NY missive no 167 - Voice

Three things yesterday made me think of “voice”. As in, written voice.

One very literally so. I was scrolling through those “recommended for you” titles that pop up in Kindle. There was Elizabeth Strout’s new short story collection, no doubt because a friend had WhatsApped me about it, and in that freaky Amazon-knows-absolutely-everything-or-at-least-thinks-it-does way, Kindle thought that I might like to buy it. There were a bunch of books with “Platform” in the title, probably because I had recently bought a book on platform economics. And then there was “The Art of Voice - Poetic Principles and Practice”. This one – with a photo of a squawking seagull on the cover and that phrase coming out of its mouth - drew my attention immediately. Then the fact that it had drawn my attention, drew my attention further. I read the sample, then bought the full thing. It’s by poet Tony Hoagland, with chapters like “Showing the Mind in Motion”, “Whose Voice is It?”, and “Voices Borrowed from the Environment”. Right up my street.

Another instance was earlier in the day, as JNH worked on his "book". These stay-at-home days while the Covid-19 pandemic ravages NYC (in so many ways) have have their tough times. Like when C was in bed with a fever and cough fighting COVID. On one particular day he emerged looking like just a shell of himself. Luckily he's better now, and his breathing never got to the point he had to go to hospital, which is what we dreaded. There have also been unexpected beautiful moments, which emerge from the fact we’re spending so much time together at home. JNH said he wanted to start work on a book. He wanted to do it on the computer (screens have become all-the-more central in their lives because of online learning), but as he's slow at typing, I said I’d help: JNH dictating and me typing. Called “Knights in Fantasy”, so far there is a great deal of scene-setting, with detailed descriptions of the various monsters and knights that will appear in the tale - characters who are inspired by his toys. I flash-backed to the “novel” SeeWich that I wrote (in blue ink) when I was around his age, two-thirds of which involved the exciting journey up the golden steps to the magical land of SeeWich, leaving not a lot of room for the SeeWich adventure itself. Still, JNH's character descriptions are vivid and entertaining. And, most important, there’s a unique voice that comes through, the voice of a ten-year-old enjoying being authorial while not thinking too hard about it.

“Creativity gives you power,” he says in the opening paragraph. “And you must find ways to channel that power. My preferred way is making my ideas out of the toys I own.” And, regarding the Livivan Tree: “I am not writing about this tree because it is the tallest in the Mystic Universe (because it’s not). It is because these trees are ‘alive’. ‘Alive’ meaning moving and groaning. They have a spirit.”

It’s hard to put into words what the voice is like. As Hoagland says at the opening of his book, "One of the most difficult to define elements in poetry is voice, the distinctive linguistic presentation of an individual speaker." Hard to describe and mighty powerful.

The third instance was in the evening when I dived back into the novel I’m reading at the moment, “Girl, Woman, Other” by Bernadine Evaristo. K sent it as a birthday present back in January: little did we know at the time that it would be part of my lock-down entertainment. At that time, just the first part of the outbreak was breaking out, in Wuhan. Each chapter is about a different person - most of them women, most black, and all, so far, conveyed in third person. Each has an utterly distinctive and immersive voice, so that you are within the character's experience. It's something that only a mighty skilled writer can make seem effortless on the page - even though "voice" surrounds us every day. No wonder that Evaristo was one of the winners of last year's Booker (the prize was split between her and Margaret Atwood).

As I write this, I can hear three sounds: the boys kicking a ball around, birds singing, and sirens.

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Particularly worried about our elderly next door neighbors G and J, though so far G says that they are ok. The boys climb over the fence into their garden to fetch their soccer ball when it goes over (often). Their garden's wild and overgrown, with the odd hyacinth and daffodil poking through. One time - no idea if it was last week or the one before as my sense of time is out of whack - CMH came back carrying the most wonderful branch. He gave it to me as a present, making my day. So many comparisons came to mind - a stag's antlers, the spindly arms and fingers of Roald Dahl's Witches (more strictly speaking Quentin Blake's), and sinister scenes from the Blair Witch Project. I've kept the branch propped up against a wall outside, and it brings a smile to my face each time I see it.

