The end of episode 5 of Ric Burns’ epic “New York” documentary is about the skyscraper wars during the early 20th Century. The goal, it seemed, was to prove the "sky is not the limit". Higher and higher they built – the Woolworth Building, the Chrysler which sneakily outdid the Woolworth by erecting a tall spike on top at the last minute, and then the towering Empire State whose plans were approved just before Black Tuesday and whose construction continued regardless.
The documentary includes awe-inspiring footage of the steel-workers, welders and carpenters building the skyscraper, their overalled figures silhouetted against clouds. The 102-storey construction took 14 months to build. When finished it was a monument in spite of the depression – "hey, look, New York can still build the tallest building in the world". It was also a monument to the depression, as the majority of its office space proved impossible to fill and most of its revenue came from tourists climbing to see the view.
What struck me about the sweeping views of the city during these scenes were not its buildings, but its rivers. There they are always. Changeless while the city they embrace transforms. The Hudson and East River flow continuously but they are the most solid part of the city. They hold its shape while people pile the land high with roads, rails and buildings, leaving what they think are significant marks.
The end of the episode echoed my thoughts, with this quote from Scott FitzGerald’s "My Lost City" in which he describes his reactions to the view from the top of the Empire State Building:
"Then I understood – everything was explained: I had discovered the crowning error of the city, its Pandora's box. Full of vaunting pride the New Yorker had climbed here and seen with dismay what he had never suspected, that the city was not the endless succession of canyons that he had supposed but that it had limits – from the tallest structure he saw for the first time that it faded out into the country on all sides, into an expanse of green and blue that alone was limitless. And with the awful realization that New York was a city after all and not a universe, the whole shining edifice that he had reared in his imagination came crashing to the ground."
Not such an awful realization. Without its limits the city couldn’t be lovable.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
New York missive no 59 - Teddy Kennedy, leadership, Diane Wilson, dragon boats
On a Friday evening, after dark, C and I found ourselves overlooking East River straight at the abandoned smallpox hospital on Roosevelt island. It looked back at us with its black, hollow eyes set in a ghostly rectangular face of pale bricks.
*********************************************************
In death, compassion is recognized as heroic. If only that was the case in life.
The press and commentaries on Teddy Kennedy’s death were quick to praise his championing of the underdog. They described the ways in which he steadfastly supported workers, the uninsured, the sick, the immigrant, and how he saw his privilege as a responsibility to help others.
The one time I ever saw him in person was at a congressional hearing held by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, about the working conditions of Florida’s mainly-immigrant tomato-pickers.
Yet I cannot help feeling that in life those qualities of compassion and a steadfast commitment to justice are not given the credit they deserve. Despite the shift in tone here in the US that has followed Obama’s election (currently soured anyway by divisive, smeary debates on health care reform), they are sidelined as idealistic, rather than recognized as the qualities of leadership that can bring about real “progress”.
******************************************
A few years back, JN walked into the office and asked, in her enthusiastic school-teachery way, “Can you name an inspiring global leader? One who’s alive today?” Ummmm…there was an awkward pause. "Mandela?" ventured some. And that was about it.
Now, many would say Obama as well. A global leader in the sense that (among other things), he can navigate the complexities of globalization, resist seeing things in black and white however much pressure there is to do so, while at the same time never losing a sense of direction. He keeps sight of the bigger picture that underlies every decision, one that has fairness at its core. I was surprised that Michael Moore, in a recent Rolling Stone interview about Obama’s first six months, was still overwhelmingly supportive – his theory being that any perceived over-compromises he has made are part of a broader strategy to keep things moving in the right direction.
But more than ever, leadership is as much about pushing up from the bottom as it is inspiring from the top. I recently read "An Unreasonable Woman" the autobiography of Diane Wilson about her persistent, painstaking campaign to combat pollution by Formosa’s plastic factory and other industrial projects by Seadrift in Texas, where she had worked for years as a shrimper. She new nothing, at first, about environmental campaign strategies, litigation, the regulation of toxic pollutants and the dirty tactics business would employ to evade that regulation. But that didn’t matter. She did know that the damage being done to her bay, her sea – in her eyes a physical creature who "still talks even though she's got a mercury Superfund on her left breast and vinyl chloride and phthalates on her right breast” – was wrong. She knew that however many people called her crazy, she wasn’t going to rest until she stopped it.
*********************************************************
Apparently in the UK – and I guess elsewhere as well – companies perceive criticism printed in a newspaper as more libelous than criticism that only appears on the internet, even though defamation laws apply equally to both. Something about the fact of printing and producing a paper gives the impression the words have more weight, are harder to remove and can do more damage. That’s a little illogical. Words online can reach a far wider audience than printed words, and they have a tendency to self-propagate, appearing on two, four, twenty, a hundred different websites and blogs making them all but impossible to erase.
That attitude implies electronic words have less ‘value’ than printed words. So what does that mean for the shift from printed books to e-books – for the rise of Kindle? Of course, the phasing out of printed books is inevitable, though I’ll lamenting along with others the loss of the smell of pages, of pen-scribbles in margins, of sagging bookshelves. But will words really mean less when they appear on screens from which they can come and go, be uploaded and downloaded? Burning books is seen as sacrilege. Wiping an electronic book off your hard drive isn’t.
