My friend Nick talks like Jack Kerouac writes – in a racing thought stream, punctuated with occasional emphasis on a word you wouldn’t expect to carry any weight. Once, Nick took me to Small’s, a Greenwich Village jazz club, where a sepia Duke Ellington photograph stared me down from the wall behind the bassist and the only sounds I heard were the trio’s syncopated notes and the “mmhmms” from the jazz-educated audience. Hours later, when we arose from the cavernous place, back onto the misty loud city streets, Nick told me that here, on this glittering concrete bridge to the vast metropolis, he is home. It was the shortest string of words I heard him say.
Home is a concept I’ve pondered extensively and one that has followed me through my college days, my master’s degree, and straight into my first year of law school, when Fr. Kalscheur, while teaching us diversity jurisdiction in Civil Procedure, asked me where my domicile is. For most of the eighty-two people in the room, this was an easy question, but I was speechless. Where do you belong when you have no place to which you return?
Like Nick’s, my home is more free-form. Having spent my childhood navigating a smattering of rural, suburban, urban, and foreign communities as my professor-parents moved us between campuses, I have been rooted in a world of knowledge but never in a place. In college, I studied abroad four times and developed a fascination with the role of neighborhoods and cities. Afterwards, I studied urban planning until I realized I wanted to take the intellectual inquiry that grounded me and apply it to one piece of the place puzzle, so I began a master’s program in sociology and education. The first book I read was Place Matters. I was home.
While studying part-time, I worked with veterans who were beginning programs at Columbia. Our life experiences were worlds apart, but we connected through a shared sense of displacement. Working with them, I wondered about people whose lives are substantially more complex than mine, like those suffering from homelessness, growing up in foster care, divided between homes during custody wars or because of incarcerated parents, or who are illegal immigrants or part of witness protection programs. To where do they return in the eyes of the law?
In my education, my job, and my own life, place and my “domicile” have mattered in access to resources, quality of life, and who I become as a human being.
Showing posts with label memories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label memories. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
On Being a Boston Resident Again
I alone am back where we began.
I wonder if when my parents decided to build a family they knew it would disperse into an American diaspora, with pieces scattered across the Southern Tier, around the Great Lakes, and at times as far as California. We are individuals with our own paths who, for a brief period in time (in the grand scheme of things), formed a cohesive unit in a few select majestic cities and sleepy towns.
What many people don't know is that it all began (or rather, I began) in Boston. New York, of course, stuck with my sister and I the most, perhaps because it hosted our most formative years or perhaps because it’s just that kind of place. My new room in Boston is filled with maps of and tributes to New York—a sepia photograph of a snow-covered Central Park, an artist’s rendering of the dominance of the subway lines over the geography of Manhattan, an old New Yorker cover, a postcard that screams in eerie ghost-like letters “NEW YORK IS A FRIENDLY TOWN.”
New York proclaims itself unabashedly. Back on 168th Street, my gateway from my home on Fort Washington Avenue to the 1 train, I used to pass an enormous red sign draped over the skywalks of New York-Presbyterian Hospital announcing, “Amazing Things are Happening Here.”
Now, I am walking the streets of Brighton and Brookline, noticing no such proclamations of greatness or friendliness. I see a few “Boston’s Best” claims, decent marketing ploys but not quite infused with the specific certainty of New York’s self-descriptions. Yet this is where the McGee-Tubb family began. This must be a friendly town, where amazing things happen, or else we wouldn’t have began here!
Cambridge has always been a magical place for us, a place where upon arrival we feel some immediate and deep attachment. For now, here, it seems as though our tendency to carry our places with us is limited solely to the streets and nooks of this one Boston city-suburb. Conversely, somehow New York pervaded us and we fell for the city as a whole- as much as we inhabited it, it inhabited us. Though Morningside Heights occupies a special drawer, the entirety of Manhattan and even some portions of the outer boroughs belong to us as places we used to own.
Will all of Boston encompass me? Will the entirety of this place become familiar enough and steeped-full-of-my-life enough that it travels along with me throughout the rest of my stops and stations?
I wonder if when my parents decided to build a family they knew it would disperse into an American diaspora, with pieces scattered across the Southern Tier, around the Great Lakes, and at times as far as California. We are individuals with our own paths who, for a brief period in time (in the grand scheme of things), formed a cohesive unit in a few select majestic cities and sleepy towns.
