I’ve just seen this 1945 footage of midtown Manhattan from a car. It’s interesting how much of New York looks the same. Many of the buildings are the same. The subway entrances, post office collection bins, trashcans, fire hydrants, and street lamps are the same.
There is a common thread of conversation among people who are either from New York, or have lived here a long time. They, spinning like broken records, moan about how much has changed for the worse, ripe with disenchantment. Countless conversations were exceptionally discouraging when I first got here – almost as if to ward me away. Admittedly, I’ve heard stories of New York’s “musical heyday” and perhaps I’m better off not able to truly compare current reality to those times, having not lived them.
One of the personality traits of NYC I believe draws daring people to it is how quickly it adapts, morphs, becomes what we do not expect. While even in my 3 years here I’ve watched beloved establishments close and become Wells Fargo, I cannot reprimand this city for “losing its magic.” Anyone who claims stowaway magnetism, momentum, creative depth, simply does not want to see it. Even during a pandemic when my usual haunts lie dormant, New York carries on in its clever nature, provoking the discovering of reasons to be an intentional musician and present human.
Another cliche the grinches of modern America like to spew is that Manhattan isn’t an artist’s town anymore. My only response to that is “as long as I am here, it’s an artists town.” Because I see New York that way. And we shan’t underestimate the power of perception to spread like wildfire. There is a theory in quantum physics, The Observer Effect, that says the observer changes the data. Paying attention to a situation or phenomenon inherently changes it. I think of this often, not entirely conscious of what it means, but knowing that I simultaneously live by it.
At any rate, I’m not standalone. I’ve met some of the most artistic people I may ever meet in my short time in New York. Many of them having grown old producing art. Some of them famous, many of them not. All of them still ever-so entangled in the equally torturous and euphoric affair of artistry. Painters, musicians, writers, filmmakers, and beyond. And people who simply take more joy in the products of these than most other things life has to offer.
New York is malleable to the observer who ventures stare down its empty blocks when no one else is. The city becomes both the most exuberant painting imaginable, and concurrently a blank canvas in a mute, North-facing room. With that, I resign, the only thing I could want more would be a roaring beach just a bit closer than Rockaway.
Lastly, I broaden this. If this city is any less down-to-Earth than it once was, I propose it to be a product of the times. This could have been written about anywhere. We are an entitled couple of generations, and entitlement does not harvest richness in character. Alas, to be fed up and step-down would be treason. It is our job as artists to choose to see. We must choose to observe the whimsy of what it is to be alive and to be in time.