To say this visit was magical would be a bit of an understatement. On top of two very special singing gigs, I spent long hours after midnight walking miles around the city with headphones on, taking it all in; and also had a couple of very intense, emotional visits with old friends.
When it comes to New York, I’m now an outsider looking in - it’s been nearly 27 years since I left; the place is not recognizable to the New York I knew in the 80s, with its ten-pak token baggies, less-than-charming urban blight, and still standing Twin Towers. Dirty old New York is long gone. And yet...every once in a while you catch a soft whisper of it. The smell of a linden tree. The patina of a sidewalk with 200 years of grime on it. The caress of a warm almost-summer night, a phenomenon unknown to the desert I now call home. And it all caused me to be overcome with terrible, crushing longing.
But...longing for what? I have no desire to live there ever again. I love the life I’ve built for myself, and the new culture I’ve adopted. I am not a New Yorker. I don’t want to be young again, with all the misery and uncertainty my young life had. So, why the tears?
In a book I’m reading the writer says our brain thinks of the things we love as ourselves. So to my brain my children are me, as is my boyfriend and my sister and my event and band members. For all the intense devotion and love I poured into that city during my formative years, I suppose my brain thinks that New York in general, and the East Village in particular, is, in fact, me. To re-connect with me after years of absence is bound to be profound. How could it not be?
My oldest friend, a gay man I worked with at a video store after high school, and I had dinner and then found ourselves wandering to the East Village for ice cream. We talked about our toxic mothers, aging, how we were the Throw Away Kids. And how we’ve overcome and thrived. I mentioned half-joking how I was considering getting a tattoo of the “the party’s over” graffiti symbol which was everywhere in that neighborhood in the 80s - it was an anti-corporate, anti-1%, anti-gentrification symbol that so perfectly summed up the rebellion and street sensibility and sheer anarchy of those days. It seems more relevant now than ever. And it is me. He said DO IT. I just might.
For now I’m going to try to come to terms with the fact that, as much as I tried to push it away - to my brain, anyway, New York is me. Immigrants all over this world know this reality - you are of two places; your heart will be forever split. My boyfriend, and my children, all native Californians, will never know the melancholy pull of the birthplace. The Brazilians sum it up so well with their term saudade - bittersweet longing. It’s terrible and beautiful and sad and lovely all at once.
I’ve had a profound experience this weekend. It will take some time to fully weed through, and I may not ever entirely understand it. But I’m grateful for it.
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