New York 11-13 March
Arrival
8 Hour flight. I’ve never done any longer than 2 hours. It’s the day after Mother’s Day.
When I phoned my mum yesterday, she said she’d be driving down the motorway while my plane took off. It made her think of that scene in Interstellar; where the rocket takes off while a car races through a cornfield somewhere else. ‘That will be us’, she said. ‘You should listen to the music when you take off’
I do, putting on Cornfield Chase by Hans Zimmer, but a bit too early. The plane is still taxiing, the music giving me a false take off in my headphones.
In the sky I think of my mum driving down the motorway, at the exact same time. I picture her driving past the big Morrisons.
I remember when I was younger, questions like ‘what do you think Barak Obama is doing right now?’. A fun game to imagine famous people at any moment in the day. Maybe in our minds we would catch them out doing something ordinary and embarrassing; sneezing or shitting.
The game was made entertaining by the fact that celebrities don’t do those things, the in between moments. No boring scenes. It’s unfathomable that they exist at every hour.
This week in my new house, I asked my new American housemate where Beyoncé lives.
“Texas, I think”, she said.
“Yes!” I said.
As if the fact I’m visiting Texas makes it in anyway likely that I’ll see her. Even now at 23 I am attaching more gravity to these random people, some mystical force pulling events around them. I like the mythology I think.
Everything in Texas centred around Beyoncé.
The same kind of mythology is attached to New York, the American dream permeating everywhere. An indescribable sense of importance, knowing that it is a place where things happen. Any event under its roof must have some significance, some inherent meaning that will stick.
The idea of it seems to be all possibility, like stepping into a film.
There are severe wind warnings for New York on the 11th of May. We start the descent. I say aloud to myself in my brain ‘You are going to New York,’ and it fills me with genuine excitement, I grip the seat hard as the air swells around me. It still feels more like a concept than a real place so it’s as if something imaginary is materialising.
The swells of turbulence last longer than I can hold my breath, a pointless instinct anyway I guess, although it feels odd to exhale with my brain still 20 feet above my stomach. This is the first time I’ve been on a plane big enough for a middle row of seats. The luggage compartment above the middle (where I sit) is looming like the underbelly of an insect, runged and swaying above my head. It moves in contrast to the stationary back walls of the plane. The insect dives forward, I hold my breath, and we descend.
day one
Once on the ground we dump all our stuff in the hostel and head out to a bar, the first one we see. It’s 5pm or so but 9pm in our heads. I am starving. There is a girl inside eating a slice of pizza. I ask her if she got it from this place, she says sorry they’re not serving food to the public. She is doing drinks and drawing though, would I like to join?
I say ok, and sit down to doodle with all the art supplies she has laid out. We chat and it’s nice and I think ‘America will be easy’.
After a while I do have to find food. In the shop at the end of the road I ask for a wrap three times, but he still can’t understand me even though I remember to say eggplant. I have to put on an American accent, a fake valley girl drawl because it’s the only one I can think of, he smiles after that and gets it.
Back in the bar, some more people have arrived for drinks and drawing. I feel uncharacteristically extroverted and make them all my friends. As we’re chatting they casually mention ‘after 9/11’ which surprises me. I thought maybe that would be a no-go area for chat here. The women are very nice and very cosmopolitan. They talk about the classes they’ve been to and the dramas between local bars (presumably gay), and work trips.
One of their toddlers, who has hair so long you wouldn’t have thought she’d had time to grow it yet, eats a pizza crust in a beanie. The New York hipster bar aesthetic seems to be corrugated iron roofs. To me that seems the kind of place kids shouldn’t eat pizza crust off a floor, but here it is just a left field bar with rich toddlers. Different cultural associations.
As I’m waving goodbye one of them gasps ‘I know where I recognise you from ! Bingo last week right ?’ I smile and consider being ‘Morgan from Bingo’, but I’ve only been on the ground 2 hours. I doubt I could pull it off.
jazz club
I take the subway into town to Smalls Jazz Club. I’ve always thought if I make it to New York I will go to all the jazz clubs.
I walk through Greenwich village; everything is a bit too big and there are less people on the streets than I would’ve imagined. The image of New York is so ingrained into tv shows in my mind, that the red brick buildings and black fire escapes feel like replicas buildings. Caricatures of a stereotype. Like walking through an oddly proportioned, and unoccupied doll house.
Ben appears, it’s strange to see someone from home randomly appear in this odd place. The sense of him being copied and pasted in is emphasised by the fact that we didn’t travel here together. He went a few days ahead of the rest of us.