*********************************************************
Kykuit, the Rockfellers' estate up the Hudson River at Sleepy Hollow is staggeringly beautiful. It inspires conflicting emotions of delight, envy and queasiness at the sight of so much wealth concentrated in one family. Wealth built on the back of Standard Oil –via large-scale exploitation, or wealth-generation for others, or both, whichever way you want to look at it.
“Money can buy you anything” is epitomized there. You like Picasso? Then commission a series of gigantic tapestries of his paintings to hang in your basement art gallery. How about the sculptors Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, David Smith? Fill your landscaped gardens with their work. And want to protect the view of rolling forested hills from your living room window? Get the government to designate it a national park (and thank god they did otherwise that stretch of the Hudson would no doubt by now be smothered in identikit condo blocks).
C and I went up there by train a few weekends ago. The train tracks run alongside the river, which inspired me to get kayaking (one day!). And despite the crazy opulence of Kykuit itself our day was characterized by magical moments that money could never buy. We sat under a tree eating tomatoes and strong cheese on a hunk of bread (actually money did have to buy us that – from a pricey Tarrytown farmers’ market). We encountered two inquisitive deer when we set out on a walk down the Croton aqueduct. We snuck through back gardens when the aqueduct path disappeared on us. I got the giggles at something C said and spat the water I’d just sipped all over the place. From a river wall in Irvington we glimpsed the shadowy forms of the Manhattan skyline, way downstream. We felt sleepy and content on the train on the way home, me gazing at sunsetted scenery flicking past the window, C scribbling bits of a poem on yellow postit notes.
*********************************************************
Labour-day weekend involved jumping in and out of a swimming pool at a big house in the middle of nowhere in Rhode island with a bunch of C’s university friends.
One morning, while I was lying on my belly reading Frank Norris’ "Octopus - A California Story", a small rust-coloured butterfly settled just in front of my nose. It opened and closed its wings, like it was hesitantly applauding the day’s performance.
*********************************************************
We took a break from the dragon boat festival at Flushing in Queens to go and see the "Panorama of the City of New York", the scale architectural model of the city built by Robert Moses for the 1964 World's Fair. The one I’d seen on my Queens exploration very soon after I moved to the city, almost two years ago. How wonderful to walk around the map again and for it to feel so much more familiar, alive. It had sprouted memories.
I’m giving my love of the city an extra stoke by watching Ric Burn’s mammoth documentary series “New York” – in bits, taken out of an old-school DVD shop on Greenwich Avenue.
*********************************************************
In death, compassion is recognized as heroic. If only that was the case in life.
The press and commentaries on Teddy Kennedy’s death were quick to praise his championing of the underdog. They described the ways in which he steadfastly supported workers, the uninsured, the sick, the immigrant, and how he saw his privilege as a responsibility to help others.
The one time I ever saw him in person was at a congressional hearing held by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, about the working conditions of Florida’s mainly-immigrant tomato-pickers.
Yet I cannot help feeling that in life those qualities of compassion and a steadfast commitment to justice are not given the credit they deserve. Despite the shift in tone here in the US that has followed Obama’s election (currently soured anyway by divisive, smeary debates on health care reform), they are sidelined as idealistic, rather than recognized as the qualities of leadership that can bring about real “progress”.
******************************************
A few years back, JN walked into the office and asked, in her enthusiastic school-teachery way, “Can you name an inspiring global leader? One who’s alive today?” Ummmm…there was an awkward pause. "Mandela?" ventured some. And that was about it.
Now, many would say Obama as well. A global leader in the sense that (among other things), he can navigate the complexities of globalization, resist seeing things in black and white however much pressure there is to do so, while at the same time never losing a sense of direction. He keeps sight of the bigger picture that underlies every decision, one that has fairness at its core. I was surprised that Michael Moore, in a recent Rolling Stone interview about Obama’s first six months, was still overwhelmingly supportive – his theory being that any perceived over-compromises he has made are part of a broader strategy to keep things moving in the right direction.
But more than ever, leadership is as much about pushing up from the bottom as it is inspiring from the top. I recently read "An Unreasonable Woman" the autobiography of Diane Wilson about her persistent, painstaking campaign to combat pollution by Formosa’s plastic factory and other industrial projects by Seadrift in Texas, where she had worked for years as a shrimper. She new nothing, at first, about environmental campaign strategies, litigation, the regulation of toxic pollutants and the dirty tactics business would employ to evade that regulation. But that didn’t matter. She did know that the damage being done to her bay, her sea – in her eyes a physical creature who "still talks even though she's got a mercury Superfund on her left breast and vinyl chloride and phthalates on her right breast” – was wrong. She knew that however many people called her crazy, she wasn’t going to rest until she stopped it.