What many people don't know is that it all began (or rather, I began) in Boston. New York, of course, stuck with my sister and I the most, perhaps because it hosted our most formative years or perhaps because it’s just that kind of place. My new room in Boston is filled with maps of and tributes to New York—a sepia photograph of a snow-covered Central Park, an artist’s rendering of the dominance of the subway lines over the geography of Manhattan, an old New Yorker cover, a postcard that screams in eerie ghost-like letters “NEW YORK IS A FRIENDLY TOWN.”
New York proclaims itself unabashedly. Back on 168th Street, my gateway from my home on Fort Washington Avenue to the 1 train, I used to pass an enormous red sign draped over the skywalks of New York-Presbyterian Hospital announcing, “Amazing Things are Happening Here.”
Now, I am walking the streets of Brighton and Brookline, noticing no such proclamations of greatness or friendliness. I see a few “Boston’s Best” claims, decent marketing ploys but not quite infused with the specific certainty of New York’s self-descriptions. Yet this is where the McGee-Tubb family began. This must be a friendly town, where amazing things happen, or else we wouldn’t have began here!
Cambridge has always been a magical place for us, a place where upon arrival we feel some immediate and deep attachment. For now, here, it seems as though our tendency to carry our places with us is limited solely to the streets and nooks of this one Boston city-suburb. Conversely, somehow New York pervaded us and we fell for the city as a whole- as much as we inhabited it, it inhabited us. Though Morningside Heights occupies a special drawer, the entirety of Manhattan and even some portions of the outer boroughs belong to us as places we used to own.
Will all of Boston encompass me? Will the entirety of this place become familiar enough and steeped-full-of-my-life enough that it travels along with me throughout the rest of my stops and stations?
Thursday, April 23, 2009
From Berlin, 3.18.09
A City Divided, united by the tearing down of a wall twenty years ago, struggles to build one cohesive identity to present to the world. More so than culture, economic realities perpetuate two worlds, one modern, progressive, western, the other the recent aftereffect of communism and inhibited progress.
This city serves as an excellent case study for tourism. The physicalities that so recently defined this city now provide more learning, cultural and commercial opportunities for tourists than for locals. We have been so quick to objectify these places, to historify them, that they have become fossils, informative and dead. Yet these places are remnants of an immediate past. 1990 is within the living memory of the majority of the world’s population. These places shaped day-to-day life for many of our neighbors, colleagues, friends and leaders—their footsteps remain in the annals of their rememberances—crisp and vivid and alive. Such quick memorialization quiets the immediacy—it puts these days in the bucket of the past. Yet it is apparent in Berlin that there were too many years of separation. How do they begin to participate in the same economy? What are their municipal priorities? Who does, and who should, this city serve?
Still, Berlin is alive—it is in that earlier, grungy state that once characterized London’s Brick Lane and New York’s East Village. Giulia raves about the inexpensive, inexplicable nightlife, the cultural energy, the constant flurry of parties and galleries and delicious food and watching the sunrise on a balcony in a new neighborhood each night. Much of this has been fueled by Berlin’s lack of cohesiveness, its inability to pull it all together into something subject to clear identification and resulting gentrification. Much of it hinges on uncertainty and perplexity at how to handle East Berlin. This is a unique situation that may prevent Berlin’s trajectory as a London or New York or San Francisco.
Yet for all the glamour and grunge, I don’t think Berlin is for me. In its youthful population, this city is dominated by floaters and dreamers, artists and thinkers who are driven toward a lofty aim or who are adrift, passionate yet uncertain of their ultimate direction. I thrive in cities that demand competition and competence—I need to be surrounded by creative energy that’s being funneled into targeted, meaningful production. There are elements of Berlin that I would cherish in any city—lazy Sundays, six languages being spoken at a bar, partying until dawn without spending more than five Euros, art everywhere and always, buildings with history, neighbors with incomparable stories, the fusion of cultures from Europe, Turkey, and the world beyond. Take all this and couple it with a city with unmatchable global power, with a city that demands a place on everyone’s map, if not as a destination than as a place that absolutely must be known, and that, that place is my city.
This city serves as an excellent case study for tourism. The physicalities that so recently defined this city now provide more learning, cultural and commercial opportunities for tourists than for locals. We have been so quick to objectify these places, to historify them, that they have become fossils, informative and dead. Yet these places are remnants of an immediate past. 1990 is within the living memory of the majority of the world’s population. These places shaped day-to-day life for many of our neighbors, colleagues, friends and leaders—their footsteps remain in the annals of their rememberances—crisp and vivid and alive. Such quick memorialization quiets the immediacy—it puts these days in the bucket of the past. Yet it is apparent in Berlin that there were too many years of separation. How do they begin to participate in the same economy? What are their municipal priorities? Who does, and who should, this city serve?