We head down into the basement of Smalls. The Ari Hoenig trio is playing. Ari Hoenig plays like he is having fun, that is the main thing I remember. It is all playful, and truly conversational. Occasionally he rips into a very heavy solo, only happening twice, but very exciting when he does. It makes me think about sound over music. They play a slow version of Stablemates which I like, it works really well with brushes.
The show is amazing. The waitress draws a smiley face next to the suggested tip on our receipt, perhaps noticing the Britishness. After, we go to see Times Square. It is all adverts, it feels like looking at tiktok on a thousand screens and it gives me a headache. Or maybe that is just the jet lag catching up with me.
On the way back on the subway I am almost falling asleep. Tonight, I accept that maybe it would be good to have someone walk me home, something I never usually mention or ask for.
Day two
I wake up at 8am, pleased that I tricked my body clock. A rough start to the day, as I quickly realise one of the others has accidentally sleep-pissed on a pile of belongings. None of my stuff, it was the opposite side of the room, but still a slightly confusing conversation to wake up into.
This specific situation hasn’t happened yet.
We quickly shake it off and start on the day’s tourism. This is the only full day we have in New York, so there is lots to do.
Central Park
The sky scrapers surrounding central park are huge. Not just in height as they usually are, the individual windows seem bigger; the building blocks of everything enlarged. Again, the streets look less bustling than how I’d invented them in my head, but probably because this is a random work morning. All the people are on the inside.
Staring at the sky scrapers I see one with a triangular roof, like a house, and a chimney with smoke coming out of it. A small house built directly on the towers. I imagine an old man sat inside by a fire place; cottage interior.
I have a strong, probably inaccurate, image of America in my mind. I’ve only been here one day and don’t really know anything about the place. But I picture the huge walls of New York, and then land never ending to the left.
New York City feels like that small house built on top of something huge. Like a city on the moon, it’s hugeness a failed attempt to dwarf the vast never-ending land it sits on.
I am not afraid of the countryside, I grew up in countryside. I am unnerved by the open emptiness and the scale of it. Not directly outside of New York of course, but further in the same direction away. Later in LA, a man in a bar would tell me about the large flat lands in Florida where no one lives at all.
I look at the wall of skyscrapers and think of what’s far on the otherside. Perhaps not in distance, but in time. Days stretch out ahead of me far in that direction. A longer time on the moon.
When we were in Galway in February the river in the town centre had one of the strongest currents I’ve seen. Fall in that and you would definitely get smashed onto the rocks, no way to swim out of the riptide. Jonny Ray said then if you look right across the sea from Galway, there’s nothing in that direction until America.
In New York now I’m still just across the sea, facing back at myself. Tomorrow I will have to turn and face away, otherside of the skyscrapers.
In the park the trees and foliage are darker than I’m used to. Deeper greens and almost black bark. The darker shades would usually seem autumnal, but here they are undeniably spring. I look for ducks but don’t see any, thinking of The Catcher in the Rye.
Further in we find a little castle and climb up. Looking down from the castle you can see a pond, and there are tiny turtles swimming around. I haven’t seen turtles like this outside of a zoo before.
I wonder what the turtles think of the ducks.
The others are a bit disappointed, thinking this is the reservoir, but then we realise that is around the corner.
It is massive, strangely so. Maybe I only notice because it’s called a reservoir and not a lake. I think of reservoirs as things outside of cities, but lakes make sense within. I don’t see any dam, but we do not walk around the whole thing.
Evening
After we’ve played our gig, I meet a guy called Josh, a native New York guy. He liked the set a lot, and tells me how he’s watched lots of live videos of gigs at The Windmill online. This seems totally hilarious to me, that someone from New York would be obsessed with something so far away and ordinary, when you have so much here. Maybe he thinks the same about me but the other way around. Different mythologies.
It turns out he’s a sax player too, and I go with him to Ornithology, a jazz club relatively near the venue. We take a subway which goes overground, up high on a platform on stilts riding directly above the road. This is kind of subway I was aiming for, I’m pleased that I found it. I look out the window the whole time at the Empire State building.
The Jazz club seems relatively normal, more familiar than Smalls. It’s a jam not a gig this time, yet strangely confrontational. Mid song someone taps the pianist on the shoulder, and then takes over on keys. The guy that takes over is slightly worse than the original. A third person comes along, taking over again, a little better now. This rotation keeps happening. The drummer eventually gets fed up and takes a long and amazing solo to shut them all up.
The people here seem hungry, in a more explicit way than back home. Everyone seems to be an entrepeuner in America. Or at least that is what they tell you.
I walk all the way back to the hostel. The Empire State building flashes at me in the distance peeking out amongst the perfectly straight streets.
I don’t get much sleep. This night I tuck my belongs far underneath my bed and cover them with a waterproof coat, just in case a similar incident occurs.
It doesn’t.
And the next day we fly to Texas.