The city as a smelling salt

Foray 014: New York's Newest Arrival

Write about New York at your own peril.

A few words in and it begins to feel like you’ve unknowingly entered a pissing contest with some of the world’s greatest writers. Because who hasn’t written about New York? There has been so much made, so many things noticed and remarked upon that even the slightest comment begins to feel like a pastiche, or perhaps a reference to something you didn’t even know existed.

I like to be a good student and so I started with my research. Well-read and all. Pacing around Three Lives bookstore, flipping through any book or essay with ‘New York’ or an allusion to the big apple in its title, I searched half-heartedly, then wholeheartedly, then half heartedly again.

The first piece I encountered in this canon of ‘City’ literature was E.B White’s “Here is New York”. There is nothing I am drawn to as strongly as a fantastic, monolithic title. It’s my true kryptonite.

“I am sitting at the moment in a stifling hotel room in 90-degree heat, halfway down an airshaft, in Midtown. No air moves in or out of the room, yet I am curiously affected by emanations from the immediate surroundings.”

Spinning out from his place on the 30-something floor of a Midtown-somewhere building into the vast city, White maps out out the place 5 blocks away where Hemingway hit Max Eastman and 22 blocks away where Rudolph Valentino lied in state. He speaks of walking through the West Village as a young man, trembling on the blocks that his favourite editors and writers lived on, the heart attack of being a bit closer to your destiny.

“…no matter where you sit in New York you feel the vibrations of great times and tall deeds, of queer people and events and undertakings.”

I love it, and I get it. Hell, I saw Spike Lee crossing the street yesterday.

And Sarah Jessica Parker the day before. That certainly felt good. Not to mention Sofia Coppola (who I dream of collaborating with, fingers crossed) was doing a book signing a few blocks away and apparently the Chipotle Founder is close at hand too.

These are all good signs, I think. Of what exactly, I’m not sure. But good nonetheless.

It’s simply nice to think both you and your dreams share the same coffee shop and walk along the same blocks. It’s nice, but it’s not everything.

Indeed, it’s proving to be more of a malady then a remedy. If proximity is meant to be reassuring, then it’s doing a very bad job at it.

I don’t want to diagnose it too quickly. It is, as I love to say and hate to hear, all relative. There are many things at play, at least half of them are my fault. New York’s responsible for the rest.

Changing my city has put everything into perspective. There’s no grass on the earth and no trees to shade me from the sun. The comforts I’ve cultivated over years of living in London, everything from friends to favourite restaurants, are wiped away and instead I’m left with the bare bones of my life. It’s jarring, it’s raw, and it’s so incredibly real.

It makes me feel like a teenager again. The deep chest angst of having so much to do, that must must be done, and yet no concrete starting point. Of being at the beginning of your life, a fact that only becomes apparent when you see how much more you have to go. The road suddenly stretches very long, my mileage is bust and I’m not quite as far as I thought.

I think about the things I love the most. Hosting big parties and relaxed dinners, walking in the park with my best friends, ridiculous nights out and incredible nights in. So much of it I can’t do right now. The best friends are across the ocean and I’m yet to find my favourite clubs. Most of the joys that have framed and buffeted my life in London over the past 6 years are gone.

Not gone, gone. Just in need of rebuilding.

In their absence a big old gap has opened up. It’s not the gap I expected, not the gap I thought I’d see. It’s not loneliness or a lack of fun, it’s not fomo or deep regret. No, thankfully, I’ve yet to be visited by any of those.

Instead, yawning in front of me, is the gap between where I am and where I want to be. Achingly apparent, larger than I realised and so incredibly salient, I feel it like a broken bone. My proximity to the greats has only made it clearer than it ever was in London, ever was in Paris, with no obstruction, no shoulder shrugging, no satisfaction.

Holy shit, New York is a city of wants. It’s all wants and it’s all work.

Thank god for that. Truly. I realise now it’s saved me from the insidious creep of age and its two henchmen, comfort and complacency.

I’ve come to realise that you don’t move cities to feel more fulfilled. You move cities to feel less fulfilled, to see where the real gaps are in your life, where the real growth is by wiping away any comfort or creation that obstructed or half-heartedly satiated it before.

One can only have so much pacifying until you begin to need the pacifier.

London is a place of pacifying. Or, at least, it became that way for me after 6 years. The gap between what I had experienced and what was left to experience had narrowed so much it wasn’t even worth remarking upon, it shrank to nil. Live 5 to 6 years anywhere and I reckon anybody’s gap of growth will disappear in front of their very eyes.

Is that a good thing? A bad thing? Up to you. Just recognise it for what it is, recognise that it’s gone.

You move, and you feel less fulfilled. More and less.

I am loving it, I would not go back but wow, I have never had more work to do or more things I want to achieve. Want being the operational word. Sometimes the amount and strength of my desires, everything I want to achieve and succeed in, is so strong that it feels like it’s going to kill me.

