Have you ever noticed that there's a dizzying array of sensory input at any given moment? You already know that I'm a master of stating the blazingly obvious, but this city just brings that observation home in the most amazing ways.
I decided to open the door to the balcony to get a little air moving in the apartment, since I've gone and moved the laptop out of the little cubbyhole/office area and set up shop on the small table by the window, and I've just been amazed at the assault on my senses. It's mostly the noise, but it's also the smells, and the light bleeding in through the curtains at all hours of the day and night, the artificial, forced quality of eternal daylight, eternal bustle. It's the perfect example, I guess, of every coin having two sides. All the things that I find exciting and thrilling about this city are also the things that I find utterly maddening. And in the same spirit of duality, I don't doubt I'm going to miss every fucking single one of those things when I have to leave this place.
I'm starting to get a first-hand knowledge of how hard it is to be poor in New York City. Certainly, I don't have it anywhere nearly so badly as many people, but as I've enjoyed the city in a leisurely way, my money has slowly dwindled. Granted, I knew it would, and at some point I was going to have to go out and get a job; and truth be told, I've managed to put that off longer than I'd thought possible. I've been here nearly a month and I've been free to audition and play all I wanted, without all the worry of bringing in a paycheck. But the bank account, while far from empty, is like a bay at low tide, but this superstitious native isn't quite sure that the moon's gonna swing around again and bring it back up. So it's time for a little human sacrifice. My leisure is about to get its throat cut on the Alter of the High Tide.
New York City makes for such an amazing mix of experiences. The infuriating distractions of the noise and the assault on the senses, the unnatural beauty of looking down across this city and it's blinking, hypnotic lights stretching to the horizon when you're looking north, south, or west, the astounding array of talent levels of the people at auditions - swarming around you like bees on a honeycomb, all trying to get in at the nectar.
Seems to me, the best way (and most impractical, unfortunately) to make your way through this city is to go completely unburdened. No bag, no pack to snag on the hundreds of thousands of bodies you have to struggle against to get anywhere in mid-town. Leave the apartment carrying nothing so that you can dodge and slide through the swirl of bodies on every street corner, so you have nothing weighing you down when you need a burst of speed to get around toddering old folks or, worse yet, the unforgivable: Tourists.
So, go forth unburdened, right? Well, it's the nature of this city that that's practically an impossibility. This isn't the kind of place where you run off, go to work, come home, and change for your evening out with friends. Oh no, my friends. It takes too long to get around this town for that kind of a leisurely attitude! You need to leave your aparment in the morning carrying everything you're going to require for the entire day... and for someone like me, who might have a couple auditions to go to, or an agent or two to meet, that can mean mutiple changes of clothes, copies of headshots, copies of voice demos, toiletries so your breath doesn't melt the skin off of someone's face - all sorts of stuff. I'm beginning to feel like my female friends with their big-ass purses.
And the crazy part of it all is that I'm digging it. It's forcing an organization and forethought on my life that I've not had in years. But it's also tiring, which brings me to the best of all the ironies about this city. That noise may be unending and unrelenting, but when I fall into bed at night, I'm so damn tired, it doesn't matter in the least. I suspect when return to my quiet little hometown, it's gonna be too quiet to sleep in.
I decided to open the door to the balcony to get a little air moving in the apartment, since I've gone and moved the laptop out of the little cubbyhole/office area and set up shop on the small table by the window, and I've just been amazed at the assault on my senses. It's mostly the noise, but it's also the smells, and the light bleeding in through the curtains at all hours of the day and night, the artificial, forced quality of eternal daylight, eternal bustle. It's the perfect example, I guess, of every coin having two sides. All the things that I find exciting and thrilling about this city are also the things that I find utterly maddening. And in the same spirit of duality, I don't doubt I'm going to miss every fucking single one of those things when I have to leave this place.
I'm starting to get a first-hand knowledge of how hard it is to be poor in New York City. Certainly, I don't have it anywhere nearly so badly as many people, but as I've enjoyed the city in a leisurely way, my money has slowly dwindled. Granted, I knew it would, and at some point I was going to have to go out and get a job; and truth be told, I've managed to put that off longer than I'd thought possible. I've been here nearly a month and I've been free to audition and play all I wanted, without all the worry of bringing in a paycheck. But the bank account, while far from empty, is like a bay at low tide, but this superstitious native isn't quite sure that the moon's gonna swing around again and bring it back up. So it's time for a little human sacrifice. My leisure is about to get its throat cut on the Alter of the High Tide.
New York City makes for such an amazing mix of experiences. The infuriating distractions of the noise and the assault on the senses, the unnatural beauty of looking down across this city and it's blinking, hypnotic lights stretching to the horizon when you're looking north, south, or west, the astounding array of talent levels of the people at auditions - swarming around you like bees on a honeycomb, all trying to get in at the nectar.
Seems to me, the best way (and most impractical, unfortunately) to make your way through this city is to go completely unburdened. No bag, no pack to snag on the hundreds of thousands of bodies you have to struggle against to get anywhere in mid-town. Leave the apartment carrying nothing so that you can dodge and slide through the swirl of bodies on every street corner, so you have nothing weighing you down when you need a burst of speed to get around toddering old folks or, worse yet, the unforgivable: Tourists.
So, go forth unburdened, right? Well, it's the nature of this city that that's practically an impossibility. This isn't the kind of place where you run off, go to work, come home, and change for your evening out with friends. Oh no, my friends. It takes too long to get around this town for that kind of a leisurely attitude! You need to leave your aparment in the morning carrying everything you're going to require for the entire day... and for someone like me, who might have a couple auditions to go to, or an agent or two to meet, that can mean mutiple changes of clothes, copies of headshots, copies of voice demos, toiletries so your breath doesn't melt the skin off of someone's face - all sorts of stuff. I'm beginning to feel like my female friends with their big-ass purses.
And the crazy part of it all is that I'm digging it. It's forcing an organization and forethought on my life that I've not had in years. But it's also tiring, which brings me to the best of all the ironies about this city. That noise may be unending and unrelenting, but when I fall into bed at night, I'm so damn tired, it doesn't matter in the least. I suspect when return to my quiet little hometown, it's gonna be too quiet to sleep in.
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