It might be that I’m still hungover from my Paris trip, or that I’m finding my small town a little, well, small these days.
It could be because we’ve been enjoying cold, grey and Northeastern weather patterns of late.
Or it could be that I feel like it’s harder than ever to convince people in my region that they should turn to Broadway for their entertainment.
Whatever the reason, I’ve been missing New York City lately.
This is weird for me. My job takes me to NY once or twice a year, and I usually blog afterward how glad I am to be home where there are grass and trees and, you know, a horizon. I can often be heard lamenting that I wish “they” would hold arts conferences in other cities so I could experience new places (London would be fine by me).
Yet I have found myself yearning for the canyon walls of the city, the garish gleam of Times Square, and the humbling feeling of being one of a million dumb visitors filling a tiny scrap of concrete in the middle of a river.
I’d like to take a long subway ride to get to Brooklyn, and visit neighborhoods I knew in my 20s. I’d like to go down to the World Trade Center and see the progress there, and walk up to Central Park to frolic in the snow, like Erin and I did a few years ago.
I want Indian food. And an egg cream. And lunch at La Bonne Soupe. And more Indian food.
Most of all, I think I want to be part of the masses for a little while, to fade into the crowd of black-clad people hurrying on their way, avoiding eye contact, hands shoved into pockets. I love my adopted southern home, but sometimes there is comfort in anonymity, in knowing that I can go into the lobby of a theater and not know a soul.
And oh yeah, there’s the theater. I want to see Peter and the Starcatcher in it’s new home, and would probably sell my first born (if I had one) to see Tom Hanks on stage. I want to go to the crappy little black box theaters where exhausted artists are clinging to their creativity with rigid fingers. And I wouldn’t mind being surrounded by people who are pretty much guaranteed to be going to a show at some point in the next day or two, to whom I don’t have to market.
Of course, I want to do all of this with my work friends beside me, and if my job picks up the tab, so much the better. AND I don’t want it to prevent me from my next Grand Adventure (wherever it might be) or to get in the way of visiting my wayward family back on the east coast. Sheesh. I’m not asking much, am I? 🙂
Everything and a Racehorse 