*********************************************************
Apparently in the UK – and I guess elsewhere as well – companies perceive criticism printed in a newspaper as more libelous than criticism that only appears on the internet, even though defamation laws apply equally to both. Something about the fact of printing and producing a paper gives the impression the words have more weight, are harder to remove and can do more damage. That’s a little illogical. Words online can reach a far wider audience than printed words, and they have a tendency to self-propagate, appearing on two, four, twenty, a hundred different websites and blogs making them all but impossible to erase.
That attitude implies electronic words have less ‘value’ than printed words. So what does that mean for the shift from printed books to e-books – for the rise of Kindle? Of course, the phasing out of printed books is inevitable, though I’ll lamenting along with others the loss of the smell of pages, of pen-scribbles in margins, of sagging bookshelves. But will words really mean less when they appear on screens from which they can come and go, be uploaded and downloaded? Burning books is seen as sacrilege. Wiping an electronic book off your hard drive isn’t.
*********************************************************
Kykuit, the Rockfellers' estate up the Hudson River at Sleepy Hollow is staggeringly beautiful. It inspires conflicting emotions of delight, envy and queasiness at the sight of so much wealth concentrated in one family. Wealth built on the back of Standard Oil –via large-scale exploitation, or wealth-generation for others, or both, whichever way you want to look at it.
“Money can buy you anything” is epitomized there. You like Picasso? Then commission a series of gigantic tapestries of his paintings to hang in your basement art gallery. How about the sculptors Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, David Smith? Fill your landscaped gardens with their work. And want to protect the view of rolling forested hills from your living room window? Get the government to designate it a national park (and thank god they did otherwise that stretch of the Hudson would no doubt by now be smothered in identikit condo blocks).
C and I went up there by train a few weekends ago. The train tracks run alongside the river, which inspired me to get kayaking (one day!). And despite the crazy opulence of Kykuit itself our day was characterized by magical moments that money could never buy. We sat under a tree eating tomatoes and strong cheese on a hunk of bread (actually money did have to buy us that – from a pricey Tarrytown farmers’ market). We encountered two inquisitive deer when we set out on a walk down the Croton aqueduct. We snuck through back gardens when the aqueduct path disappeared on us. I got the giggles at something C said and spat the water I’d just sipped all over the place. From a river wall in Irvington we glimpsed the shadowy forms of the Manhattan skyline, way downstream. We felt sleepy and content on the train on the way home, me gazing at sunsetted scenery flicking past the window, C scribbling bits of a poem on yellow postit notes.
*********************************************************
Labour-day weekend involved jumping in and out of a swimming pool at a big house in the middle of nowhere in Rhode island with a bunch of C’s university friends.
One morning, while I was lying on my belly reading Frank Norris’ "Octopus - A California Story", a small rust-coloured butterfly settled just in front of my nose. It opened and closed its wings, like it was hesitantly applauding the day’s performance.
*********************************************************
We took a break from the dragon boat festival at Flushing in Queens to go and see the "Panorama of the City of New York", the scale architectural model of the city built by Robert Moses for the 1964 World's Fair. The one I’d seen on my Queens exploration very soon after I moved to the city, almost two years ago. How wonderful to walk around the map again and for it to feel so much more familiar, alive. It had sprouted memories.
I’m giving my love of the city an extra stoke by watching Ric Burn’s mammoth documentary series “New York” – in bits, taken out of an old-school DVD shop on Greenwich Avenue.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
New York missive no 59 - Blackberries
A blackberry. What’s the first thing that comes into your mind? An electronic hand-held device for receiving, reading, sending emails? Or a succulent piece of fruit composed of juicy purple beads? A fruit that grows on brambles at the back of gardens and tangled in hedgerows.
I had just eaten blackberries – huge ones – in my Mojo café yoghurt and fruit (a regular and now so familiar indulgence). I had a moment of blackberry appreciation, so I wrote the word down, “Blackberry”, ready to be turned into more words at a later date.
Then I looked back at the page, saw "blackberry" written there, and the first thing that came into my head was the electronic variety.
I had just eaten blackberries – huge ones – in my Mojo café yoghurt and fruit (a regular and now so familiar indulgence). I had a moment of blackberry appreciation, so I wrote the word down, “Blackberry”, ready to be turned into more words at a later date.
Then I looked back at the page, saw "blackberry" written there, and the first thing that came into my head was the electronic variety.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
New York missive no 58
Woman walking in a very short skirt through West Village with your dog, do you know that your legs don’t look that good from behind? I wonder...maybe so, and you don’t care. That’s cool.
******************************************
The yellow dress that Michelle Obama wore to her husband’s inauguration in January is on display at Fashion Institute of Technology, just over the road from my work. So I went to check it out one lunchtime. It’s there along with lots of other outfits by its Cuban designer Isabel Toledo, who, I felt (being as far from a fashion expert as possible hence not really in a position to comment), designs fabulous shapes but often misfires on the material. Michelle’s inauguration suit, for example, is an elegantly dramatic shape and a striking colour but up close the fabric looks a bit like a sofa cover, heavy and floral.
