NYC = 19th c. Paris. (version 2.0)

Well if this Radar article about 'Hipster Hookers' doesn't confirm that 21st century New York is actually 18th century Paris, in disguise, then I don't know what will. Sure, the article is under charges of fraud (which frankly seems absurd when put in context next to magazines such as The National Enquirer, or even The Guardian Weekend at its low points). I don't think that questions of authenticity detracts from the general tone, perhaps it even adds to it. If I get it together, I should whip out some Cousin Bette quotes or a touch of Zola to reiterate what I'm talking about. Even Joe Friedman talkes about it in terms of architecture. Most notably on the Upper West Side, but also in the Rockerfeller interiors now spread around the state, although 'The Moorish Room' is now in the Brooklyn Museum. 

I find this tv clip quite creepy. It's obviously staged. That somehow makes it's commentary on the current financial climate all the more chilling. The clip seems more like a poorly performed show, then a news commentary...I don't know if that's an intentional irony or just a mistake.  

A better article is this one I found in 'Profile' magazine, (which is a little bit like Monocle, only slightly less fanciful - more American, as opposed to 'citizen of the world'). I prefer the style for one. Though perhaps a comparison between the two is a little unfair!

Hell's Kitchen and Other Stories

Last night I met up with Gabriella - a friend from Pembroke, who is also in New York. What's so hilarious\bizarre about seeing her out here, up to pretty much the same thing as I am (job-hopeful quasi-paid internship, rent free apartment, fresh from university bug eyes) is that at college we were constantly mistaken for one another. It went far beyond a joke: to the point where strangers were arresting me for ten minuet conversations at The Turf about this and that. She explained it was the same with her. Her apartment is in this abandoned Wherehouse in Queens really near the metro stop 40th St and Lowery . By wherehouse, I mean the place has dumper trucks outside and the first two floors are art storage. But on the thired is her apartment: with a giant rooftop that faces out towards Manhatten. Inside the cecilngs are the same as those in school - that's what I mean by wherehouse-y! Well, one thing lead to another and we ended going back to the city and going to the Beatrice Inn. I had no idea about the reputation of the place: but it was certainly a lovely bar with illicit dancing in the back. Only in retrospect do I recall the big fuss of back patting the door guy, and knowing nods. 

Oh and the photographs are of this rather wonderful film still shop, which I discovered on a stroll through Hell's Kitchen earlier that day. The window that wasn't filled with collages of old movie posters and little dolls was stacked with a messy pile of dusty boxes. I don't believe it has been open in a while. But it's right by the Film Centre, which oddly doesn't use it's front entrance anymore. You'd have thought with a foyer as good as theirs that there would have been a movement to keep it as the 'front door'. 

The Chanin Building

New York Historic Society

- and I thought I was a horder: in this museum, some one has thoughtfully collected about a hundred 'food sticks' covering the period 1932 until about 1965! Below was my fave piece of crockery. It's from the 1930s. The middle espresso cup is really the point of showing this picture. I don't know if you can see it, but it depicts a lady with long plats whacking a fallen man with a broom. For some inexplicable reason, an umbrella lies at the man's side. I don't know if this is part of a story that involves all the pieces here, but I think it's a very peculiar piece of domestic crockery. 

The museum as a whole was really nice. It had an exhibition of Victor Prevost's photographs of early New York. (Though unfortunately they did not show the original prints - only reproductions.) And it had details from the New York Great Exhibition, which looked so eery and antiquated for a show intended to display the vanguard of victorian modernity. 

The man selling postcards in the shop was fantastic.  I asked him if they had any postcards of the Prevost exhibit, and if you could go have a look at the Society's archives. Very  bored, and very skinny  with golden spectacles, he launched into a dramatic monologue: it turns out he collects antique men's clothing. He just added the top hat of Frederick Vanterbuilt's little brother, Jacob. Thrilled to the very core, he'd then used the Historic Society archives to find a photograph of Jacob, in said hat. So - he knew the collection, and said it was a really worthwhile to set aside an afternoon to peruse the photographs. Much of what they'd rescued had apparently been gained by mistake. Then , to disclose some 'exclusive' gossip, the society had recently been in a big fight with the New York Transit Museum. Their images of the MTA and its construction were rescued from a skip. He said they'd recently had the cheek to ask for them back, but, with much eye rolling, he said with a mild southern drawl: 'Wheel, you can imagine what we said!' Finger waggling and raised eyebrows aided the delivery of the next statement: 'Hell no. You may borrow them. And that is all!'

