Hello there. A week has passed already since I last visited you all here. Funny how that happens. I’d felt kind of empty of ideas when sitting down to write today, having put it off yesterday. No big topic was looming in my brain waiting to be spooled out. In the end though, that mostly doesn’t matter since as I keep learning (over and over), it’s just the starting that counts. Who knows what comes next?

The actual happenings: I got a haircut (see above). Dennis and I went to LA last weekend. I went to a chat about art at the Broad museum (a window of which is featured at top) where Kim Gordon and Christopher Wool talked with John Corbett about making art. A good portion of the start of the talk centered on how New York City has changed so immensely as a place for artists to live and thrive. Obviously this is a topic that has been kicking around for many years among the NY-dwellers who create in the arts but cannot afford to live there (unless they have subsidized housing) or find studio space given the always escalating rents. Kim and Chris discussed how the city used to be in the eighties and nineties and how they see it now. I had a fair amount of flashbacks as they talked given my move to the Lower East Side was a few years after Kim’s own relocation from SoCal in 1980. I was struck by how technicolor memories can be and also how old we’re in danger of sounding when we wax on about then vs. now. “Back in my day, kiddo, there were heroin addicts right there where that natty restaurant sits, and after that a good portion of crackheads roamed this block. What a time that was.” And while that may be true—it was in fact a time, often exciting, often terrifying, and, I think also ultimately boring to reference ad nauseam without allowing that new things are happening that are refashioning creativity. To Kim’s credit, when the question was put to her (paraphrasing), Where is there to go in the city to hear new music? She said, “I have no idea” in a way that while not altogether an eye-roll, definitely had the edge of ice that she’s so good at, but also allowed that she’s not the arbiter of these things in New York any longer. And Chris added something to the effect that at his age he doesn’t pay attention to the cool places to go anymore. He said that with not an ounce of bitterness, but with a kind of relief that I could totally relate to. But when asked what she thinks about New York City now that she’s moved back to LA, Kim paused and said that since she’s gotten distance from it, what she sees is “… a luxury brand that Bloomberg built.” That got a lot of “mmms” and “aahhs” from the attendees. Well, yes. But it’s also a place where your average Joe & Josephine can live. I’ve done it. It’s quite possible and only sometimes painful. It’s true that you have to work your butt off to afford shows and dinners and the like on the regular. And sometimes you’re just too damn tired to do all that stuff. But that basically describes living and aging and stuff like that. I did not feel like I had to take part in the luxury branded-ness unless I wanted to scale that mountain. I could be a 99cent store creature just fine.

A really often-asked question I’ve gotten from people since moving here is “What do you miss?” I write that as I stare out at a big sky filled with some clouds post-rain where two tall palm trees are sticking up. A very different view from the sun setting over New Jersey across the Hudson River. Both views are really gorgeous. The answer to the miss question then is: being able to call close friends and make dinner plans. While I’m grooving on reaching out to friends here and making plans, the distance with car can be a thing. But I’m also welcoming the non-social time to investigate my own inner world. Publicly, I recognize a blank spot where a parade of strangers used to traipse by on a daily basis. There’s a much different people parade strolling along out here. Really the only walking activity I see has to do with people and dogs. I have a whole lot of neighbors who are attached to leashes and the furry friends on the end. I’m also enjoying hearing the pneumatic wheeze of a school bus door open and close in the morning and see kids on their bikes coming home from school in the afternoon. Different from the stand-clear-of-the-doors opening and shutting of the subway for sure. To ride my bike past Victorian houses into the downtown which is borderline twee but mostly really cute is vastly different from riding my bike to the Hearst tower. All these different views that I’m feeling solitary about, but not unhappily so. Day to day it’s the starting. And the continuing.

Things you miss about a place? New views from a distance?