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Aug. 29th, 2003
I will watch you over and over
Aug. 29th, 2003 10:00 pmA lot of people I know are already discussing "how they are going to deal with 9/11 media saturation". The general discussion goes that there's too much on TV about it, it's too disturbing, it's exploitive, they have to leave the city. Which is all well and fine, albeit totally alien for me.
I forgot it was less than two weeks away and I am relieved for its arrival. Because otherwise I forget. And I do not need to remember in the sense that much has been written about New York becoming a city of the dead (the next thing to dominate our skyline will be the replacement for those buildings, a structure that will, regardless of intent, be viewed entirely as a memorial to the dead, an undertaking whose scale will be purely ancient Egyptian in nature). I mean that I forget what my city looked like, that those things were real.
In thirty years, people will tell each other than there was once another New York, and describe buildings that were an unavoidable presence in every part of the city. I remember lying on my parents roof, 38 stories up on the Upper East Side, and watching lasers from some art installation there sweep across the sky.
I did not like those buildings, as many New Yorkers didn't. We groused about the massive saltine boxes that were supposed to announce arrival at our new continent's Paris, sure that we were once again, merely embarrassing as a city and a nation. They went up in the early seventies and were a symbol of possibilty through that decade which was as ugly and as brutal a one as this city has ever known. They were my childhood destiny, for I was eight in 1980 and my childhood and teen years seemed to indicate that everyone in the world would grow up and become a stock broker. An empire of money, and as I was a girl, frustration either at work or at home, was seen as a right, by people who grew up where I did, as I did. Greed was good and with enough proof of it, it was clear you could laugh as loudly and shrilly as you wanted at any party anywhere. As the decade wound down, I hesistate to tell you how many missed the uncanny satire of American Psycho and the lesser known Metropolitan. They were goodbye to a world that began with After Hours and Less than Zero, and, for that too, I am grateful now.
One of the great wonders of New York is that there are a million of it. Everyone lives in their own scene, their own little world, king of empires no one else knows anything about. Occassionally, that all becomes a bit more homogenized -- thanks to the city war on nightclubs, Sex in the City or civic events -- like blackouts and rats, and like buildings falling down.
New York has many temporal divides -- which blackouts you remember, which neighborhoods were cool or cheap, when. But few physical ones, as all its landmark buildings were built in the initial age of skyscrapers. Even the recent building that mattered -- the ugly lipstick tower in midtown, and the return of great movie theaters -- was trivial. Only the World Trade Center was that part of our modern life, the simplistic truth that despite being a 19th Century City, in both the best and worst senses of the word, we were always hungry. The building reminded us of the dreams of the 20s and 30s and 40s -- it reminded us of our sci-fi future, of our belief in brash men and sassy girls who did the right thing and served civic duty through honesty and a bit of cruelty down at the newspaper. It reminded us that we were the center of a million private movie magic moments and ten million more movie magic fantasies belonging to those who might never come here, not simply because the city is huge and busy, not simply because you can almost fall into the ocean here, but because we were huge. We were immense. Chicago could have all the big shoulders it wanted, but we had to go and build not one tower, but two.
So one day there will be a new building. A new beacon to the world of the New York mythology. And some people will remember that between it, and nothing, we had giant saltine boxes in the sky.
I love New York, and I love the New York of my childhood. Eventhough I was terrified of the subways with their graffiti and rats and lights that constantly went out. Eventhough the neighborhoods I love now that grow to resemble Rodeo Drive were both dangerous and mostly pointless then. I love that life here was hard. That there was only one true Papaya King and that you hated the Yankees and kinda had to give vague props to the Mets. And I loved that we had two huge towers downtown, in that most ancient and confusing part of our city, where one day we'd all grow up and make lots of money.
So, me, I need to watch them fall down. A lot.
In most places, adulthood is marked by marriage and children. In New York, where people get married later, if at all, and people have fewer children, if at all -- we don't always say goodbye as clearly to those things that are considered part of our youth -- which is fine, other than it pisses us off when we deal with the rest of the nation, this lack of certification, as if choosing here and surviving here isn't sign enough. And now there's this whole generation of us, around my age, that didn't grow up or anything when those towers fell down -- how could we -- it was too big to be that personal, but whose links to childhood were irrevocably severed by it.