The exhibition is called "Fashion from the Inside Out," because, Toledo says, that’s the way that she sees her work. "I never thought of myself as a designer. I’m a seamstress. I really love the technique of sewing more than anything else. The seamstress is the one who views fashion from the inside! That’s the art form, really – the technique of how it’s done." The dresses on display were technical masterpieces (again - says I, the absolute novice). Ah, and of naming, which appealed to me of course. There were Origami dresses, folded to create sail-like collars and backs, the Double Tier Pagoda dress, Blossom Sleeve Bolero and Balloon dress, a Butterfly Wingspan jacket, a jersey dress called Tequila Sunrise, and the Cage dress, made of little black bars hung over the shoulders. Lots of descriptions and pictures here.
The week after seeing that exhibition, dramatic dresses caught my eye. There was the woman on the corner of Greenwich Ave and West 13th wearing a fluorescent green one, and the woman with pink hair and a whispy orange floaty dress at a Lincoln Centre Out of Doors concert (where I had a brightish blue sundress on). The concert involved 200 electric guitars. It would have been more dramatic had we got there in time to be in the centre of things rather than tucked away under the trees, but was relaxing in a zenny-summer evening way.
******************************************
The yellow dress that Michelle Obama wore to her husband’s inauguration in January is on display at Fashion Institute of Technology, just over the road from my work. So I went to check it out one lunchtime. It’s there along with lots of other outfits by its Cuban designer Isabel Toledo, who, I felt (being as far from a fashion expert as possible hence not really in a position to comment), designs fabulous shapes but often misfires on the material. Michelle’s inauguration suit, for example, is an elegantly dramatic shape and a striking colour but up close the fabric looks a bit like a sofa cover, heavy and floral.
The exhibition is called "Fashion from the Inside Out," because, Toledo says, that’s the way that she sees her work. "I never thought of myself as a designer. I’m a seamstress. I really love the technique of sewing more than anything else. The seamstress is the one who views fashion from the inside! That’s the art form, really – the technique of how it’s done." The dresses on display were technical masterpieces (again - says I, the absolute novice). Ah, and of naming, which appealed to me of course. There were Origami dresses, folded to create sail-like collars and backs, the Double Tier Pagoda dress, Blossom Sleeve Bolero and Balloon dress, a Butterfly Wingspan jacket, a jersey dress called Tequila Sunrise, and the Cage dress, made of little black bars hung over the shoulders. Lots of descriptions and pictures here.
The week after seeing that exhibition, dramatic dresses caught my eye. There was the woman on the corner of Greenwich Ave and West 13th wearing a fluorescent green one, and the woman with pink hair and a whispy orange floaty dress at a Lincoln Centre Out of Doors concert (where I had a brightish blue sundress on). The concert involved 200 electric guitars. It would have been more dramatic had we got there in time to be in the centre of things rather than tucked away under the trees, but was relaxing in a zenny-summer evening way.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
New York missive no 57 - A strange view of reverse racism
“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation for ever.” That was Alabama senator George Wallace at his inauguration speech in 1963. How ridiculous history can make people seem (aside from the terrifying ridiculousness of that statement in the first place). Parts of that speech were used in the film “Soundtrack for a revolution” that I saw on Sunday. Supposedly about the role of music in the civil rights movement, it provided a good chronology of the movement and powerful footage – including of the songs. But it forgot, it seemed, to reveal anything new about the music, which was a shame.
Race has been in the news at the moment. On Saturday, there was the sense of another racial barrier broken down as Sonia Sotomayor was sworn in as the first Latino Supreme Court Judge. There was the centenary of the Natl. Association for the Advancement of Colored People, at which many questioned its continued relevance (even though, for example, just a few weeks previously, a private swimming club in Philadephia canceled its contract with a group of mostly black and Latino children to swim there once a week, after objections from white parents). There was the arrest of the Harvard Professor Henry Louis Junior on his doorstep by the white police officer James Crowley, leading to Obama’s statement that the police “acted stupidly”, followed shortly after by his concession that his words may have been ill chosen, and the “beer summit” between Obama, Biden, Gates and Crowley on the White House lawn.
In her Talk of the Town last week Kelefa Sanneh used the beer summit as a springboard for a commentary on reverse racism. She traces emerging perceptions of anti-white discrimination (including critical responses to affirmative action policies, and people claiming Obama’s “acted stupidly” was an example of reverse racism). Then she says, “In the past few decades…reverse racism has undergone a similar re-definition [as discrimination against blacks], from symptom to system…In fact, the ‘reverse’ has largely been dropped from ‘reverse racism’; in today’s mainstream political discourse, ‘racism’ regularly refers to anti-white racism”. She concludes that by the end of the beer summit, “Obama, for his part, seemed ready, maybe even eager, to change the subject. He had discovered, surely, that a black President can pay a price for talking about racism. And he was no doubt reminded that to some Americans 'racism' doesn’t mean what it used to.” Ok, with the insertion of “some Americans” Sanneh distances herself subtly from this argument. But whoah, hold on a minute…
“Systemic” reverse racism – “systemic” racism against whites? I don’t think so. The systemic nature of racism is tied, in part, to its collective experience. (It's we - not "I" - shall overcome). Of course, one person can be racist towards another by judging or discriminating against them on the basis of their race, whatever that race may be. But there is a vast distance between the disgruntlement of whites in the face of affirmative action or instances of misplaced presumptions of racism on their part, and the collective discrimination that was and to an extent still is experienced by blacks in the US. An entrenched process that has ripple effects through time, across generations, so that, as Gary Younge points out in the same article I linked to above, “One in three black boys born in 2001 is destined to go to jail, according to the Sentencing Project", and "thanks to civil rights victories, African Americans now have the right to go into any restaurant they wish. But thanks to the legacy of segregation and continuing discrimination many cannot afford what is on the menu."
