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the city in exile
Aug. 27th, 2005 11:15 amLast night I watched the National Georgraphic four hour 9/11 thing, which I highly recommend if you've the inclination for it. It's very well done, and my quibbles with it are extremely small. It's incredibly brutal though, and includes lots of footage that hasn't been previously or widely shown, some of which will be debated in journalism classes for a long time to come (jumpers). It does an excellent job of conveying the utter confusion everywhere, melding the timelines of the multiple events and capturing a few moments of surrealism (the muzak played in the plaza continued to function even after both plane strikes, and they show footage a reporter took from the plaza, with the stuff blasting. It's one of the strangest things I've ever seen, and probably the most surprisingly interesting of the not previously seen footage) and humour (the individuals who escaped from the towers that they chose to interview were very well chosen, and not the same people we've heard from over and over again).
I'm, by nature, compelled to watch these things. It's as much about my news junkie nature as it is an act of control. It's also an act of memory -- and by this I don't mean remembrance -- I mean, when traumatic events happen, the mind smooths them out into a vague mush in many many cases and no matter how grateful I may be for human defense mechanisms, I find that annoying in myself. So I watch these things.
It was the first time since going to Australia where I thought of New York as my city, _mine_ and fuck everyone for fucking it up. I don't tend to think of my love affair with Sydney as being a response to 9/11, just as I don't think my choice to pursue acting was a 9/11 "disaster happened and now I must _live_" thing. I'm not really that sort. Rather things here and in our economy got fucked up enough that I finally allowed myself to consider other choices. It's a logistical phenomena for me, rather than psychological or spiritual. It also created a divide between the here and now, and several aspects of my life that had ended just before that September.
People in Sydney worry about terrorism a lot, which can and does seem a little weird to a New Yorker. But they did have the whole Bali thing, they are our allies in Iraq for whatever reason and they do certainly have landmarks. You can't live in this new world and go there and not say, "Christ, no one better ever fuck this up," when you look at the Bridge and the Opera House. And Sydney is weird; Bill Bryson describes it as the 1950s with porn, and it is, filled with innocence even when it comes to very worldly, gritty things which it's more than perfectly aware of -- it's not sweep it under the carpet innocence, more smile and shrug and wear hats (the sun, the sun, I know) innocence. That's a powerful antidote for what New York has become -- not this dark thing teetering on the edge of Gotham and Metropolis that still has enough to offer that makes it worth all its distopian woe and boredom and struggle -- but this enforced shiny happy place where nothing bad must ever happen again and we all must apparently think and feel and fear the same way for that to be the case.
Most people here start feeling the anxiety by early September. This year, I suspect it's come a little sooner because of the local elections. Do you remember we were supposed to vote on 9/11/2001? What amazes me is how many people don't remember.
I have discovered that I love the sky in late Summer. I never noticed this before I went to Sydney, where I almost burst into tears everyday at the streak of clouds of Circular Quay. I remember thinking, no other sky in the world looks like this. Now, I am not so sure. While New York has more haze both for georgraphic and polution reasons this time of year, the sky here, when you can see it between buildings and bother to notice it, is not disimilar, and sometimes I stand on a street corner and turn so the angle of the light is as close as I can get it and put the Opera House and the Bridge where they should be in my memory.
This morning, I lay in bed thinking about Kali's city conference and about the art deco distopian fantasy of New York in film. Even when I removed comic-book inspired films, which have that design element because of when the comics were originally developed, you still come up with a startling number of films that follow this mode. We come back to Metropolis.
Then I thought about cities as demons in film in a similar context. It was an excuse to include Moulin Rouge in a survey of things really, but it led back, quickly, to the machine that turns into a devouring god in Metropolis. All things we can blame on Fritz Lang it seems.
Walking home from a casting earlier this week through the financial district and Soho, I thought of how the very premise of New York is to make all its residents feel as if they are living in exile. Immigrants from their homes, the poor from their success, the rich from unmolested privledge -- all part of this failed beacon of a place that is often more powerful in magnetism than in promise. And I don't think any of us knew about this life of exiles until 9/11 -- no matter how often we window shopped on Fifth Avenue we never thought about why we did not enter the store.
New York has always been my home, and I have always been in exile, but I didn't understand until I went to the other side of the world and taught myself to miss someplace other than the exact spot where I was standing.