For me anyway, it explains with a nearly pained certainty, why I have spent the time since sitting in the dark, and crying to the things I have, why I have sat late at night looking at pictures of cities people here are mostly ignorant to beyond their architectural monuments, and wanting to be there and turn to look at the sky and know exactly where I am.
I forgot it was less than two weeks away and I am relieved for its arrival. Because otherwise I forget. And I do not need to remember in the sense that much has been written about New York becoming a city of the dead (the next thing to dominate our skyline will be the replacement for those buildings, a structure that will, regardless of intent, be viewed entirely as a memorial to the dead, an undertaking whose scale will be purely ancient Egyptian in nature). I mean that I forget what my city looked like, that those things were real.
In thirty years, people will tell each other than there was once another New York, and describe buildings that were an unavoidable presence in every part of the city. I remember lying on my parents roof, 38 stories up on the Upper East Side, and watching lasers from some art installation there sweep across the sky.
I did not like those buildings, as many New Yorkers didn't. We groused about the massive saltine boxes that were supposed to announce arrival at our new continent's Paris, sure that we were once again, merely embarrassing as a city and a nation. They went up in the early seventies and were a symbol of possibilty through that decade which was as ugly and as brutal a one as this city has ever known. They were my childhood destiny, for I was eight in 1980 and my childhood and teen years seemed to indicate that everyone in the world would grow up and become a stock broker. An empire of money, and as I was a girl, frustration either at work or at home, was seen as a right, by people who grew up where I did, as I did. Greed was good and with enough proof of it, it was clear you could laugh as loudly and shrilly as you wanted at any party anywhere. As the decade wound down, I hesistate to tell you how many missed the uncanny satire of American Psycho and the lesser known Metropolitan. They were goodbye to a world that began with After Hours and Less than Zero, and, for that too, I am grateful now.
One of the great wonders of New York is that there are a million of it. Everyone lives in their own scene, their own little world, king of empires no one else knows anything about. Occassionally, that all becomes a bit more homogenized -- thanks to the city war on nightclubs, Sex in the City or civic events -- like blackouts and rats, and like buildings falling down.
New York has many temporal divides -- which blackouts you remember, which neighborhoods were cool or cheap, when. But few physical ones, as all its landmark buildings were built in the initial age of skyscrapers. Even the recent building that mattered -- the ugly lipstick tower in midtown, and the return of great movie theaters -- was trivial. Only the World Trade Center was that part of our modern life, the simplistic truth that despite being a 19th Century City, in both the best and worst senses of the word, we were always hungry. The building reminded us of the dreams of the 20s and 30s and 40s -- it reminded us of our sci-fi future, of our belief in brash men and sassy girls who did the right thing and served civic duty through honesty and a bit of cruelty down at the newspaper. It reminded us that we were the center of a million private movie magic moments and ten million more movie magic fantasies belonging to those who might never come here, not simply because the city is huge and busy, not simply because you can almost fall into the ocean here, but because we were huge. We were immense. Chicago could have all the big shoulders it wanted, but we had to go and build not one tower, but two.
So one day there will be a new building. A new beacon to the world of the New York mythology. And some people will remember that between it, and nothing, we had giant saltine boxes in the sky.
I love New York, and I love the New York of my childhood. Eventhough I was terrified of the subways with their graffiti and rats and lights that constantly went out. Eventhough the neighborhoods I love now that grow to resemble Rodeo Drive were both dangerous and mostly pointless then. I love that life here was hard. That there was only one true Papaya King and that you hated the Yankees and kinda had to give vague props to the Mets. And I loved that we had two huge towers downtown, in that most ancient and confusing part of our city, where one day we'd all grow up and make lots of money.
So, me, I need to watch them fall down. A lot.
In most places, adulthood is marked by marriage and children. In New York, where people get married later, if at all, and people have fewer children, if at all -- we don't always say goodbye as clearly to those things that are considered part of our youth -- which is fine, other than it pisses us off when we deal with the rest of the nation, this lack of certification, as if choosing here and surviving here isn't sign enough. And now there's this whole generation of us, around my age, that didn't grow up or anything when those towers fell down -- how could we -- it was too big to be that personal, but whose links to childhood were irrevocably severed by it.
For me anyway, it explains with a nearly pained certainty, why I have spent the time since sitting in the dark, and crying to the things I have, why I have sat late at night looking at pictures of cities people here are mostly ignorant to beyond their architectural monuments, and wanting to be there and turn to look at the sky and know exactly where I am.