Still, Berlin is alive—it is in that earlier, grungy state that once characterized London’s Brick Lane and New York’s East Village. Giulia raves about the inexpensive, inexplicable nightlife, the cultural energy, the constant flurry of parties and galleries and delicious food and watching the sunrise on a balcony in a new neighborhood each night. Much of this has been fueled by Berlin’s lack of cohesiveness, its inability to pull it all together into something subject to clear identification and resulting gentrification. Much of it hinges on uncertainty and perplexity at how to handle East Berlin. This is a unique situation that may prevent Berlin’s trajectory as a London or New York or San Francisco.
Yet for all the glamour and grunge, I don’t think Berlin is for me. In its youthful population, this city is dominated by floaters and dreamers, artists and thinkers who are driven toward a lofty aim or who are adrift, passionate yet uncertain of their ultimate direction. I thrive in cities that demand competition and competence—I need to be surrounded by creative energy that’s being funneled into targeted, meaningful production. There are elements of Berlin that I would cherish in any city—lazy Sundays, six languages being spoken at a bar, partying until dawn without spending more than five Euros, art everywhere and always, buildings with history, neighbors with incomparable stories, the fusion of cultures from Europe, Turkey, and the world beyond. Take all this and couple it with a city with unmatchable global power, with a city that demands a place on everyone’s map, if not as a destination than as a place that absolutely must be known, and that, that place is my city.
Friday, July 4, 2008
July 4, 2008
"Here's where I am, here's where I stand," tearing down the walls of apartment 2G in 90 Morningside Drive, pushing papers into heavy cardboard boxes, as we say goodbye with sweeping brooms and ladders to reach the cabinets we haven't touched since day one. It feels like we have been moving always--13 years of trips to storage and spring cleaning initiatives blend together now. We have lived here the longest, we keep saying, both as an excuse and as a coping mechanism.
How do we reflect? When do we look back to C.'s 1st grade "presidents" birthday party and M.'s senior prom? When do we honor these hallowed hallways?
We can see where we are now. C. is a young woman--she eats at school now and doesn't count her handwashes. Mom is tired but still exuding creative energy. Dad is the same as always but more worried. I am too practical, less passionate, disoriented.
For years we have defined ourselves as a family that lives in New York. Do we define ourselves as a diaspora now? Dispersed for economic and educational reasons? In Chicago, Dad inhabits a world of academia that many see only in movies. In Alfred, Mom will re-learn (or discover for the first time?) rural life and a real opportunity for leadership. Back in New York, remaining in New York, C. and I will navigate the remains of our youth. Like ghosts, we will traverse the streets of Morningside Heights pursing new, revised dreams. We will cross independently at crosswalks that used to require a held hand; we will make decisions that used to be made for us; we will open doors we could not have yet imagined.
Yet some doors, like that of 2G in 90 Morningside Drive and like 5J in 400 W. 119th Street before, will close to us, vaulting previous phases of our lives so that they are accessible only in the memories that visit us when certain smells or notes or conversations invite them. Now remembering seven odd years earlier than this moment, writing a poem that begins: "there comes a time when memories are all we've got. A shoebox of photos, an attic of pasts, decorating the modern memorabilia." We are so vulnerable to our memories--this has never occurred to me before. Nostalgia is the most powerful feeling that has no immediate rooting in the present moment. It is the past intruding on where we have arrived--it is a reminder that we may or may not need.
How long have we used this apartment, this home, as our base? From here we learned New York. Speeding down Broadway on the 1 train, we learned the restaurants of the Upper West Side, the Stardust Diner, the need to avoid Times Square, Younghee in Tribeca, Canal Street, the World Trade Center. Privately, we made our own discoveries, building secret New Yorks that no one else will share. We found patterns that suited us, routes we found preferable, places that meant comfort and safety and hope. We began to define ourselves through these individualized ties, these constructed days and weeks that we could allude to across the dinner table but never fully recount.
When did our relationship with this city change? Was it when M. left for college? When D. left for Israel? When the plan became to leave this city, to go our separate ways? Or was it only when we packed the last straws, the wrapping paper boxes, the Ganeshas over the doors?
How do we reflect? When do we look back to C.'s 1st grade "presidents" birthday party and M.'s senior prom? When do we honor these hallowed hallways?