On September 11, I have two dance classes. So I won't be around for the usual round of "What Do We Say on 9/11" followed by the usual round of people taking offense at who says or doesn't say the thing they themselves would have said. I don't mind missing this; I'm still glad a plane didn't hit the fucking Chrysler Building. New York is mine, but I don't own her. None of us do; We only own the exile. Meanwhile, I still believe this is not yet a post-9/11 world. I believe this remains During, remains an unsettled landscape, remains the moment of trauma and what our symptoms and nightmares will finally be when it's over, I don't yet think we can know.
I'm, by nature, compelled to watch these things. It's as much about my news junkie nature as it is an act of control. It's also an act of memory -- and by this I don't mean remembrance -- I mean, when traumatic events happen, the mind smooths them out into a vague mush in many many cases and no matter how grateful I may be for human defense mechanisms, I find that annoying in myself. So I watch these things.
It was the first time since going to Australia where I thought of New York as my city, _mine_ and fuck everyone for fucking it up. I don't tend to think of my love affair with Sydney as being a response to 9/11, just as I don't think my choice to pursue acting was a 9/11 "disaster happened and now I must _live_" thing. I'm not really that sort. Rather things here and in our economy got fucked up enough that I finally allowed myself to consider other choices. It's a logistical phenomena for me, rather than psychological or spiritual. It also created a divide between the here and now, and several aspects of my life that had ended just before that September.
People in Sydney worry about terrorism a lot, which can and does seem a little weird to a New Yorker. But they did have the whole Bali thing, they are our allies in Iraq for whatever reason and they do certainly have landmarks. You can't live in this new world and go there and not say, "Christ, no one better ever fuck this up," when you look at the Bridge and the Opera House. And Sydney is weird; Bill Bryson describes it as the 1950s with porn, and it is, filled with innocence even when it comes to very worldly, gritty things which it's more than perfectly aware of -- it's not sweep it under the carpet innocence, more smile and shrug and wear hats (the sun, the sun, I know) innocence. That's a powerful antidote for what New York has become -- not this dark thing teetering on the edge of Gotham and Metropolis that still has enough to offer that makes it worth all its distopian woe and boredom and struggle -- but this enforced shiny happy place where nothing bad must ever happen again and we all must apparently think and feel and fear the same way for that to be the case.
Most people here start feeling the anxiety by early September. This year, I suspect it's come a little sooner because of the local elections. Do you remember we were supposed to vote on 9/11/2001? What amazes me is how many people don't remember.
I have discovered that I love the sky in late Summer. I never noticed this before I went to Sydney, where I almost burst into tears everyday at the streak of clouds of Circular Quay. I remember thinking, no other sky in the world looks like this. Now, I am not so sure. While New York has more haze both for georgraphic and polution reasons this time of year, the sky here, when you can see it between buildings and bother to notice it, is not disimilar, and sometimes I stand on a street corner and turn so the angle of the light is as close as I can get it and put the Opera House and the Bridge where they should be in my memory.
This morning, I lay in bed thinking about Kali's city conference and about the art deco distopian fantasy of New York in film. Even when I removed comic-book inspired films, which have that design element because of when the comics were originally developed, you still come up with a startling number of films that follow this mode. We come back to Metropolis.
Then I thought about cities as demons in film in a similar context. It was an excuse to include Moulin Rouge in a survey of things really, but it led back, quickly, to the machine that turns into a devouring god in Metropolis. All things we can blame on Fritz Lang it seems.
Walking home from a casting earlier this week through the financial district and Soho, I thought of how the very premise of New York is to make all its residents feel as if they are living in exile. Immigrants from their homes, the poor from their success, the rich from unmolested privledge -- all part of this failed beacon of a place that is often more powerful in magnetism than in promise. And I don't think any of us knew about this life of exiles until 9/11 -- no matter how often we window shopped on Fifth Avenue we never thought about why we did not enter the store.
New York has always been my home, and I have always been in exile, but I didn't understand until I went to the other side of the world and taught myself to miss someplace other than the exact spot where I was standing.
On September 11, I have two dance classes. So I won't be around for the usual round of "What Do We Say on 9/11" followed by the usual round of people taking offense at who says or doesn't say the thing they themselves would have said. I don't mind missing this; I'm still glad a plane didn't hit the fucking Chrysler Building. New York is mine, but I don't own her. None of us do; We only own the exile. Meanwhile, I still believe this is not yet a post-9/11 world. I believe this remains During, remains an unsettled landscape, remains the moment of trauma and what our symptoms and nightmares will finally be when it's over, I don't yet think we can know.
