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Oct. 4th, 2003 04:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmThis Sunday's New York Times Magazine is entirely about how NYC right now, is actually remarkaby like the New York I grew up in, for the first time in 20 - 25 years. Really fun, exciting reading for me, and I would encourage everyone to check it out.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/magazine/
This is the New York I believed in. Minor celebrities in a time before _everyone_ was one, and art, as more important than money. And a sense of communual struggle that could make you feel proud, as well as pissed off.
A few years ago, if you rode the D train from Brooklyn to Manhattan, your peripheral vision might have been surprised by a stroboscopic flicker of color at the mouth of the tunnel leading out onto the span of the Manhattan Bridge. If you adjusted your angle of vision properly, you could make out, through pillars and support walls, the bright Krylon hues and characteristic bubble letters of classic wild- style graffiti. By then, the M.T.A.'s subway cars were being made of special paint-resistant stainless steel, and those 50 feet or so of transfigured wall were like a secret museum, a preserved -- more probably an overlooked -- subterranean shrine to a bygone city. I remember once overhearing a young boy ask his mother what those words and pictures were. ''What's graffiti?'' he asked her, and she provided the responsible parental explanation, emphasizing the dangerous, rule-breaking nature of the act. Without knowing it, the child resuscitated an ancient civic and aesthetic controversy -- a standoff, really, between the civic impact of graffiti and its artistic status. ''I think it's beautiful,'' he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/05/magazine/05SCOTTT.html
This is why I am a romantic, this is why I am in love with New York City, this is why I love what I love and want what I want and believe in nightlife, peculiar celebrity, self-study and struggle. This is why I constantly say, "you don't understand," because the New York I grew up in was one where everyone lived in extremes, vastly different ones, and _none_ of us understood, but there was a sense of communal struggle against that, in the name of communication, that I believe in and believe in and believe in, not out of faith, but because it was a given fact.
One of the most treasured and durable self-images of New York is of a city of artists, defined not as a profession, or even an activity, but as the disposition to put your hands on some available object -- a basketball, a turntable, a camera, a spray can -- and make something new. And it is this attitude -- sometimes destructive, often misunderstood -- that helped keep the city going in its darkest hours, that kept it beautiful through ugly times and that ultimately transformed it.
Which I suppose explains a lot of things about this year for me, both in terms of my own work, and all that crying at an opera.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/magazine/
This is the New York I believed in. Minor celebrities in a time before _everyone_ was one, and art, as more important than money. And a sense of communual struggle that could make you feel proud, as well as pissed off.
A few years ago, if you rode the D train from Brooklyn to Manhattan, your peripheral vision might have been surprised by a stroboscopic flicker of color at the mouth of the tunnel leading out onto the span of the Manhattan Bridge. If you adjusted your angle of vision properly, you could make out, through pillars and support walls, the bright Krylon hues and characteristic bubble letters of classic wild- style graffiti. By then, the M.T.A.'s subway cars were being made of special paint-resistant stainless steel, and those 50 feet or so of transfigured wall were like a secret museum, a preserved -- more probably an overlooked -- subterranean shrine to a bygone city. I remember once overhearing a young boy ask his mother what those words and pictures were. ''What's graffiti?'' he asked her, and she provided the responsible parental explanation, emphasizing the dangerous, rule-breaking nature of the act. Without knowing it, the child resuscitated an ancient civic and aesthetic controversy -- a standoff, really, between the civic impact of graffiti and its artistic status. ''I think it's beautiful,'' he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/05/magazine/05SCOTTT.html
This is why I am a romantic, this is why I am in love with New York City, this is why I love what I love and want what I want and believe in nightlife, peculiar celebrity, self-study and struggle. This is why I constantly say, "you don't understand," because the New York I grew up in was one where everyone lived in extremes, vastly different ones, and _none_ of us understood, but there was a sense of communal struggle against that, in the name of communication, that I believe in and believe in and believe in, not out of faith, but because it was a given fact.
One of the most treasured and durable self-images of New York is of a city of artists, defined not as a profession, or even an activity, but as the disposition to put your hands on some available object -- a basketball, a turntable, a camera, a spray can -- and make something new. And it is this attitude -- sometimes destructive, often misunderstood -- that helped keep the city going in its darkest hours, that kept it beautiful through ugly times and that ultimately transformed it.
Which I suppose explains a lot of things about this year for me, both in terms of my own work, and all that crying at an opera.