Saturday morning

In typical Ba-esque fashion, I have set myself up with a desk as opposed to addressing the washing. I have hovered, but the work surfaces need tending to. Today I woke up with a terrible hangover, having been plied with Sancerre by my godmother, Hannah, the night before. In the morning I found myself propped up on my bed by one of the larger cushions, which has a baby blue starched linen cover.  I don't care much for the pattern, but its texture in terms of the linen count is more than satisfactory. 

Feeling at a considerable distance from 'on form', I padded over to the kitchen in my slippers and dressing gown. Ignoring the coffee cups and biscuit platters, I smile at the porridge saucepan. Fond images of Saturdays at 139b flit across my mind, where, in the same dressing gown and slippers (I would rise early, but wouldn't dress until late), Lucian would greet me with a cry of despair: ' Oh Sister Aimee, when I wake up with a hangover, and I'm greeted by your leftover porridge skins. I'm attempting to start the afternoon, and  can't help but think that looks almost as awful as I feel.' Then Adelia would rush in and say: 'I moost ave ze couffee: Aimee, if you wish, would you car fo soume avec ze whipped cream. Zis is the oonly way I can ahddress St Augusteeen. I ope it weeel aide you wiz the Maaarrrrlow. Oh whare did I leeve ze electronic whisk.'  Then we'd set about making the most awful mess in our attempt to woosh up some kind of revision treat. Things would escalate into brunch. Felix would be called to come over and cook eggs, and we'd make Lucian cycle off to get some fresh posh bread. So rather than hurry to clean up the mess, I let the washing up  sit there as a memory prop. 

Turning to the fridge door, I fumble for orange juice, but my hand grasps at the Lemonade. Swigging from the container, in addition to a barrage of sweet, salty and sour tastes, fully revive my poorly head. I refocus and look out of the kitchen window. To my intense shock New York seems to have disappeared. I rush back to the bedroom: the view is indeed empty. As it is in the bathroom, reflected a thousand times in the tall wall mirrors. I return to the living room and sit on the couch. The room is situated on the corner of the building, so as I gaze in front of me, out of the corner of my eye is also the presence of a window on the right-hand wall, facing in a different direction. Yet out of each of the three windows I can see, not one of them has anything at all to show. For the first time I feel giddy at being so high up on the 29th floor. Suspended in the clouds, my little bubble of proportions faces out onto nothing. New York has really gone. In the left hand window you can see a portion of the bathroom wall, as it jutts out a little further. I like this because the brickwork acts as a kind of proportion stick against the expansive view of the city. Yet here, the terracotta edges don't brush against a crisp blue sky, or the carpeted green of Central Park. Nor do they dwarf the neon red 'CNN' sign, atop one of the distant skyscrapers. It brushes against a white expanse.  Perhaps this is what it feels like to be in a giant film set, with the blue screen surrounding you. Or more like a giant apple mac advert. Any second now an enormous silhouette will come crashing through the window, clutching a Mac Book air, some cute folk song blasting in the background. 

I think sitting inside a skyscraper is so dramatic because it's where you experience this perfect collision between the natural and the urban world. You're in the air, yet also in one of the most urbanised structures humans have yet come up with. I don't know why the sky doesn't get such a focus as the rest of the 'natural world.'  Perhaps this is because it's so very difficult to capture an image of it. Now I experience alot of thinking about the natural world through telly shows: like David Atts show on the sea. Yet even the sky seems to out do the deep blue, in its evasion of successful photography. In the 1830s photographers would have to capture the sky separately to the foreground image, if they wanted to include it in their final 'image'. Some even used the same sky in several photographs, because it was so hard to capture one that reflects how really good looking the sky is. So sometimes you would have a scene, most often in urban towns, where the principal subject was a street lamp, metro sign, or a bridge. The sky in such cases was considered relatively unimportant, was not photographed by itself and later collaged back into the image of the city. Instead it was left as the camera 'saw' it: blank. I think this is most like what the fog resembles to me now. Perhaps this is why I think the sky-as-subject is still the property of painting. I think it's in 'Good Night Mr Tom', when Tom recalls his dead wife saying that if she could only paint one thing, then it would be the sky, because it's never the same thing twice, but always in perpetual motion. John Constable's (nearing living relative: Barbara Windsor) 'cloud studies' has some pretty exciting sky, if you can call Constable exciting! 