We can see where we are now. C. is a young woman--she eats at school now and doesn't count her handwashes. Mom is tired but still exuding creative energy. Dad is the same as always but more worried. I am too practical, less passionate, disoriented.
For years we have defined ourselves as a family that lives in New York. Do we define ourselves as a diaspora now? Dispersed for economic and educational reasons? In Chicago, Dad inhabits a world of academia that many see only in movies. In Alfred, Mom will re-learn (or discover for the first time?) rural life and a real opportunity for leadership. Back in New York, remaining in New York, C. and I will navigate the remains of our youth. Like ghosts, we will traverse the streets of Morningside Heights pursing new, revised dreams. We will cross independently at crosswalks that used to require a held hand; we will make decisions that used to be made for us; we will open doors we could not have yet imagined.
Yet some doors, like that of 2G in 90 Morningside Drive and like 5J in 400 W. 119th Street before, will close to us, vaulting previous phases of our lives so that they are accessible only in the memories that visit us when certain smells or notes or conversations invite them. Now remembering seven odd years earlier than this moment, writing a poem that begins: "there comes a time when memories are all we've got. A shoebox of photos, an attic of pasts, decorating the modern memorabilia." We are so vulnerable to our memories--this has never occurred to me before. Nostalgia is the most powerful feeling that has no immediate rooting in the present moment. It is the past intruding on where we have arrived--it is a reminder that we may or may not need.
How long have we used this apartment, this home, as our base? From here we learned New York. Speeding down Broadway on the 1 train, we learned the restaurants of the Upper West Side, the Stardust Diner, the need to avoid Times Square, Younghee in Tribeca, Canal Street, the World Trade Center. Privately, we made our own discoveries, building secret New Yorks that no one else will share. We found patterns that suited us, routes we found preferable, places that meant comfort and safety and hope. We began to define ourselves through these individualized ties, these constructed days and weeks that we could allude to across the dinner table but never fully recount.
When did our relationship with this city change? Was it when M. left for college? When D. left for Israel? When the plan became to leave this city, to go our separate ways? Or was it only when we packed the last straws, the wrapping paper boxes, the Ganeshas over the doors?
Monday, May 5, 2003
Goodbye to New York, Part 4
I loved Miracle on 34th Street until I became a New Yorker. On that first Thanksgiving in the city, for that’s when Christmas starts here, the holiday became my third symbol of New York. I love the Christmas season because everything is so happy, even the women Goodwill Santas collecting dimes from wealthy Long Island shoppers outside of Macy's during a blizzard or even in slush. It seems like everything is dying around me even while remaining so hiddenly vibrant. Call me sentimental but I cried during the Christmas All-School chapel this year, when the first graders processed down the isle with plastic candles in all their glory, the children's eyes focused intently on the outstretched arms of squatting teachers at their destination. I picked out you and Bobby and Giulia and Laurence, vicariously remembering you when you were six through these unfamiliar children, at the same time mixing future with the past and present and wondering if my children will be repeating the same holiday ritual in a few years. Then during "Once in Royal David's City," the words to a song I hear only here serenaded me and the strong beautiful voices of the thirty other people in chorus surrounded me like the timbre of a tympani drum. My eyes watered and I looked around at all the other seniors near me and saw similar tears in their eyes. We knew security was quickly leaving us and tradition slowly releasing its grip on us, ready to exclude us the next time around, though we may not be ready to let go.
Our eyes danced over the rows and rows of Trinity students in their uniforms and formal attire, and for once we did not spite the rules we loathe nor did we desire to change the system we criticize, but rather we accepted it for what it is indeed and found the beauty somehow, somewhere, in the moment. Some of us remembered the Messiah Sing-In two nights before and how we stood outside singing carols, as always, and were not ready to shed the tears we knew we would later shed over the moment. And then when Mr. Rupcich told us he would be conducting next year at that event, smiles and tears all around in the basement of that old church that only we know by heart, some happy because they will see him in all his glory, some sad knowing they will not be able to return for it. In a heartbeat the service was over and we didn't know exactly how to feel. Lost?
Our eyes danced over the rows and rows of Trinity students in their uniforms and formal attire, and for once we did not spite the rules we loathe nor did we desire to change the system we criticize, but rather we accepted it for what it is indeed and found the beauty somehow, somewhere, in the moment. Some of us remembered the Messiah Sing-In two nights before and how we stood outside singing carols, as always, and were not ready to shed the tears we knew we would later shed over the moment. And then when Mr. Rupcich told us he would be conducting next year at that event, smiles and tears all around in the basement of that old church that only we know by heart, some happy because they will see him in all his glory, some sad knowing they will not be able to return for it. In a heartbeat the service was over and we didn't know exactly how to feel. Lost?
