[note: I wrote this a few months back in my notebook. I was no doubt responding to some of the pressures that we now see taking center stage in downtown Manhattan.]
Early on a Monday morning, as I walk to work, I feel her creaking and groaning beneath my feet, the machinery slowly clicking into gear. When you are on the streets, you feel the rumble under your feet, the buzz in the air. New York City is happening. All day, every day, wave after wave of people going about their routines. From the Guatemalan immigrant who is on his way to work for two dollars an hour in the back of a deli to the self-possessed Wall Street type with his pin stripes and fuck-you grin, NY has it's own morning feel.
However pleasant or unpleasant, grey or sun-filled the day might be. And whether I am filled with purpose or ambling confusedly in search of caffeine, the beginning of each city day fills me with the same dread and wonder -- as if anything could happen, from the dangerous to the banal.
In my country-bred mind, I think of NYC as "a failed experiment." Maybe I'm just jealous of all the people with more money and connections, the beautiful shiny-faced couples, the VIPs. Or maybe it's just that I see the goings on from a different perspective than those raised here. But to my mind, it's an endlessly exploitative loop that illustrates exactly how liberal, Western capitalism has failed to protect its laborers. To my ears, it sounds like the death bell of American democracy. Oh sure, all the appearances are in place: gung-ho cops and firemen who will bravely lay down their lives for their fellow Americans, patriotic Union members with "Never Forget" sewn into their uniforms. The language too gets it just right. Bloomberg talks endlessly about how immigrants make us strong, about how inclusive NYC is, and the ability of anyone to make it here, the American Dream, yada-yada.
But to me, it feels empty. The appearances manufactured. The rhetoric recycled from "what worked before" and cheesy movies. The face of New York has changed much in 100 years, but the underlying structure is the same: the rich few (aka the 1%) exploit the poor many (the 99%). How they do this is so intrinsic to New York culture as to be invisible to those outside. While it may be said that Los Angeles is the city of empty appearances, NYC, the city of Madison Avenue and television, has its own smoke and mirrors in place. Its own mythology.
One of the things I would like to explore on this blog is this mythology of New York City (and by extension, America) and how it is being challenged by economic recession and angry masses of people without jobs. It seems the once fresh and attractive face of NY (as portrayed in movies and television) has a few wrinkles now, the makeup needs a touching up -- and, are those bags under her eyes?
I believe the experience of working hard and "making it" in NYC offers very little for most of us. Except for the experience of working and belonging to this city, and, more beneficially, to each other. That in itself is the reward offered. The ability to say to outsiders, "I'm a New Yorker. I'm tough and resilient. I can make it there! Even after the 9/11 attacks, I'm still here." There is some spiritual camaraderie in that, I suppose. What gives New York its power, its essence, is not the culture industry or the fashion industry or the endless production of money and beauty for others to consume -- rather, it is the human experience that has imprinted itself on this city. All of us living, working and dying in the City have given it its soul.
Not what is made here. (What real thing is made here?) Not the ephemeral "culture" we export throughout the world. That seems meaningless to me, it withers and dies and more grows up to replace it. It serves for a while to be bought and sold -- and then forgotten. In this culture that reproduces and devalues its own cultural products, what is left for the human soul?
The only meaningful answer, I feel, is to be found in the struggle itself. The fight for the human soul rages on, whether political or personal -- or both. While we may have been devalued, made into interchangeable parts by the crushing force of the market, the struggle for humanity remains the only truly worthwhile struggle left to us.
The trick will be to reclaim public spaces for us -- all of us. To reclaim NY for New Yorkers. It will take a sea change in the way we think about ourselves and our city. It will take a peaceful revolution.
A Rockefeller Square where, instead of Atlas, we see the immigrants who truly hold this city on their shoulders. If they shrug, all of this edifice will come tumbling down. And even Mayor Bloomberg and all his cops and cronies, will not be able to put it together again.
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