NY missive no 166 - Another first decade

Would it be possible to live this decade, from 43 to 53, with the same sense of newness as the decade from 0-10?

Of course not but it's worth a try.

NY missive no 165 - Deep and up

In so many contexts I've been in, there's a tension between those who want to go up and big, and those who want to go deep. Both are important. Creating strong connections between the two is a real art form, and so often a missed opportunity.

Windows and doors

On Tuesdays last year I had a routine during JNH's guitar class, of drinking a glass of wine in Omonia cafe on Broadway. The guitar school was right above Omonia. It became a habit to the extent that the waitress would say "your usual?", and "it's been so long!" when I missed a few weeks. A precious window of time during which I'd sit by the window, with a book to read or a notepad to write in, and look up out of that window to the street from time to time.

On one of those occasions, I realized that windows and doors could illustrate my philosophy of life and work, if I ever got around to having one.

Windows for the way that they put a frame around a part of the world and prompt you to reflect on what that frame contains. Looking through a different window provides a different perspective, a different take, and your life takes it in and becomes richer.

There's a wonderful New Yorker profile of Jorn Utzon who designed the Sidney Opera House. At one of the homes he designed in Majorca, Can Lis, he included slit-like niches alongside each other overlooking the ocean, instead of a single window, so that a ship sailing by would appear, disappear, reappear, disappear, reappear. How simple and beautiful.

And doors for the way that we don't know what to expect before we open them. Doing so reveals the unexpected. The more new windows and doors we find to look and walk through, the better.

NY missive no 164 - Watchmen, New Kid, and the promise of a blank comic strip

It was only on reading Watchmen (after C’s patient encouragement over the years) that I realized something fundamentally wonderful about graphic novels. They are a profound example of constraints breeding creativity. Within each of the boxes, what do you choose to show, what do you not show? When do you zoom in, when do you zoom out? That's similar to a novelists’ choices between revelation and omission but more visceral given it’s visual as well as verbal. Controlling the reader/watcher’s experience, but then only so much of course, because the reader/watcher might capture what you intended, only some of it, or something altogether different. Close and distant, like any relationship.

I was reminded of this again yesterday when I drew out the square and rectangle shapes for a comic strip that JNH had to complete as a homework assignment. I thought about whether to use three, two or one boxes in each of the four rows on the yellow page, and wasn’t sure how exactly I arrived at those decisions, drawing them first in pencil, and then going over the lines with a thick black sharpie. A page of potential. Even more intriguing than a blank page. I’m looking forward to seeing what JNH comes up with, but this being an assignment no doubt it will be less spontaneous than what he sketches in his big red notebook. Recently, that has involved annotated diagrams of the risks associated with the various parts of a school bus - including the puking potential of sitting at the front, in the middle or at the back - and mascots for invented American Football teams, like the Miami Sunburns, Tennessee Towers, and Buffalo Spears.

Another recent graphic novel encounter was New Kid, by Jerry Craft (here's a video of Craft talking about it; what a great surname for a graphic novelist by the way).

JNH plucked it off a shelf in a bookstore. He read it twice, then C read it, then I read it aloud to CMH with JNH listening too. It tells/shows the story of Jordan Banks as he straddles two worlds, between his home in Washington Heights (where C grew up), and a private middle school in Riverdale in the Bronx, where he’s one of the few kids of color, and one of the few on financial aid. He navigates these tensions with curiosity, humor, and by capturing them within the squares and rectangles of his own comic strips.

NY missive no 163 - Tennis, soccer, Queens

The last Saturday before the kids went back to school, JNH and I were on the Sean’s Place basketball courts on 38th Street, playing tennis.

I say playing tennis, but it was more like trying to hit the ball to each other and get a rally of more than three. I was wearing a sleeveless Japanese-style print shirt in turquoise, pink and white, and sneakers with pink laces, which made me feel a bit clown-like. We’d been to the US Open at Flushing Meadows the week before, which inspired the kids to get rackets. JMH was particularly impressed by Kyrgios. Tennis on a basketball court, I thought...talk about gentrification.

CMH kicked a soccer ball nearby. And while there was this touch of tennis towards the end, it had really been a Summer of soccer. Of riding the 7 train each Saturday to the pitches in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, where kids from all over Queens played against each other, with team names like Real Astoria, Manchester NYC, Las Malvinas, and ours, 5 Star Soccer Academy.

