dissabte, de juliol 21, 2007
Make New Self
One of the reasons I love living in New York is because people feel free to be themselves here. Live here long enough and the most exaggerated version of yourself will also become the most common. The vast permutations of personalities and backgrounds helps people feel at ease in their own thoughts. The carefree nature that inhabits New York's youth is impossible to deny.
Wait, what the fuck am I talking about? There is no way I could believe that crock of shit I was writing.
Just like the majority of streets here in Manhattan, the inhabitants of this city are highly gentrified. You see most of us showed up as someone else. We closed our eyes the night after we arrived with dreams and fears of what awaited us. At the end of those thoughts there was always a different version of the person those ideas originated from. Like a weird game of telephone played in solitaire the reverberations eventually shake out a picture of what we want to be perceived by the other actors on this stage.
This whole internal combustion that generates a new person isn't something that is unique to New York. It happens to everyone when they leave the place they called home. Just so happens that are a lot of those chums floating around these waters.
As a disclaimer I like to say that I find little joy in judging other people. Those criticisms usually tend to be wrong, and I usually dislike being wrong. The game I do enjoy playing is where I imagine how the object of my attention came to wind up in the situation I found them in.
Obviously the average looking girl in a business suit is not a type that will evoke a cranking of my creative juices. I do get excited when I come upon the guy with long greasy hair, bushy beard, disco tight jeans, cowboy boots, and eyes engrossed in the pages of "Lonesome Dove." I find myself postulating how this Grunge Eastwood I have been presented with found the inspiration to be a cowboy amongst the skyscrapers of New York.
I can already see him learning to roll his own cigarettes. Forcing his bowels to an all chili diet over glasses of warm Knob Creek. And as I, elatedly, imagine him using his those few precious moments he has the apartment to himself to practice tricks with his lasso I realize that I know nothing about this guy.
The weird part is that I enjoy pretending I do. I think I get this from my mother.
I don't imagine myself being the only person who enjoys this sort of voyeur storytelling. Next time you and a friend are sitting in a car or park try filling in the dialogue for a conversation that is going on out of earshot. At least you can learn a little about how you and someone else interpret body language. At worst you can seem like a total weirdo who has too much time on his or her time.
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Wait, what the fuck am I talking about? There is no way I could believe that crock of shit I was writing.
Just like the majority of streets here in Manhattan, the inhabitants of this city are highly gentrified. You see most of us showed up as someone else. We closed our eyes the night after we arrived with dreams and fears of what awaited us. At the end of those thoughts there was always a different version of the person those ideas originated from. Like a weird game of telephone played in solitaire the reverberations eventually shake out a picture of what we want to be perceived by the other actors on this stage.
This whole internal combustion that generates a new person isn't something that is unique to New York. It happens to everyone when they leave the place they called home. Just so happens that are a lot of those chums floating around these waters.
As a disclaimer I like to say that I find little joy in judging other people. Those criticisms usually tend to be wrong, and I usually dislike being wrong. The game I do enjoy playing is where I imagine how the object of my attention came to wind up in the situation I found them in.
Obviously the average looking girl in a business suit is not a type that will evoke a cranking of my creative juices. I do get excited when I come upon the guy with long greasy hair, bushy beard, disco tight jeans, cowboy boots, and eyes engrossed in the pages of "Lonesome Dove." I find myself postulating how this Grunge Eastwood I have been presented with found the inspiration to be a cowboy amongst the skyscrapers of New York.
I can already see him learning to roll his own cigarettes. Forcing his bowels to an all chili diet over glasses of warm Knob Creek. And as I, elatedly, imagine him using his those few precious moments he has the apartment to himself to practice tricks with his lasso I realize that I know nothing about this guy.
The weird part is that I enjoy pretending I do. I think I get this from my mother.
I don't imagine myself being the only person who enjoys this sort of voyeur storytelling. Next time you and a friend are sitting in a car or park try filling in the dialogue for a conversation that is going on out of earshot. At least you can learn a little about how you and someone else interpret body language. At worst you can seem like a total weirdo who has too much time on his or her time.
Publica un comentari a l'entrada