Whites have never and never will experience the collective humiliation that gave rise to the civil rights movement. I can't see whites needing to sing "We shall overcome" anytime soon.
Race has been in the news at the moment. On Saturday, there was the sense of another racial barrier broken down as Sonia Sotomayor was sworn in as the first Latino Supreme Court Judge. There was the centenary of the Natl. Association for the Advancement of Colored People, at which many questioned its continued relevance (even though, for example, just a few weeks previously, a private swimming club in Philadephia canceled its contract with a group of mostly black and Latino children to swim there once a week, after objections from white parents). There was the arrest of the Harvard Professor Henry Louis Junior on his doorstep by the white police officer James Crowley, leading to Obama’s statement that the police “acted stupidly”, followed shortly after by his concession that his words may have been ill chosen, and the “beer summit” between Obama, Biden, Gates and Crowley on the White House lawn.
In her Talk of the Town last week Kelefa Sanneh used the beer summit as a springboard for a commentary on reverse racism. She traces emerging perceptions of anti-white discrimination (including critical responses to affirmative action policies, and people claiming Obama’s “acted stupidly” was an example of reverse racism). Then she says, “In the past few decades…reverse racism has undergone a similar re-definition [as discrimination against blacks], from symptom to system…In fact, the ‘reverse’ has largely been dropped from ‘reverse racism’; in today’s mainstream political discourse, ‘racism’ regularly refers to anti-white racism”. She concludes that by the end of the beer summit, “Obama, for his part, seemed ready, maybe even eager, to change the subject. He had discovered, surely, that a black President can pay a price for talking about racism. And he was no doubt reminded that to some Americans 'racism' doesn’t mean what it used to.” Ok, with the insertion of “some Americans” Sanneh distances herself subtly from this argument. But whoah, hold on a minute…
“Systemic” reverse racism – “systemic” racism against whites? I don’t think so. The systemic nature of racism is tied, in part, to its collective experience. (It's we - not "I" - shall overcome). Of course, one person can be racist towards another by judging or discriminating against them on the basis of their race, whatever that race may be. But there is a vast distance between the disgruntlement of whites in the face of affirmative action or instances of misplaced presumptions of racism on their part, and the collective discrimination that was and to an extent still is experienced by blacks in the US. An entrenched process that has ripple effects through time, across generations, so that, as Gary Younge points out in the same article I linked to above, “One in three black boys born in 2001 is destined to go to jail, according to the Sentencing Project", and "thanks to civil rights victories, African Americans now have the right to go into any restaurant they wish. But thanks to the legacy of segregation and continuing discrimination many cannot afford what is on the menu."
Whites have never and never will experience the collective humiliation that gave rise to the civil rights movement. I can't see whites needing to sing "We shall overcome" anytime soon.
Friday, July 31, 2009
New York missive no 56 - Brighton Beach, Governor's Island, and tapestries
New York’s stormy this Summer. There’s a humidity that brews then explodes at intervals, drenching pedestrians.
On Saturday, C and I got to Brighton Beach just when a monsoon-like downpour hit. Thousands of people in skimpy beach clothes were sprinting off the beach (we were headed towards it in search of L), scurrying for shelter even though they were already soaked to the skin, and not sure where the shelter they were scurrying to was, and flapping sodden towels behind them.
We squashed with lots of others beneath some scaffolding where L found us. In 10 minutes there was clear sky and sunshine and bodies beach towels were re-established on the sand. A long swim in the sea made me, as it always does, a happy creature. Then a feast of food from the former Soviet union in a 80s-style cafe blaring cheesy Russian pop. Despite the strong post-Soviet influence the beach was diverse of course - a cross-section of all New York escaping the streets to get salty and sandy, and relax (for the brief period that New Yorkers are able to).
On Governor’s Island the next day for a Judy Collins concert we kept casting wary glances to the sky. It had ominously dark patches like eye bags. But no rain. The rain didn’t come till the evening when AG and I watched from our window West Village fashionistas try to protect their meager dresses (the meagerer the costlier) and shoulder-slung shopping bags from the downpour. Then another storm came in during my writing class on Wednesday. We sat round in CW’s apartment commenting on each others work to the deafening accompaniment of thunder claps.
Unlike the previous week, CW's big cats left me alone. Then, I seemed to have the appeal of a saucer of milk – they didn’t quite lap me up but did stalk around my chair and slink across my shins which was somewhat distracting and gave me the giggles. They must have smelt C’s cats on me and liked it.