Saturday, May 3, 2003
Goodbye to New York, Part 3
On the day of my graduation from eighth grade I went to a party at the Canfield house, my second symbol of New York. At the time it was to me Nick’s penthouse, but it has become my haunt, saturated with awkward memories.
We’re listening to Nix Mix again, in the backroom of the Canfield house, where we have spent many indecisive nights. I put on Less Than Jake and everyone screams in revolt. This is the group I have known since fifth grade but didn't really befriend until ninth. We don't really know why we are friends except because we commuted to that urban Cathedral close with peacocks and choirs for a few years. We are growing apart but we cling to that common experience for stability, for the reminder that we are really all that we have to hold on to. I hide myself in the covers of Suzie's bed because we're watching some stupid action movie in the dark, and Madeleine comes over and gets in bed with me. We pull the blankets up to our chins to fight the air conditioning and whisper about loving and hating this place-- the same old people, the same old motions and movements, the same old Domino's and Coke, the same old shushing and laughing. The light is flipped on and Nick pounces on us and doesn't move, so we are three in a bed, pulling at flower sheets and fluffy pillows, and Max comes in with his yamhaca and feels unloved. Lights out again and the movie is resumed with Max in a chair and the rest on the couch, except for the three of us still performing a balancing act on the bed. We talk for hours when the movie ends, sharing stories about the sex we’re not having and whispering our fears. Someone shouts “hey remember that time on this very couch…” and the victim of the story blushes at the revelation of a memory she had hoped had been forgotten. In the Canfield house I have learned about the nature of secrets. I have learned that the city itself has too many secrets that they aren’t even secrets because no one’s keeping them, because no one knows they’re there. I have learned that you can’t have a secret if you don’t know you’re keeping it. So another night winds down at the Canfield house and everyone grabs trash on the way out, waving goodbye when it never really is.
We’re listening to Nix Mix again, in the backroom of the Canfield house, where we have spent many indecisive nights. I put on Less Than Jake and everyone screams in revolt. This is the group I have known since fifth grade but didn't really befriend until ninth. We don't really know why we are friends except because we commuted to that urban Cathedral close with peacocks and choirs for a few years. We are growing apart but we cling to that common experience for stability, for the reminder that we are really all that we have to hold on to. I hide myself in the covers of Suzie's bed because we're watching some stupid action movie in the dark, and Madeleine comes over and gets in bed with me. We pull the blankets up to our chins to fight the air conditioning and whisper about loving and hating this place-- the same old people, the same old motions and movements, the same old Domino's and Coke, the same old shushing and laughing. The light is flipped on and Nick pounces on us and doesn't move, so we are three in a bed, pulling at flower sheets and fluffy pillows, and Max comes in with his yamhaca and feels unloved. Lights out again and the movie is resumed with Max in a chair and the rest on the couch, except for the three of us still performing a balancing act on the bed. We talk for hours when the movie ends, sharing stories about the sex we’re not having and whispering our fears. Someone shouts “hey remember that time on this very couch…” and the victim of the story blushes at the revelation of a memory she had hoped had been forgotten. In the Canfield house I have learned about the nature of secrets. I have learned that the city itself has too many secrets that they aren’t even secrets because no one’s keeping them, because no one knows they’re there. I have learned that you can’t have a secret if you don’t know you’re keeping it. So another night winds down at the Canfield house and everyone grabs trash on the way out, waving goodbye when it never really is.
Friday, May 2, 2003
Goodbye to New York, Part 2
"Who's playing tonight?"
"Wayne," responds a tiny, hunched-over man with a black and yellow cap sitting placidly outside a tiny, brick-lined doorway. "It's ten bucks," he says, as two twenty-somethings in Columbia tee-shirts enter the narrow stairwell with Heinekens in hand and smug faces, amused by themselves for inquiring about the musicians of a jazz world with which they are entirely unfamiliar.
We enter behind them, paying with crumpled, used and reused ten dollar bills, and follow them down the stairs into a dark, musky, scarcely-populated room. In the corner, a few disheveled musicians sit on a bookshelf, staring blankly at a half-full pitcher of cranberry juice on the dry bar. Small's has forks, barstools, cups, and even a microwave, but has never served anything but cranberry or the occasional apple juice, as I learned on my first visit there, when I attempted to order a Coke. Fifteen or so trips later, I have learned my lesson and now carry a bottle of water and a candy bar with me, in case the jazz inspires some chocolate craving in me.