So, yet, now the sky isn't there, and I'm so shocked by it's absence, I'm wondering why the sky isn't such a Big Thing that we think about.  It's perpetual motion should be something that draws us towards captivating it's ever changing composure. 'Le Plaisir' is all about characters in 'perpetual motion': showing how pleasure can be innocent, refreshing and funny, yet equally or perhaps simultainiously ugly, cruel and pathetic. Like the sky, 'plaisir' is neither wholly one thing or another, but a little of both. 

What A View!

Tyndall Report

The Tyndall Report: I've become an active member! having been a number cruncher for godfather Andrew when there was a computer software melt down last night. 1:30 am. Very His Girl Friday.

'Le Plaisir', Max Ophuls, (1952).

'There is no joy in happiness', is the closing phrase of Max Ophuls's 'Le Plaisir'.  It is the parting words of a story which while sad, promises a marriage. This sugar lump cliche is served up as a cold comfort, by the time the story has come to its end. Such simply phrased, cruelly delivered pearls typify the atmosphere of this film. It is a world of illicit joy, pathetic failure, and uncomfortable delight brought to you by a narrator who prefers the dark to guide us through these Guy de Maupassant stories because it provides both intimacy and anonymity. Such a paradox typifies the voyeuristic pleasure in watching the three episodes of the film. Peeping through the window pains, back doors and open shutters, each segment is exquisitely told, with plenty of french lace, and ominous shadows. You are danced through the stories at a whurlwind pace,  yet can't leave the ball without feeling more than a slight chill at the company you've seen. The characters are portrayed as  over-ripe fruit: poised between a nutritious delicacy and fecund rubbish. There is nothing in here that a mature child couldn't understand, yet the love-play between pleasure, innocence and death has an eloquence which I find unmatched.

" Excuse me. I am eating a pear."

New York Times Magazine phone service is a vortex of thinking answerphones. It's proof in the pudding we're not nearly as close to 1984 as some would like to think: the beast just doesn't work. You have to leave a voice message detailing the name of the person you are trying to call. Rediculous. Just like calling up the cinema service and shouting 'Petersfield, Hampshire' down the phone line, and the voice keeps reading: 'I heard Lecister Square. Let me connect you.' *fume*. 

Eventually I get through to the arts editorial dept. I give my schpeel about a manuscript teaser the agency would like to see published before they release the whole book. The man on the other end inturrupts the last quatriane of my monologue with a "muugh. phew!" [very long pause] "Excuse me. I am eating a pear. *Long sigh* Ohh Kayy. Let's rewind that." I re-explain, then, because it's the end of the day, I start nattering on about how it's good to finally speak to an actual voice, as I'd been lost on the automated phone service for what felt like forever. His reply: "Oh my god you were only lost for ten minuets. Is that ALL? usually it's about TEN years." So luckily he's in a good humor, and as gatekeeper to the editors I need that can only be a good thing. "Well. Lets see...in arts  you've got the Daily Arts section, the seprate Daily Review,  supplement, the Weekend Magazine which is out on Sunday, the Review Section for the magaine, the Culture Daily section within the main newspaper, and the Friday Magazine plus the review section within that...which one were you thinking of?"

"um. ah."

"III would say go for the Magazine?(the weekend one that is)"

"Lovely"

So. Let me try and find someone nice for you to talk to there.[pause for dramatic effect]. Let me se- oh here's a number. This is for the associate managing director. Let me give you the details. Now don't think for a moment you're going to escape the voicemail: you are going to have to stay lost in the machine. I'm sorry.It's awful, I know". It was such a completely different world from

''Hello.''

''Hi, yeah, I um, I was wondering if this is the right number for -''

''No. Ma'am.''

''Ha...Oh. Well, could you possibly put me throu-''

 *Hang up*

- that it stuck in my mind. For once there was a personality down the end of the telephone. Not only that, but said human was in a good humor. Incredible.

The small town gag: screwball vs. Palin

It was a stroke of broadcasting genius to have  G.W.Bush 'bail out' speech of yesterday followed by a showing of 'The Great McGinty ' (1940). Preston Sturges screwball cum political satire is a fantastic election themed flick.  I remember watching it during my revision and it did not disappoint upon second viewing. In the opening scene, where he's a bartender in Mexico, McGinty says 'I was the governor of a state, baby'. Hannah came in with the quip 'Just like Sara Palin' which couldn't have been more spot on. Watch the scene from 'McGinty', and then read this quotation from Palin's vice-president nomination speech, because the vibe is so unwittingly similar: 

"I have had the privilege of living most of my live in a small town. I was just your average hocky mum, and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids' public education better. When I ran for city council I didn't need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters, and knew their families, too. Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown." 

 Sometimes, the face of a corrupt and morally bankrupt organization is an anyone who hasn't got a clear (or any real) clue as to 'what-is-going-on'. 

It's a brilliant film, and doesn't seem like an awkward first attempt, despite the fact that it was Sturges's first big motion picture. Yesterday my parcel of Max Ophuls DVDs arrived, which has only lead to my endless longing to spend the day in bed watching them. Dad Amazon Primed them over, after I'd made an unsubtle hint with a 'New Yorker' review of them, which was so nice of him. The covers are exquisite. As Ophuls was Sturges favorite director I feel the segway is far neater then I could ever have contrived. 'What to watch in Manhattan' is another must do list. 

Bush vs. Project Runway

- more day to day observations against the back drop of the Palin fandango and the Bush administration 'bail out'. Went downtown to sup with the Handrew on heirloom tomatoes. This was our final taste bud hurrah to the last fresh food from the summer. After all, we have just had an equinox. What Andrew said about Bush's speech last night was spot on (of course). All the major network channels give him the prime time spot, because they have to, because he asked for it. Though I don't mean to be sarke, when I say the speech can't have come even close to the anticipation of 'Project Runway'.  Perhaps telly watchers across the states are so used to his sub-par performance, they've given up. Bush plays political theatre in a way that would make Elizabeth Ist blush for shame, Russian tsars titter and emperors weep.  'Project Runway' reports on ambition, love and loss in a consumer world with frankly far superior production, research, and aplomb. It's no good blaming the 'celebrity culture' around American politicians. They have simply slid closer towards more classic images of monarchy, commonly associated with latterday Europe. Elizabeth Ist (though I can't vouch this applies to the 2nd), again,  positively cultivated the monarch\idol attitude towards the governing body. While contemporary theatre (which is some of the best available in the Western world), certainly jibed, heckled and hissed at her performance, there was never a sense that it was inappropriate for the two to be intertwined. Perhaps Bush should invite 'Project Runway' to his 'court', in a belated attempt to engage with the peoples over which he rules. At the very least, his television team might get some better speech tips. 

Many fairly, nay practically all, calm headed financial commentators are saying the state of America's fiscal affairs are as bad as it's been not simply in the 80s, but the 20s: all ye mark how the bell tolls, recession on that scale is imminent. Despite this somewhat tangible climate, Bush took only 15 mins to address the nation on the matter. He looked terrified: apparantley as frightened as he looked just after 9\11. (Incidently, yesterday was one of those '9\11' days when the light is so shockingly beautiful, with a breeze light and crisp, and a cloudless baby blue sky: perfect temperature, iconic 'New York in the Fall' weather. But of course now such a sensation is charged with weary tension. Something you couldn't even dream up, like a plane crashing into a skyscraper, happened on a day just like it. So hence, '9\11 weather'. The perfect irony being how pretty it is.) You could even hear a tremor of the voice as he paused for breath. He's the leader of the western world, and he's terrified.

 I think that was most clearly expressed by the television.  Afterwards, barely anyone on the telly spent any time reviewing the speech at all. Perhaps there was nothing else you could say. Of course his message was fairly clear:  it's fucked. it's over. Yet what signalled this more than anything Bush's nerves betrayed, was his impotency to pack a punch over American primetime.  Wait - I'm forgetting myself: Fox News spend a considerable ammount of time talking about how McCain was right to suspend his campain in the light of the 'bail out'. As a strategy which screems nothing but weakness and selfish stupidity, they only vindicated how dreadfully incompetent the McCain jambouree really is. As always, they used phrases which don't actually mean anything. It seems more fun trying to import semantic sense onto Fox News than admit the general moral tragedy that is what they are actually trying to say. The faces on this channel consisted of  two types of commentator: stupid, arrogant old men and stupid, arrogant young broads. Just like the republican party presidential candidates. Some of them spoke so badly I doubt they'd qualify for sports commentary let alone 'live' analysis of the american election. 

Before the speech came on, we watched a repeat of the daily show, which had a fantastic skit about the current debacle. Running on the lines of 'is there anything left that this administration can de-achieve'.  The punchline was superb. "George doesn't want to be the worst president [beat] but the last"

'New.York.Life.'

With the architectural excitement  typical in Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's AOL Time Warner Building experience, even the view from the descending escalator has an innovative sightline. This scene was perfectly framed by a designer view of New York's skyscraping urban muscle. Clearly this is simply another mundane image from a 'Monday afternoon at the shops show'. 

The best image was the advertising. Hopefully the slogans can be made out in the photograph attached to this post. It reads (from top to bottom):  'Think. Of. Them', 'Self. Less. Gift', 'New. York.Life.' 

"DO IT AGAIN"

Completely by mistake, once I got off the subway at 42nd street, to take the S for Grand Central Station, I came across a subtle, funny piece someone had put up on the corridor. After combing the net I found some hard facts about it on a rather odd  nyc subway art website,  and the piece is by Norman B. Colp (1991). Each phrase was short (key), and pitch perfect.  The jaded ad-slogan style fought really well with a bit of wry humor and a spot of imagist poetics against all the 'happy time' doodle projects which are on the walls of the same corridor. I think the general concept of subway art is an attempt to mitigate the austere atmosphere down there. What's so successful about this piece however, is that it taps directly into how unpleasant and average such a walk, job or life tends to feel like when you're in corridor S. By contrast, when it must be well over 30 degrees and the B train still hasn't arrived, the 'jolly' scenery feels a bit like a slightly off key joke.  Incidentally, the original tile work on many of the subway stations (that cobalt blue of 'Bleaker Street' for example) are beautiful, well executed designs.  

"Ha.Ha." Woolf, V., (1912).

Today I walked a full rectangle around the city. I started uptown, with a walk across Central Park, to the tune of Giorgio Moroda. Then made my way down Madison Avenue, stopping at The Grolier Club for a nose around their exhibition of  what you could call primary manuscripts (given that it was so long ago), between Virginia Woolf and her intimate circle. Oddly it aligns them more with how you might look at a late medieval rather than the modern printed page. However, I enjoyed the connection: it released these rather familiar characters from their biographer's shackles...and made me want to learn palaeography. The whole thing was little, but exquisite; constructed almost exclusively of handwritten letters. Bar the odd Juliet Margaret Cameron, or smudgy photocopied face, it was image free. I'm unused to seeing text as the subject rather then aid of an exhibition, and all this attention to script completely doctored the way I gazed at New York for the rest of the day. Looking back, I seem to have taken endless photographs of words. 

The best letter in the exhibit is Virginia Stephens and Leonard Woolf's first collaboration. A letter to Lyndon Strachey announcing their engagement. It reads: 

"Ha.Ha."

Virginia Stephens, 

Leonard Woolf

What's so brilliant isn't just the succinct content, but the utterly bewildering tone of the letter. Almost imposisble to decipher without the handrails of back-history between this circle of friends (which you can and should look up), the letter is nasty, amusing, clever and simple all at once. Entirely personal, yet wholly literary, seeing this letter 'in the flesh' as it were, was an up there experience for the English Literature graduate abroad. 

Really I'm glad Virginia Woolf's impeccable literary reputation has taken a slight knock from the recent admonition she was a first class snob. As an icon I find her hard to bare. So it was pleasurable to see an exhibition in which her reputation took second place to the material fact of the work itself. I think Woolf's literature comes out the better for it. All this wannabe romantic clutter about her immortal genius was swept aside. Here, the focus was a dialouge of scripts rather than a cult of personality. Such a hangover from Seventies literary criticism is evangelical in tone, dogmatic in style, and tiresome to hear: Woolf as literary modernism's Madonna is an image some find hard to let go.  The constant twists and turns of her public image, at the mercy of academic vouge,  should really be a subject of critique in its own right. 

- to begin

 

On September 9th, about two days into my internship), I popped out of the office for a breather (also a coke plus peanut m&m's). The September sun really does give you a vitiman D high - especially as it's unheard of for my body to be getting some sun at this time of year. As I was walking around the block to a newsagents, a parking valet hailed me with a 'Good Morning Miss New York.' I was holding a giant teachers pet red apple, and the sun shined bright. We laughed. What makes a New Yorker anyway. I've decided the greeting is culturally, if not legally,  a badge of citizenship. I'll prize it high.