reassessment of priorities, they’re in a dark place living day to day.

The downturn has also birthed a new breed of guilt-quickly-transformed-to justification for spending. Several times recently I’ve heard myself and others rationalizing carrying on as usual, deciding to eat out, have an extra glass of wine rather than spending more cautiously and saving, either on the basis that “we may as well enjoy it while it lasts”, or on the basis that doing so will support the economy, keeping small businesses and shops alive.

But back to the intense appreciation feeling. It was echoed in a speech I read this morning over coffee (back at Mojo’s again, yay!) – David Foster Wallace’s 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address. I’m no longer surprised in this city when I find echoes and reflections between things I see, hear and read: the frequency of interactions means it’s inevitable there’ll be connections between some of them. And alertness to connections is a kind of survival strategy too, weaving patterns and logic through what could seem disconnected sequences of events.

“Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience,” Wallace says. And, “The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness…if you really learn how to pay attention…It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation [he had just described a stressful trip to the supermarket in cinematic detail] as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down. Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital T-True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it.” (His "try" there a tiny but such a loaded word). The speech throws open window upon window upon window of possibilities. I guess you could sum his message up as, "it's all in the attitude." But in the most profound and liberating, and challenging, of ways.

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