Ice-cream, empanada and mango sellers moved among the throngs of parents on the sidelines. Always a creature of habit, each Saturday I’d look forward to my zip-lock bag of mango slices shaken with lime and salt, sucking on them under a hot Sun with bits of AstroTurf in my sandals and rooting for 5 Star with their bright blue and white shirts, as airplanes headed down into La Guardia rumbled overhead. The U7s rocked the season, the U10s less so, which made the high moments all the better.

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At JFK waiting for a flight for a quick work trip to the UK. Scandinavian couple to my right at the bar, sipping very slowly on their Cosmopolitans, and looking somewhat relieved that they are headed back to the peace and quiet of their hometown.

I still love this City like I did when I arrived 12 years ago, actually more so.

Now the Scandinavians next to me have drunk about half their Cosmopolitans, and their conversation is flowing.

NY missive no 162 - Year of the pig

Recently I caught up with JQ. She said that returning to New York after a year in Berlin and Budapest reminded her how deeply she loves this city. It struck her particularly on a visit to Chinatown. I too had had a similar reminder in Chinatown, when I took the boys there for the Luna new year celebrations. As my schedule’s more flexible for now (oh yeah!) I can make the most of days like that, when they are off school. We got the train down to Sara D Roosevelt Park where the firecracker ceremony was happening.

The park was packed, but we found a slightly less crowded area on the South Side by a playground and some grass. A nearby store brimmed and spilled out on to the street with lanterns, small boxes of firecrackers, and foam string spray cans for a dollar. The boys loved squirting the foam all over the park where it hung in fluorescent threads from the trees and climbing frames. The air popped with the sound of the fire crackers as little feet leaped on them.

Then we found a little girl who had lost her mother. Tears ran down her face. Everyone was just continuing on their way around her, oblivious to the fact she was on her own. We tried talking with her, but she only understood Chinese. I lifted her up high to see if she could see her mother in the crowd, but no sign. A woman who did speak Chinese came and helped us. We began to head towards the stage to ask for an announcement to be made, when the mother came running up to us, hugged the girl with tears and relief, and all was well.

It’s the year of the pig. The boys talked me in to buying a pig each: bright red, round, squishy ones decorated with Chinese flowers. In that unpredictable way that toys do, they have turned out to be hits. Both sleep with them each night (with a group of other carefully selected animals), and JNH’s joins us when we’re watching TV.

Homewards through Little Italy. Though I’d given up hope of seeing dragons in action, suddenly there they were on a side-street, leaping and glaring to the accompaniment of cymbals and falling streamers in the evening sun: I was taken right back to my 10th birthday party in London’s chinatown, where the dragons frightened little sister P.

NY missive no 161 - Hudson Yards, West 30th Street and the fabric of places

We have become so used to talking about the fabric of a place or a neighborhood that rarely do we pause to think about fabric, real fabric - to draw out the texture of the word's original meaning. I mean, what does the place feel like to touch? What's holding it together? How is it held together? What colors does it have, what shades? Is it stretchy, heavy, light, hand-made or factory-made?

I was struck recently on moving from the glassy monochrome fabric of Hudson Yards (freshly opened this weekend) to the deep, rich fabric of a short stretch of 30th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues.

Hudson Yards has a disturbing flatness (beyond all else that's disturbing about it, which I wrote about here). The "Vessel" is an empty vessel, a selfie vortex, a mise-en-abyme of unseeing self absorption, by which I mean in these selfies and reflections we don't even see ourselves. Or a giant shawarma as some have observed.

The rectangular mall could be a rectangular wall anywhere. This fabric feels cold to the touch. It does not give. The eyes grow tired quickly.

The 30th Street block is deep and immersive. It is soft to the touch. You can get lost, your eyes and mind alerted to multiple mysteries and possibilities. Walk just 50 paces or so and you've passed old furriers, a drum store, a recording store, a martial arts center, a church, and that's just for starters. You can feel the multiple hands that have worked this fabric and wrapped themselves in it over time, and you know that time will continue to thread new patterns in it, make its mark, build on what came before and extend its history.