I tell Katie, who has never been here, that the musicians arrive when they like. At 10:30, they've set up and begin to play. As they swing into their first number, I enter a trance, fixated on the welcoming picture of Louie Armstrong directly behind the band. I had been convinced it was a photograph of Duke Ellington, but after the set that night, the owner told me otherwise. Despite this new information, the photograph still looms in my memory constantly, as my first symbol of New York, a reminder of smoky, hazy nights spent at Small's and the eerie familiarity of a single smiling face.
Nick, an aspiring jazz musician and connoisseur of sorts, introduced me to Small's two years ago. Now, when I ask him to accompany me on one of my many trips there, he refuses, claiming it is "selling out and losing its cool." To me, though, Small’s is just beginning. I can't get enough of that dark enclosed space where New Yorkers blend with an occasional out-of-towner, businessmen fare well with musicians, and where both nobodies and somebodies go for relaxation and a good rhythm. I find myself constantly drawn to its sepulchral feel and familiar tunes, its secretive existence and early morning hours, its good taste in jazz and its ability to make me feel at home downtown. The dissenting chords, giant bass plucks, and harsh sax notes make me think, ponder, question, and perhaps most importantly, live.
When we leave Small's, I stay to talk to Mitch, the owner and peaceful collector of the cover charge. He begins our conversation with a simple, "good?", and I respond, "as always." We launch into a discussion of hungry mice, how to salvage the dying Fat Cat (his billiards/jazz club joint that isn't doing so well), what makes a musician (and a good one at that), the importance of style, and Walt Whitman. He tells me he's his biggest fan, and that in the 1950s, before this small hole in the ground was Small's, it was home to Lenny's Hideaway, one of the first gay clubs in New York, a place patronized by many of the famous Beat poets. I'm in awe of the history of such a tiny room and go back downstairs for a minute to see if I can feel the presence of ghosts or history or maybe have some lines come to mind, and they do. Duke Ellington saying “playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.” Whitman's "What is it then between us? What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?" Whitman's "Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem." I go back upstairs, haunted, and continue my back-and-forth chat with Mitch, who plays violin on 68th and Columbus during the day and reminds me of an owl in some way, holding deposits of information and releasing them slowly to people who tap into them enough. I promise to return soon, and at one a.m., hail a cab to my uptown abode, fulfilled once again by an evening of rich jazz and conversation I've found only in New York.
"Wayne," responds a tiny, hunched-over man with a black and yellow cap sitting placidly outside a tiny, brick-lined doorway. "It's ten bucks," he says, as two twenty-somethings in Columbia tee-shirts enter the narrow stairwell with Heinekens in hand and smug faces, amused by themselves for inquiring about the musicians of a jazz world with which they are entirely unfamiliar.
We enter behind them, paying with crumpled, used and reused ten dollar bills, and follow them down the stairs into a dark, musky, scarcely-populated room. In the corner, a few disheveled musicians sit on a bookshelf, staring blankly at a half-full pitcher of cranberry juice on the dry bar. Small's has forks, barstools, cups, and even a microwave, but has never served anything but cranberry or the occasional apple juice, as I learned on my first visit there, when I attempted to order a Coke. Fifteen or so trips later, I have learned my lesson and now carry a bottle of water and a candy bar with me, in case the jazz inspires some chocolate craving in me.
I tell Katie, who has never been here, that the musicians arrive when they like. At 10:30, they've set up and begin to play. As they swing into their first number, I enter a trance, fixated on the welcoming picture of Louie Armstrong directly behind the band. I had been convinced it was a photograph of Duke Ellington, but after the set that night, the owner told me otherwise. Despite this new information, the photograph still looms in my memory constantly, as my first symbol of New York, a reminder of smoky, hazy nights spent at Small's and the eerie familiarity of a single smiling face.
Nick, an aspiring jazz musician and connoisseur of sorts, introduced me to Small's two years ago. Now, when I ask him to accompany me on one of my many trips there, he refuses, claiming it is "selling out and losing its cool." To me, though, Small’s is just beginning. I can't get enough of that dark enclosed space where New Yorkers blend with an occasional out-of-towner, businessmen fare well with musicians, and where both nobodies and somebodies go for relaxation and a good rhythm. I find myself constantly drawn to its sepulchral feel and familiar tunes, its secretive existence and early morning hours, its good taste in jazz and its ability to make me feel at home downtown. The dissenting chords, giant bass plucks, and harsh sax notes make me think, ponder, question, and perhaps most importantly, live.
