Neil Scott

It always starts the same way. Too early in the morning. Blundering and bumbling across the flat, stashing toiletries in a plastic bag, cramming the bag in the suitcase. No matter how long we leave it, it always feels as though we are running late. Disaster looms, then gives way to boredom as we realise how long we have to wait.

America, land of my dreams, home of all the infinite possibilities I aspired towards as a young man. Something changed. I changed and stopped wanting to even visit. Then came 9/11 and America became a security state. Now that I can visit, having held down a proper job for the first time, I face the endless checks with bemused detachment. One of the banes of working full-time is how few opportunities there are to really get into a good book. Waiting around in these stern non-places I become absorbed in literature. For this trip, Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn.

The plane is late but travels fast, aided by a rare Easterly wind. I have a window seat and become entrenched in my book, reading the tribulations of the Tourette’s suffering pseudo-Detective. There are plenty of pre-echoes of The Fortress of Solitude, all the Boerum Hill and Gowanus references. Precious little for the tourist coming to New York.

Approaching the North American coast I suddenly feel aware of all the possibilities. I feel like a pilgrim or Columbus or some kind of explorer faced with a fresh challenge.

After customs, waiting around in a train station for the train to Penn, we finally emerge into the heat and chaos of 7th Avenue. Nowhere on Earth does one feel class stratification so perfectly hardened. Everyone in New York reveals who they are and what they are worth immediately. We are all taking part in a film. Everyone in America is an actor, the guy in Newark airport who sent us to Agricultural customs had that smooth implacable actorliness that is everywhere. Class and power are so clear here. As a tourist you feel yourself playing the part of tourist, insignificant but with enough money to interest the street sellers. Cops on every street corner with crew cuts, one legged veterans begging with their army cap, beautiful women who exude success, Jews with skull caps, Blacks and Puerto Ricans sweeping streets. I could walk in the street all day and not tire of the sheer classified enormity of 21st century humanity.

With $200 in our wallets and a disorientated strangeness in our eyes, we arrive at the Edison. We stay on the 4th floor, which after reading Ballard’s High Rise, makes me worried that I will feel oppressed by those above us. Maybe if we were living here. Either way, the room is calm.

We manage to get our heads together before going to the Empire State Building. The weather was perfectly stuffy but also lovely and hot. Despite the queues and the crowds, it was well worth going up to the 86th floor. I looked a scruff in my black T-shirt but nobody seemed to mind. A family with three kids, one daughter blossoming. Black kids everywhere, all very friendly. I had the impression that everyone was not necessarily an actor, but merely repeated cliches that they had heard on TV.

The view from the 86th floor is too high to give one a feeling of vertigo. It’s also too high to make one feel endistanced from the life below. I had worried that I would feel psychologically apart from the world after being so high over it. Going up tall buildings does seem to me the opposite of psychogeography, where you feel the riches of life on the street.

Oddly, after my paranoia on the plane, I got more paranoia about the safety of my wallet. A thousand films have told me that pickpockets are everywhere and that it would be particularly easy to pick my pocket, as I use the one on the back of my trouser. So I switched my wallet to my man bag, but that didn’t feel more secure. In fact I worried more that I was going to somehow drop it over the edge, along with my passport. These visions became certainties and, when I did one of my periodic checks of my bag, I discovered it wasn’t there. A flush of all the problems that would ensue rushed over me. And there was nothing I could do. Report it? Hah! Then Laura calmed me down and found it in the bag.

After that, I felt elated and more or less entirely secure. We went to a vaguely British pub which advertised Bass and had a couple of pints, one of Brooklyn Lager, the other Yuengling. Laura had a nice one with lemon. Then to Rickshaws for nice dumplings. Walked home for TV (baseball! basketball! football!) and rest. Exhausted, yet woke up at 3am feeling awake (it was 8am UK time, my solid waking up time) and active and awful all at once. I used various techniques (breathing, meditating, wanking, reading) but still only got to sleep at 5.30am.

Thus concludes day one.

Day Two, we resolved to get up early, which essentially involved me being prodded by Laura every five minutes to get up, despite having had about five hours sleep to her 12. Eventually I relent and we go for breakfast. Laura has her heart set on a proper American diner breakfast. Unfortunately, New York is badly designed in terms finding the place you want to go to when you are looking for it. We end up in a deli, with big resentful black man making a wrap for me. Wrapped in tin foil, eaten in a grimey seating area, it is a rather pathetic sight, not exactly what we wanted.

As is her wont, we window shop outside the Manolo Blahnik shop. Dull, if you ask me. We then go to MoMA, which is of course closed. We had it in our heads that there was some Museum Day on today which made everything free, but we were wrong. It was only at Museum Mile. We trudge up through beautiful Central Park, past a thousand bleached white children being ferried around by their hispanic and black nannies. We get to the Frick Collection (which is a spitting image of the Wallace Collection) and find that the Muesum MIle thing only works between 6 and 9 at night. There is nothing in New York that is free. Everything is about money.