During the class we briefly described elements of our “material”, i.e. the stuff we want to write about. The classes have been all about mining that material without spelling it out. So it was interesting to pause and think about what exactly that material is. Here’s what I jotted down - very much an instinctive and provisional list:
Prisons: More broadly, freedom and what it means to have or not to have it. And also injustice – in itself (because it makes me angry, hence good material), and how people deal it out and deal with it. Interested in perpetrators and victims – the power dynamics involved.
Navigation: Of places and of lives – combining maps of cities and places with the ways that people navigate themselves and each other. How people need to put markers down, choose which direction to take and what’s significant, give meaning (or a sense of direction) to things where there may be none, etc. Exploration, openness, curiosity, exposure.
Legacy: How people want to leave their mark on the world. Something that will stay behind after they die. Could be something built, something written, something painted, or a child.
Leaving: How people hurt themselves and each other by leaving – but can equally hurt themselves and each other by staying. The tension that causes.
Mental health: How vulnerable our minds make us. Responses to trauma. And how people described as ‘mad’ are often the wisest.
Nature: As a backdrop to everything. Because that’s where we come from.
Other things: The sea, snakes. Magic in ordinary things.
*****************************************************
Seems to be a Radiohead revival at the moment. Am in Mojo (heavy thunderclouds brewing outside) and it’s playing, and in my other early morning hangout, the Roasting Plant at 7th and Greenwich Aves it’s on all the time.
*****************************************************
Tapestries are assuming significance. There was my encounter with Elias Sime's beautiful tapestries early this year, and the memories they brought back of my grandmother’s (among so many other things they were part of her legacy – the mark she has left on the world). There’s CA’s search for the right big tapestry for his wall. And to zoom further out of my immediate world, the new Director of the Met, Thomas Campbell, is a tapestry guru. Can't be many of them in the world. Rebecca Mead did a captivating profile of him in last week’s New Yorker.
*****************************************************
As magnificent as the thunderstorms are the luminous calms that follows them. I'm about to emerge from the coffee shop into one.
On Saturday, C and I got to Brighton Beach just when a monsoon-like downpour hit. Thousands of people in skimpy beach clothes were sprinting off the beach (we were headed towards it in search of L), scurrying for shelter even though they were already soaked to the skin, and not sure where the shelter they were scurrying to was, and flapping sodden towels behind them.
We squashed with lots of others beneath some scaffolding where L found us. In 10 minutes there was clear sky and sunshine and bodies beach towels were re-established on the sand. A long swim in the sea made me, as it always does, a happy creature. Then a feast of food from the former Soviet union in a 80s-style cafe blaring cheesy Russian pop. Despite the strong post-Soviet influence the beach was diverse of course - a cross-section of all New York escaping the streets to get salty and sandy, and relax (for the brief period that New Yorkers are able to).
On Governor’s Island the next day for a Judy Collins concert we kept casting wary glances to the sky. It had ominously dark patches like eye bags. But no rain. The rain didn’t come till the evening when AG and I watched from our window West Village fashionistas try to protect their meager dresses (the meagerer the costlier) and shoulder-slung shopping bags from the downpour. Then another storm came in during my writing class on Wednesday. We sat round in CW’s apartment commenting on each others work to the deafening accompaniment of thunder claps.
Unlike the previous week, CW's big cats left me alone. Then, I seemed to have the appeal of a saucer of milk – they didn’t quite lap me up but did stalk around my chair and slink across my shins which was somewhat distracting and gave me the giggles. They must have smelt C’s cats on me and liked it.
During the class we briefly described elements of our “material”, i.e. the stuff we want to write about. The classes have been all about mining that material without spelling it out. So it was interesting to pause and think about what exactly that material is. Here’s what I jotted down - very much an instinctive and provisional list:
Prisons: More broadly, freedom and what it means to have or not to have it. And also injustice – in itself (because it makes me angry, hence good material), and how people deal it out and deal with it. Interested in perpetrators and victims – the power dynamics involved.
Navigation: Of places and of lives – combining maps of cities and places with the ways that people navigate themselves and each other. How people need to put markers down, choose which direction to take and what’s significant, give meaning (or a sense of direction) to things where there may be none, etc. Exploration, openness, curiosity, exposure.
Legacy: How people want to leave their mark on the world. Something that will stay behind after they die. Could be something built, something written, something painted, or a child.
Leaving: How people hurt themselves and each other by leaving – but can equally hurt themselves and each other by staying. The tension that causes.
Mental health: How vulnerable our minds make us. Responses to trauma. And how people described as ‘mad’ are often the wisest.
Nature: As a backdrop to everything. Because that’s where we come from.
Other things: The sea, snakes. Magic in ordinary things.
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Seems to be a Radiohead revival at the moment. Am in Mojo (heavy thunderclouds brewing outside) and it’s playing, and in my other early morning hangout, the Roasting Plant at 7th and Greenwich Aves it’s on all the time.