When we leave Small's, I stay to talk to Mitch, the owner and peaceful collector of the cover charge. He begins our conversation with a simple, "good?", and I respond, "as always." We launch into a discussion of hungry mice, how to salvage the dying Fat Cat (his billiards/jazz club joint that isn't doing so well), what makes a musician (and a good one at that), the importance of style, and Walt Whitman. He tells me he's his biggest fan, and that in the 1950s, before this small hole in the ground was Small's, it was home to Lenny's Hideaway, one of the first gay clubs in New York, a place patronized by many of the famous Beat poets. I'm in awe of the history of such a tiny room and go back downstairs for a minute to see if I can feel the presence of ghosts or history or maybe have some lines come to mind, and they do. Duke Ellington saying “playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.” Whitman's "What is it then between us? What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?" Whitman's "Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem." I go back upstairs, haunted, and continue my back-and-forth chat with Mitch, who plays violin on 68th and Columbus during the day and reminds me of an owl in some way, holding deposits of information and releasing them slowly to people who tap into them enough. I promise to return soon, and at one a.m., hail a cab to my uptown abode, fulfilled once again by an evening of rich jazz and conversation I've found only in New York.
Thursday, May 1, 2003
My City is Scrabble without Vowels: Goodbye to New York, Part 1
Dear D.,
It’s Friday night and a woman with a heavy covered voice is crooning down from the crooked stage, and someone is chanting in the background, keeping her beat with deep vocals. Her name is Sugar and she’s black, big and black with cornrows, lots of them, and eyes of color café and roots in Harlem and Ghana, and a lover in every South American country, and round hips and large perfect thighs with purple brown stretch marks that she reveals when she’s feeling sexy, when she glides that jean skirt up her leg to show some big black skin and scream “I’m black and I’m proud, I’m morena and I don’t give a shit what you are just listen to me and love what you hear, love what you preach and don’t you give up on your dreams girl, I don’t care the color of your skin.” She’s rich with salsa rhythm constantly keeping her gliding those notes out like a queen, a big black queen, and she lets the loud heavy real sounds drip out of her mouth like nutella or water from a faucet, smooth and so simple and concrete. She’s spitting out phrases like saliva and scatting all over the place, left right and around her curves and up her spine and yours and down your throat. We’re in the corner, clapping and laughing, screaming shaking watching her go go go and we wish we were black, or at least I do, we wish we were ethnic and could sing like that and have people laugh with us and not at us, we wish we could shake our big bosoms and big asses and have everyone call us sexy and not fat, have everyone say we’re beautiful and not just another white girl. We’re the only white ones there and that scared us the first time, made us feel alone and uncomfortable and we thought we couldn’t clap, but now we’re jaded and we don’t care what they think and they don’t care either, here we don’t even think, we don’t know the color of your skin and it doesn’t matter what you are or where you’re from as long as you can get that beat into you and exist with it and for it, and move to that rhythm like you mean it, and when you’re here you do. When we leave the underground club, it’s raining in Harlem, and the streets are glistening with wetness, mimicking our sweaty faces and damp bodies. Everyone’s shouting goodbye and good luck girl and shit man I gotta piss and we’re waving and scatting and you might say we’re acting black but not even a black person can define black, so can you? We’re tired of being racist and going to a white school and shunning Spanglish as unintelligent and we violate our standards and are vulgar and that’s the way the city life is, our city life. We are selfish, we don’t want the whites to come here, we don’t want to lose the black flavor and the Latino taste and the vulgarity and dignity of minorities. We don’t tell them, especially not the tourists who think they want to see real New York but shit in their pants at the mention of 125th street and can’t conceive of a New York that is poor and struggling, that curses and spits and pees on itself when it has to and shares mixed drinks and salsas, Latinos and whites, and dances in the streets.
