In NYC again, and Hearing the City in the Key of Daddy

My reunion with New York City last month came after a Covid-imposed, 20-month hiatus. I bet many other people visited the city this summer, after the same anguished separation.

But in my case, I re-emerged in the city (rising up from the train platform below the ground) after another kind of hiatus. 

I was back in New York for the first time since my father had fallen ill.

Perhaps that wouldn't matter, except I realized my father embodies Manhattan for me (my mother gets Brooklyn in all of its colorful, fairy tale glory). 

Growing up, I visited the city with my parents countless times -- afternoons at the museum, overnight stays at Midtown hotels, visits to family in Brooklyn -- and I memorized stories of their newlywed days in Manhattan when they would buy their meat at Macy's. I divided Long Island, where I was born, in two: the families with roots in the city and the people who rejected that New York was the alpha and the omega.

I was visiting Manhattan for a short research fellowship at The New York Public Library, and on the train ride to Grand Central, I felt that rasp of excitement, that frothy giddiness I’ve known since childhood when the destination is New York and the method of transit is the train (“This is the train to New York, making stops in…”). Watching Harlem through the train windows, I felt as though I was eavesdropping on people’s lives.

I had hoped no one would be over my shoulder, accompanying me as I walked the streets of “The City.” But I knew better. In my heart of hearts, I suspected my father’s voice -- his impressions relayed through his signature expressions -- would provide a soundtrack, regardless. New York's vibrancy -- its urgency -- was made first manifest through my father's stories. The tales of strolls along the avenue and visits to fancy hotel lobbies long gone and staying out all night, the excitement of it all painted on his face and vibrating through his voice. He grew up in one of those Jersey cities just on the other side of the Hudson for whom Manhattan is your backyard, if you happen to have the center of the world out back.

Mike, Leo and I were staying in Midtown, which probably only exacerbated the sensation of walking in my father’s footsteps since that was the precinct he'd haunted before it was inundated by tourists -- that area and anywhere near Lincoln Center or the museums uptown, including the Frick. 

(The Frick would be just any New York museum, mind you, but it will remain forever precious to me because that's where the Hans Holbein portrait of St. Thomas More resides. After I studied More in high school at St. Anthony's, my father become obsessed with tracking down where he’d seen the famous Holbein portrait. He finally figured out it was at the Frick. Who would care? But he did – so I do. When I finally visited the Frick some years ago, I stationed myself in front of the portrait as if there were a kinship between myself and the painting almost as keenly felt as a normal relationship.) 

Each morning last month during my visit to New York, I had to toggle between our hotel on 50th Street and the New York Public Library, so from 50th down to 42nd every day, and from Third Avenue over to 5th.

No one ever walked that expanse more joyfully, more studiously than I did, all the while with the singular voice of my father plying me with memories. I was hearing the city in the key of my father.

(I was also hearing the voice of my Uncle Joe because I believe he was the one who had me memorize the order of the non-numbered avenues east of 5^th Avenue: Madison-Park-Lex. As I walked, I unwittingly repeated it like a little mantra.)

Even certain words in my head are rendered in his voice, like cab or taxi. (Not surprisingly, they form a key part of a New Yorker's vocabulary).

The way my father always talked, it was like the exhilaration of the city rose up from the streets, was contained in the streets. I could hear him mapping out routes to various places, on foot. And to this day, what I like best to do in New York isn't attend a concert or eat at a restaurant or grab drinks -- it's simply to be in the streets. Walking through New York is a passion, an instinct. I slept badly the first night in New York but if I had the whole day to roam, that would be no problem. When we went there as children, my father walked with a long, brisk stride that we struggled to duplicate.

It’s that same old story I've written about before: loving something that someone I love urged me to love. Think about that for a moment. It makes for an extremely potent, poignant obsession. I have dozens of examples, from the literature of James Joyce to jazz music to walking fast (“city walking”). I love all those things because he has loved them. And it’s like a double web of admiration and love, far more than simply stumbling upon them on my own. I don't get to decide if they are important -- they simply are, whether I like it or not (Memoir 101).

What I read the summer I was 16

I keep old journals. Lots of them. In fact, I heap them all in a vintage wicker basket my parents used to take on picnics. And lately, I've been trying to organize them -- mainly by affixing labels to the covers so I can figure out what years or events the journals cover.

And that's what led me to discover a journal that contained a list of the books I had read when I was 16 years old. It was probably the first time I'd logged the books I'd read -- something I continue to do to this day in a small notebook (for reasons I can't quite pinpoint).

Back then, I was meeting certain authors for the first time -- Joyce Carol Oates, Kurt Vonnegut, Albert Camus and James Baldwin -- and amassing as many of their titles as possible.

In some cases, the titles were books my father recommended -- including Last Exit to Brooklyn, The Sterile Cuckoo and Breakfast at Tiffany's (he's always had wide-ranging interests; he also put me onto the book by Feynman, the renowned physicist).

Another impulse motivating some selections: reading books that were repellent to good society in one way or another. Exhibit A: American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. I would have trouble reading it now. But back then, I resolved to face how ugly society could be to women. Henry Miller could also fall under the heading of authors who challenged the status quo, but my father encouraged me to read his works so in some ways it doesn't count since it didn't involve rebellion.

Here are some of the books I read that summer AND the following summer (the lists appeared together in the notebook):

The Stranger – Albert Camus

The Sterile Cuckoo – John Nicholls

Them – Joyce Carol Oates

The Fall -- Albert Camus

Six Degrees of Separation – John Guare

Hiroshima – John Hersey

Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote

The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

The Joy Luck Club -- Amy Tan

What Do You Care Anyway? -- By Richard Feynman

Lolita -- Vladimir Nabokov

Native Son -- Richard Wright

Go Tell it on the Mountain -- James Baldwin (did not finish)

Play It as It Lays – Joan Didion

Illusions, Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah – Richard Bach

On the Road – Jack Kerouac

Dandelion Wine – Ray Bradbury

Pentimento – Lilliam Hellman

American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis

The Last Tycoon – F Scott Fitzgerald

Cybele – Joyce Carol Oates

Sirens of Titan – Kurt Vonnegut

Last Exit to Brooklyn – Hubert Selby

Opus Pistorum – Henry Miller

Conclusions can be drawn. For example, as much as I was already a Feminist in high school, I hadn't yet committed to seeking out books by women authors so there is not a concentration of books by women. Not many books in translation either (Did Nabokov write Lolita in English?). And not many books by diverse authors. It would take me a while to read the essay "Notes of a Native Son" by James Baldwin and realize his style of writing suited me to a tee, and hence I needed to read all of this works. I also hadn't yet read any Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

What did you read? Do you remember? Is it possible you have a log somewhere? Look for it. In many cases, the ideas in these books continue to reverberate in my mind. Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn, for example, was so explosive I see it my mind as written in all-caps.

"The worst of us are a long drawn-out confession"

Nov 19, 2020 – the day Leo’s teacher called him “an intellect.” But before she does, and before her remark can cause me to burst into tears, my soundtrack pivots on a handful of songs that soothe and at the same time perpetuate a sudden, mysterious sense of malaise: "Cedars of Lebanon," and the song just before it, on the U2 album "No Line on the Horizon."

My pal Bono says:

"The worst of us are a long drawn-out confession
The best of us are geniuses of compression."

Bono doesn't need me to lionize him in any way but those are powerful lyrics that reveal an acumen in human psychology. I can imagine the people under the heading 'long drawn-out confession' as much as I can imagine those who keep it tight (maybe too tight).

He's writing about someone in the latter category who's lost a spouse to endless warfare and aggression. The character, if you will, has to keep living even though one of his main reasons for living has been snuffed out by a conflict with no resolution in sight. But in our day-to-day lives, how do we sum up tragedies like this? The details in the song about their domestic life are heartbreaking -- 'tidying the children's clothes and toys' -- and in the aftermath of her demise, he hasn't 'been with a woman, feels like for years.'

Then Bono ends the song here, with a world weariness so deep and menacing it sounds like a sneer:

"Choose your enemies carefully, 'cause they will define you
Make them interesting 'cause in some ways they will mind you
They're not there in the beginning but when your story ends
Gonna last with you longer than your friends."

Mark Rothko, or sunrise photos c/o the dog

Well, the dog wasn't the photographer but I would not have been outside in an impromptu Mark Rothko museum if it weren't for Caramel.

(You can read more about my morning "travels" with Caramel at the Brevity Nonfiction Blog.)

When I saw these colors in the sky, I flashed to Mark Rothko paintings stored in my brain. Stored but until that moment never deciphered or beloved.

In fact, I never felt any kinship with the so-called color field paintings. What was he trying to express?

But now I want to know, was Rothko trying to approximate the sunrise or the sunset with his color paintings?

And should I bother to find out? Maybe. Or maybe I should simply enjoy the moment where art and nature mix in an unexpected way (courtesy of the dog).

Either way, I won't dismiss them when I see them again in a museum or book of paintings. I might just have experienced something similar.