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Tapestries are assuming significance. There was my encounter with Elias Sime's beautiful tapestries early this year, and the memories they brought back of my grandmother’s (among so many other things they were part of her legacy – the mark she has left on the world). There’s CA’s search for the right big tapestry for his wall. And to zoom further out of my immediate world, the new Director of the Met, Thomas Campbell, is a tapestry guru. Can't be many of them in the world. Rebecca Mead did a captivating profile of him in last week’s New Yorker.
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As magnificent as the thunderstorms are the luminous calms that follows them. I'm about to emerge from the coffee shop into one.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
New York missive no 55 - Arrival of the High Line
Three walks up the High Line.
Something magnificent has appeared on the western edge of Manhattan. I say “appeared”, but it is more the result of dedicated design and years of hard work. Originally an elevated freight train line built in the 1930s, the last train ran along the High Line in 1980 and it has now been transformed into a long, thin park. It’s a splash of wild green slicing up through the mix of fast-disappearing warehouses and fast-developing expensive apartment blocks that make up the west of the meatpacking district and Chelsea.
A few days after it opened I walked along it to work (just a little detour west from my usual route, oh lucky me). It was 7 in the morning so there was hardly anyone else there. Just a man by an easel painting the view and a very occasional jogger. I took my time, taking what I thought were arty photos. Of the wide staircase up to it from the end of Gansevoort Street, with its high walls that make you feel like a train emerging into light from the end of a tunnel. Of the smart and scruffy urban scenes that crowd beside and below it – a yard full of scrap including a mannequin wearing a spacesuit, ceramic urns and an old tv set…glimpses of the Hudson river…pipes and air conditioning units…redbrick-blue-glass-plain-glass buildings…a metal rack of new cars (is that what they’re called?) – and of the High Line itself with its wooden walkway and freshly-planted plants that still looked a little vulnerable.
The second time, I walked faster – a more New Yorkerly pace now that the childish wonder had gone. Like a traveler getting used to being in a new city and putting on an air of “I know my way round this place”. (Oh dear, is that as long as amazement lasts – just one day – in this city where surprise is so commonplace? But that sounds mournful, which is unintended. It’s the constantly vanishing then regenerated sense of surprise that I love about New York, and the knowledge that I’m sharing that feeling with so many millions of others, alive and dead). The painter was there again with his easel. This time he was just beyond the new Standard Hotel which is meant to be oh-so-cool but from the outside looks little more than a concrete slab. And there was another man, who seemed to be experiencing what I had been the first time. Now he was the one dawdling with his camera, tugged this way and that by the quirky angles begging to be snapped.
The third time I walk along the High Line is about 10 days later, after returning from a trip to London and Amsterdam. Wow the plants have grown fast. The seedlings by the south end are almost trees already. There are wild flowers of all kinds, including some dramatic purple prongs. And hovering all about the place like bees are High Line staff in shorts and new T-shirts, clutching trowels, being productive and making me think what a fabulous way to spend a morning. The awe’s returned. (Thought I’d throw in a past-to-present tense change there…having experimented with it in latest creative writing piece and thinking it suits…).
As P said in a recent email from the Swiss mountains that are now her home: “Nature designs in perfect balance, every single element with a purpose and function and the most aesthetically pleasing result. You will never see a flower with clashing colours, a disproportioned tree, or hear a bird sing out of tune. And yet the number of different designs is phenomenal…So I’ve decided - nature is the icon and peak of design that all should aspire too…I think if you are to design something, approach it as nature would.”
Or in the case of the High Line, design it with nature.
********************************************************************
A delightful conversation of sorts overheard in a coffee-shop last week. A man in his mid-forties and a younger woman were playing chess on a tiny board. I thought, but might have just been imagining it, that the man was savouring the times when it was the girl’s move, because she would be staring intently at the board and he was able to sit back and stare gently at her. The conversation was more remarks than conversation.
“I should have killed your bishop” (her).
Then a few moves later when he returns from the bathroom, “Man how exciting, how very exciting. I could get killed. Seriously killed.” (him).
“That’s what I like to hear” (her).
“Aha. But no.” (him).
“Damn I always loose because of that.” (her, as he deftly slips, with a little hop of a castle or prance of a knight – I couldn’t see – out of danger’s way using an escape route she hadn't forseen).
********************************************************************
Last weekend was a precious weekend in Amsterdam catching up with K. We strolled and talked and strolled and talked. We saw herons disappointed on Sunday when it was raining and when the Albert Cuyp market outside K and T’s apartment was closed (hence no herrings for them). Silly birds they just stood there on top of cars and on rooftops getting their feathers wet, waiting for the rain to pass. We did eat herring though – hah – bought the day before. We saw a Klezmer band at the BadCyup. It was, it seemed, the first gig for the young girl playing the accordion. She was playing well and loving it but cringing shyly whenever she was brought centre-stage – K said she thought that’s what I would be like (something to do with my not liking having my photo taken no doubt). I admired the way that K has decorated their bathroom wall with covers of penguin books cut from “700 Penguins”. And we cooked. Hooray! I realized how crazy it is that I never, ever cook in New York. I resolved to do so more but am already doubting my own resolution. We made delicious veggie things from the Ottolenghi cookbook involving broad beans, radishes, pickled lemons, grilled halloumi, asparagus, coriander, garlic, grilled cherry tomatoes, courgette…(not all in the same recipe).