I wish you would have shared this New York with me. I wish you would have escaped your confines of the Upper East Side and released yourself into the depths of this city. Why can’t we teach each other to live? Now I’m leaving, leaving you and this city, and you haven’t seen my places, seen where I have learned to live, seen where I have become who I am. In the time we have been together you have taught me to fit into your book, your land of Tasti-Delite and Central Park and seventh floor apartments and Duane Reades, your existence of the M86 and gummy bears and 91st and Columbus, please, and step on it, it’s already 8:11. Why is every Friday a Blockbuster night when this city is rolling over in its grave a hundred times a minute while you bask in tasks that occur everywhere, all the time, except for in this city? Why are we suburbanites in the middle of urban bliss? We don’t share the same appreciations. Candlelight vigils on Columbia campus are “boring and such a waste of time” to you, a walk down Columbus is “pointless” and an $8 concert at CBGBs is “bad music, and downtown is too far anyway, let’s just stay here.” I have obliged pretty much every time, and now I am leaving this city, and leaving you, and we will never know what could have been of those long quiet Friday nights. In these last few months let me show you my New York. Let me show you my city that is made up of symbols, thousands of memory-joggers compiled.
It’s Friday night and a woman with a heavy covered voice is crooning down from the crooked stage, and someone is chanting in the background, keeping her beat with deep vocals. Her name is Sugar and she’s black, big and black with cornrows, lots of them, and eyes of color café and roots in Harlem and Ghana, and a lover in every South American country, and round hips and large perfect thighs with purple brown stretch marks that she reveals when she’s feeling sexy, when she glides that jean skirt up her leg to show some big black skin and scream “I’m black and I’m proud, I’m morena and I don’t give a shit what you are just listen to me and love what you hear, love what you preach and don’t you give up on your dreams girl, I don’t care the color of your skin.” She’s rich with salsa rhythm constantly keeping her gliding those notes out like a queen, a big black queen, and she lets the loud heavy real sounds drip out of her mouth like nutella or water from a faucet, smooth and so simple and concrete. She’s spitting out phrases like saliva and scatting all over the place, left right and around her curves and up her spine and yours and down your throat. We’re in the corner, clapping and laughing, screaming shaking watching her go go go and we wish we were black, or at least I do, we wish we were ethnic and could sing like that and have people laugh with us and not at us, we wish we could shake our big bosoms and big asses and have everyone call us sexy and not fat, have everyone say we’re beautiful and not just another white girl. We’re the only white ones there and that scared us the first time, made us feel alone and uncomfortable and we thought we couldn’t clap, but now we’re jaded and we don’t care what they think and they don’t care either, here we don’t even think, we don’t know the color of your skin and it doesn’t matter what you are or where you’re from as long as you can get that beat into you and exist with it and for it, and move to that rhythm like you mean it, and when you’re here you do. When we leave the underground club, it’s raining in Harlem, and the streets are glistening with wetness, mimicking our sweaty faces and damp bodies. Everyone’s shouting goodbye and good luck girl and shit man I gotta piss and we’re waving and scatting and you might say we’re acting black but not even a black person can define black, so can you? We’re tired of being racist and going to a white school and shunning Spanglish as unintelligent and we violate our standards and are vulgar and that’s the way the city life is, our city life. We are selfish, we don’t want the whites to come here, we don’t want to lose the black flavor and the Latino taste and the vulgarity and dignity of minorities. We don’t tell them, especially not the tourists who think they want to see real New York but shit in their pants at the mention of 125th street and can’t conceive of a New York that is poor and struggling, that curses and spits and pees on itself when it has to and shares mixed drinks and salsas, Latinos and whites, and dances in the streets.
I wish you would have shared this New York with me. I wish you would have escaped your confines of the Upper East Side and released yourself into the depths of this city. Why can’t we teach each other to live? Now I’m leaving, leaving you and this city, and you haven’t seen my places, seen where I have learned to live, seen where I have become who I am. In the time we have been together you have taught me to fit into your book, your land of Tasti-Delite and Central Park and seventh floor apartments and Duane Reades, your existence of the M86 and gummy bears and 91st and Columbus, please, and step on it, it’s already 8:11. Why is every Friday a Blockbuster night when this city is rolling over in its grave a hundred times a minute while you bask in tasks that occur everywhere, all the time, except for in this city? Why are we suburbanites in the middle of urban bliss? We don’t share the same appreciations. Candlelight vigils on Columbia campus are “boring and such a waste of time” to you, a walk down Columbus is “pointless” and an $8 concert at CBGBs is “bad music, and downtown is too far anyway, let’s just stay here.” I have obliged pretty much every time, and now I am leaving this city, and leaving you, and we will never know what could have been of those long quiet Friday nights. In these last few months let me show you my New York. Let me show you my city that is made up of symbols, thousands of memory-joggers compiled.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Posts
