Listen to the Music of the Traffic in the City
Back in the habitat, sneezing up a storm.
Hello fellow travelers on this blogging journey!
I write to you from my native habitat, which is not quite a bodega, but close: it’s my parents’ couch in on the Upper West Side, wearing my ratty P.S. 87 class of ‘96 t-shirt, surrounded by Kleenex. Immune collapse was perhaps inevitable: my flight was delayed, I arrived at 2am local time after spending 8 hours sitting around BER airport and then 8 hours on a plane breathing stale air, and went about four days total without real sleep.
My last couple of trips home were stressful and shitty for many reasons, but even with the head cold this one has thus far been lovely. And I have accomplished many things since I arrived.
For example, I have:
At least doubled my usual daily coffee consumption.
Eaten a bodega BLT (first of several, ideally).
Finally bought an analogue camera and then spent $130 on film at B&H, because there’s nothing like taking up an expensive new hobby when you’re constantly complaining about how broke you are.
Seen friends, including my oldest and very best friend who was briefly in town from Australia, and another friend who regaled me with tales of the beloved pet tarantula he got after his divorce, which legitimately made me laugh so hard I think I scared the other customers at Maman. I’ve concluded that “tarantula daddy’s dating adventures” needs to be some sort of tragicomic gay divorce memoir, or at the very least an open mic standup routine, and I know you are reading this right now, friend, so I’ve solved your life for you you’re welcome.
Been shockingly productive while cycling through 3-4 different Manhattan WeWork locations, based on where I had plans with friends that day.
This last item made me fondly recall my publishing days in an office near Union Square, and the particular energy of being a person who works in Manhattan, and how easy it was to jet through the streets for dinner or happy hour at twilight with all those buildings lighting up above you, and then take the train back across to Brooklyn in the dark. (I do not miss commuting during rush hour though, except for maybe that 30 seconds of going over the Manhattan Bridge on the BQ, which I actually miss a lot.)
It’s very easy to romanticize living in New York when you don’t actually have to deal with making a living there, and can stay at your parents’ house and eat their food for free, and thus spend your money cramming every good New York thing into a few weeks. Including a nonstop rotation of friends and family who are genuinely elated to see you, but who inevitably get caught up in their own shit (as do I) when we have the luxury of taking each other for granted.
New York is, in fact, a very easy place to get bored and lonely and a very easy place to feel somehow inadequate, which is something I’ve thought about a lot in the last years. Many people in Berlin have asked me why, having grown up in Manhattan, I would have ever wanted to leave, and the answers are various but seem to fall into two broad categories:
New York can be a uniquely difficult place to live, even for someone born and raised and with family there, and
Staying in your hometown is a trap, even when that hometown is as vast and multifaceted as New York.
New York is, however, a place that very easily seduces you into feeling like it’s the only real place in the world, especially when you haven’t been there in a while. Pretty much every time I come home I walk around, surrounded by every version of myself I have ever been, beaming at all the people and all the things like holy shit why does anyone live anywhere else? Then after a couple of weeks, I’m perfectly happy to go back to the peace of my very nice 1bd apartment with a full kitchen and balcony that costs €900 a month. I do, increasingly, know I’m not going to want to be in Berlin forever, but there’s still a lot of value to be had there before it’s time for whatever the next chapter will be.
Anyway, on Saturday I’m going to Maine to visit another very dear friend who I haven’t seen in a couple of years, and where I plan to burn through my first roll or two of film. I tell myself that if even one person will pay for this Substack, I can write off all of my photo expenses in perpetuity by foisting the results on you. Get excited.
A coda
Last night at dinner, other friends told me that they liked it when I used to end my posts with random YouTube music clips, so maybe I’ll bring that back going forward.
So, inevitably: