Bagdad on the Hudson

Oh Blog. Just read Matt Broyles elegy to his four years in New York.



Yes, go to New York where everything can happen and if you find something up there you cannot do without, stay and remain part of the great kaleidoscope dynamo. It grinds the gifts of the gifted and ambitious into little pieces and adds it to the ever-flowing river of life that flows from it’s bowels. He quotes REM’s Michael Stype:

....It's easier to leave than to be left behind (it's pulling me apart)
Leaving was never my proud (change)
Leaving New York never easy (it's pulling me apart)
I saw the life fading out (change)
Leaving New York, never easy (it's pulling me apart)
I saw the light fading out (change)
Leaving New York never easy (it's pulling me apart)
I saw the life fading out (change)

- R.E.M., Leaving New York


Oh it is there for all. Hardly even part of the United States, a separate urbanity, like Hong Hong or Singapore. It’s own place, and a place for everybody. Black hole and super nova. Depending. If we went there to find ourselves, we only got more lost. If we went there to conquer the world, we found we had to get in line. Every man is Alexander the Great up there!!! And what you find is all about you.

And twice, the lights went out.

Reminds me of the two blackouts I was on hand for..... The first in 1965, in my 40 dollar rent controlled flat with Jim Carter, the violinist, not the future President. Jim and I were problem drinkers from North Carolina at the time and I had just lost a good job in the Davidson College Art Department and headed for NYC, hoped to go to Germany or somewhere and do art, until Jimmy, who was genius violinist studying at Manhattan School of Music in East Harlem, about 20 blocks north of our First Avenue/91st Street digs.... which he found in this German Town area. I could goof off a lot with that kind of rent. And besides, he knew and associated with these beautiful Alabama musician bells, Sister and Ceci Carter (no kin!) When the lights went out, we watched from the fire escape, as they went out all over town. Then you could see across the East River to La Guardia airport, the spans of the Triboro bridge.... It was exciting for a small mill town guy, still quite green to big city life.... Going dark, quite disarming.....

That November night, Jimmy playing his fiddle to the Avenue out on the fire escape, wanting something to happen. I went down to the car and listened to a local station on the radio, the announcer getting into more and more panicked.... finally giving up. Nobody knew if it was the end of the world. Or what. The bars were serving by candle light as we went up the hill to the Carter girls’ Lexington Avenue flat. I found some Scotch whiskey somewhere. Andy Warhol's place was on the next block.

The lights did not come back on till the next afternoon, and NYC under the full moon that night was quite a sight!!! Tranquil, calm, citizens taking charge of the traffic and all.... They finally announced around midnight, that the trouble had been found, the grid, near Canada, or something, and everything would be better soon..... The city is at it’s best in time of peril. Did not see many cops for some reason. The whole North-East and New England was dark.

The Rupurt Brewery was still in operation, and we drank a lot of beer. We watched a lot of underground movies in the East Village and made a few too.... Jeff Tate and Tanky Ritzman came and went. My brother Chal came home from the Army and stayed mostly. He is still there, but not at 1773 First Avenue. Brother Maury came with all his earthly affairs in his van. But when he saw the number of cockroaches in the flat, running amock among tooth brushes etc.... Would not hang. He left early the next morning, doing a 600 plus mile round trip in a little more thatn 24 hours. New York is not for everybody. But one of his girl friends had given him some high dollar Theater tickets. I got to use them, seeing things like Tosca and Salome with Birget Nielson, and the wonderful play: Marat/Sade. ("the Persecution and Assination of Jean Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Clarenden Assylem under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade".... whew!) I gave a ticke to Beethoven's Fidelio to a friend at work, who slept through it!!!! It was the last season of the old met.

Mark de Mello showed up with his Nikon. He took the above photo. And Broadway was every bodies' Boulevard of Broken Dreams....