Back to that bone-aching gap. I see it everywhere I look. I can’t help it. All the things I want to build and create, be apart of, help with, lead, change - my god.

The invitation to look back and appreciate how far you’ve come, what you already have, to rejoice in the journey; cute, but unwelcome. In fact, its begun to feel like the only way anything incredible gets done is by deep, driving, unbridled want and work. No flag waving until the war is won, screw the battle.

This view is undoubtedly less happy than other world views. We are supposed to love our effort and make peace with normalcy. Whether it is defect or design, I can’t. I don’t want to. I fear mediocrity more than I fear failure. Which sometimes, I’ll admit, can itself lead to failure or procrastination. Needing to excel so not wanting to begin and risk floundering etc, etc.

I remember very clearly when I saw it. I was walking in Holland Park, about 9 months ago, when I suddenly realised that being so ambitious and, more or less, perfectionist at nearly everything I do came at the cost of choking down many of my desires. That bowled me over. I sat down on a damp wooden bench and ran through everything I wanted, making note of how badly I wanted it, hair falling in front of my eyes as I jotted it all down.

Desire is a tricky mistress. Admitting to it feels like half the war.

Now that that has been more or less dealt with, I am in the midst of another realisation. As a child, the incredible felt more real than the average. Between all the story times and colourful characters, I came to believe the forgone conclusion of life, the natural outcome, was one of magic. That life would carry everyone, easily and smoothly, to the awesome and only a select few, who had tampered with the order of things or done something roundly ‘bad’, would fall short of that outcome.

In due time, the old wives tales were wiped away but what remained, stronger than I fully realised, was a whole hearted faith that the end of every story would be brilliant. That no life would be wasted and all would stumble upon their secret treasure, that everyone would get their time in the sun.

What I’ve now realised, vaguely and against my will, is how widespread mediocrity is. I don’t say this to demean or even to pass judgement on anyone but myself, but it is a stark realisation. Instead of the natural outcome being one of serendipity, it seems to be one of mediocrity. There is no one definition, it’s not the physical things or tangible achievements. One person’s serendipity can be another’s mediocrity and the difference is invisible besides, of course, the fact that you can feel it. You can feel it.

Stand tall or fall.

Cormac McCarthy, the truly excellent American writer, has a quote that I think encapsulates this feeling quite well:

“Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I’d always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it is always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals come easily.”

There are so many choices. So many different ways one can live. Abiding by different tenets and worshipping different gods. You can choose to not be mediocre, I believe, but it will be an uphill battle, it will be a fight. The little lizard brain won’t lead us where we want; it is scared of the sun, so we have to strangle it.

This altogether tougher new perspective I’ve adopted has been massively aided and abetted by reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. Wow. There’s someone who hated mediocrity like a precision laser. Happy is not the first word I would use to describe his life, but incredible is. It’s all about what you want.

I’ve been in New York for two weeks. That gap. Lodged like a wisdom tooth, aching in my jaw.

I am so young, I surprise myself.

I am sticky fingers and mouth breathing on the glass windows, trying to get a look in. I am hair in pigtails and dreaming, bouncing up and down. I am stalking to my journal tearfully, writing what I would do as president.

Open, unending.

I am standing on heavily-trafficked corners with the sun on my face. I am reading fiction like an instruction guide and thinking Wikipedia is the best source. Everyone is beautiful and I am a walking possibility.

Changing cities has changed me. I feel so light here. I apply to jobs and I am so excited. I walk on the streets and I am so excited. The sky is so blue, no gray and I haven’t had a headache in weeks.

New York was needed.

Here, I get to be so new.

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Thank you so much for reading this week’s article! I really appreciate all of the support I’ve been receiving for my writing - a single like or comment has been known to make my day! Thank you all very much.

In other news - It’s been brought to my attention that we had a lunar eclipse last night and are now in a new eclipse cycle. I like that very much. Apparently we’re supposed to take a step back, let the chips fall where they may and embrace the shifts. This, I also like very much. What new shifts are coming your way?

Also, I want to read as much as I can about (or set in) NYC in the next few months so would love any and all recommendations! What’s your favourite city book? Or a good essay about the history of NYC?

The first episode of my podcast has been published, you can find it on Spotify here and YouTube here. I think it’s going to be fun! And once I get a few big projects wrapped up (namely the agent querying process for my novel) I’m going to be committing to it wholeheartedly. Times are a-changing!

You can read E.B White’s essay, which I quoted, here (both quotes are pulled from page 696) and the great Cormac McCarthy quote is from his novel “All the Pretty Horses”, I don’t have a link for that so you’ll have to buy it to read it!

I want to leave you this week with a song that I love and keep coming back to. It has nothing to do with anything besides the fact that it embodies everything.

Lots of love xx

Jasmine