Something magnificent has appeared on the western edge of Manhattan. I say “appeared”, but it is more the result of dedicated design and years of hard work. Originally an elevated freight train line built in the 1930s, the last train ran along the High Line in 1980 and it has now been transformed into a long, thin park. It’s a splash of wild green slicing up through the mix of fast-disappearing warehouses and fast-developing expensive apartment blocks that make up the west of the meatpacking district and Chelsea.
A few days after it opened I walked along it to work (just a little detour west from my usual route, oh lucky me). It was 7 in the morning so there was hardly anyone else there. Just a man by an easel painting the view and a very occasional jogger. I took my time, taking what I thought were arty photos. Of the wide staircase up to it from the end of Gansevoort Street, with its high walls that make you feel like a train emerging into light from the end of a tunnel. Of the smart and scruffy urban scenes that crowd beside and below it – a yard full of scrap including a mannequin wearing a spacesuit, ceramic urns and an old tv set…glimpses of the Hudson river…pipes and air conditioning units…redbrick-blue-glass-plain-glass buildings…a metal rack of new cars (is that what they’re called?) – and of the High Line itself with its wooden walkway and freshly-planted plants that still looked a little vulnerable.
The second time, I walked faster – a more New Yorkerly pace now that the childish wonder had gone. Like a traveler getting used to being in a new city and putting on an air of “I know my way round this place”. (Oh dear, is that as long as amazement lasts – just one day – in this city where surprise is so commonplace? But that sounds mournful, which is unintended. It’s the constantly vanishing then regenerated sense of surprise that I love about New York, and the knowledge that I’m sharing that feeling with so many millions of others, alive and dead). The painter was there again with his easel. This time he was just beyond the new Standard Hotel which is meant to be oh-so-cool but from the outside looks little more than a concrete slab. And there was another man, who seemed to be experiencing what I had been the first time. Now he was the one dawdling with his camera, tugged this way and that by the quirky angles begging to be snapped.
The third time I walk along the High Line is about 10 days later, after returning from a trip to London and Amsterdam. Wow the plants have grown fast. The seedlings by the south end are almost trees already. There are wild flowers of all kinds, including some dramatic purple prongs. And hovering all about the place like bees are High Line staff in shorts and new T-shirts, clutching trowels, being productive and making me think what a fabulous way to spend a morning. The awe’s returned. (Thought I’d throw in a past-to-present tense change there…having experimented with it in latest creative writing piece and thinking it suits…).
As P said in a recent email from the Swiss mountains that are now her home: “Nature designs in perfect balance, every single element with a purpose and function and the most aesthetically pleasing result. You will never see a flower with clashing colours, a disproportioned tree, or hear a bird sing out of tune. And yet the number of different designs is phenomenal…So I’ve decided - nature is the icon and peak of design that all should aspire too…I think if you are to design something, approach it as nature would.”
Or in the case of the High Line, design it with nature.
********************************************************************
A delightful conversation of sorts overheard in a coffee-shop last week. A man in his mid-forties and a younger woman were playing chess on a tiny board. I thought, but might have just been imagining it, that the man was savouring the times when it was the girl’s move, because she would be staring intently at the board and he was able to sit back and stare gently at her. The conversation was more remarks than conversation.
“I should have killed your bishop” (her).
Then a few moves later when he returns from the bathroom, “Man how exciting, how very exciting. I could get killed. Seriously killed.” (him).
“That’s what I like to hear” (her).
“Aha. But no.” (him).
“Damn I always loose because of that.” (her, as he deftly slips, with a little hop of a castle or prance of a knight – I couldn’t see – out of danger’s way using an escape route she hadn't forseen).
********************************************************************
Last weekend was a precious weekend in Amsterdam catching up with K. We strolled and talked and strolled and talked. We saw herons disappointed on Sunday when it was raining and when the Albert Cuyp market outside K and T’s apartment was closed (hence no herrings for them). Silly birds they just stood there on top of cars and on rooftops getting their feathers wet, waiting for the rain to pass. We did eat herring though – hah – bought the day before. We saw a Klezmer band at the BadCyup. It was, it seemed, the first gig for the young girl playing the accordion. She was playing well and loving it but cringing shyly whenever she was brought centre-stage – K said she thought that’s what I would be like (something to do with my not liking having my photo taken no doubt). I admired the way that K has decorated their bathroom wall with covers of penguin books cut from “700 Penguins”. And we cooked. Hooray! I realized how crazy it is that I never, ever cook in New York. I resolved to do so more but am already doubting my own resolution. We made delicious veggie things from the Ottolenghi cookbook involving broad beans, radishes, pickled lemons, grilled halloumi, asparagus, coriander, garlic, grilled cherry tomatoes, courgette…(not all in the same recipe).
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