The Frick Collection was pretty much lovely. A Vermeer and a Rembrandt made it worthwhile. What else was there? Turner and Hals, a lot of lovely pieces. Monet. It was a terribly bourgeois collection of lovely pictures. lovely but ugly. No, not ugly. It was lovely. But it’s difficult to think of lovely without thinking ugly. At least, I find.

We walked up the road to the Met, the New York equivalent of the National Gallery, Tate Modern, and the British Museum all rolled into one. I was entranced by the question of civiilization: what it has done for man, how we have handled its advances and what the future holds. I reflected on this particularly at the exhibition of Mesopotamian artefacts, all lions and seals and glyphs. Pre-artistic things for the glory of wealth, success and power. I also loved a piece called Prelude to Civilization. did I get depressed by Stendhal’s Syndrome? Yes, of course. I started wondering what the point was, what my purpose was in life and, really, who was I? What right did I have to do anything. Where was I going? Amongst this self-absorption I managed to view lots of Vermeer and Rembrandts, some massive Warhol Mao, Indian, Chinese, and other minority interest stuff. I was fascinated with Malian and Sudanese art, religious masks and such like. Only these can break through the carapace of indifference that we have nowadays.

Edgar Degas said that he realised that civilization had ended when he saw people atop a bed with wheels, rolling down a hill. It was then, like Nietzsche with his tightropewalker, that he saw that man is always more impressed with broad physical pleasures than subtle intellectual ones. And it’s true. If I were to write a book about civilization it would have to be called The End of Civilization and be about the death of subtlety, how mass culture has processed the life and individuality out of everything good and refined. It would be wrong, of course, a collection of modernist snobbish cliches, but it may be invigorating all the same.

The Met was really good and left us feeling enlightened. A short trip to Union Square to Casa Mono/Bar Jamon where we ate enormous quantities of tapas. I had bacalau croquetes and lamb, Laura had a great salad and piquillo peppers. The wine was 16 dollars for 2 small glasses. One thing that is becoming clear is that Laura and I don’t really have a sense of abundance. We are both quite tight. Whether this is due to my restrictions or the shock of sudddenly paying so much on the mortgage, I don’t know, but I would like to move to the next level, whilst living within my means, of course.

Thought about buying an ipod today, but I’m not sure I could face the guilt of passing through customs. Or, if I did, would I be able to be nonchalent about the fact that it is unused. It is a shame I didn’t think ahead and put together a cachet of songs on the computer to load up.

We had planned to go bowling after Casa Mono, but felt bloated and time poor. So we went to the Strand Bookshop, an enormous place full of old and new books, a glorious find that was also pretty cheap. Then to Cinema Village, a tiny poky cinema which happened to be the only place in New York to be playing Grindhouse.

Grindhouse is a double bill of faux B-movies directed by Robert Rodriquez (Sin City, Spy Kids) and Quentin Tarantino (Pulp FIction). It contains fake previews by Eli Roth and Edgar Wright and then films themselves are quite funny. There is a disarming lack of knowingness despte the self-conscious jokes on the films cliches and conventions. Self-conscious without being knowing, who’d have thought it was possible?!

The only thing that really spoiled one’s enjoyment was the sheer length (191mins) of the film. We were tired and beginning to feel jetlagged, so it really didn’t help. Apparently it isn’t going to be released as conceived in Britain, due to its appalling bow office returns. I think the idea is to split them into two films, though I really don’t think they’ll be worth much on their own. The Tarantino one, in particular, lacked any real substance.

Then Subway back. My fears about New York are unfounded, it is no more dangerous than London, perhaps less so, but it is more manic, more intense, with more people wandering the streets. American cinema is also quite accurate at depicted American reality, which gives one a jolting sense of recognition at even the most atypical vagrant.

Thus concludes day two in New York.

Went for breakfast in the hotel cafe, which was staffed almost exclusively by octogenerians. There are a lot of old people working in America, all of them failed by social security. I had a blueberry waffle then walked to the Manolo Blahnik shop where Laura had some pictures taken by me. I don’t know why but I resented this slightly.

Whilst she went shopping at Tiffany’s, I went to MoMA to survey the pearls of 20th Century Art. I wasn’t really in the mood, I have to say, and because I was on my own I decided to work out the meaning of life. Again. This sent me spiralling into a rather opaque depression. Neither art nor people interested me, everything held a bourgeois smugness, a enervated joylessness. Indeed, it was only when I went to the posh cafe that I perked up.

Sitting adjacent to me was a 77 year old man and his Nigerian friend. The Nigerian came to study psychology at the Jesuit University. As they were part of the same church he had been invited to stay with the old man. Both of them were quite dull with each other. The old man getting history wrong all over the shop, the young black not interested. It was only when I corrected his account of something or other (second world war?) that we got to talking properly. A New York conversation that went about history and psychology. The old man was an insurance salesman “I give people security!“ but really he had enslaved himself and others to a healthcare programme that was far too expensive to be sustainable - $300 per month. Then I talked to the Nigerian about NLP, I hope that I inspire him to cure people rather than just indulging them in their symptoms.

After the tea and the chat, I felt invigorated and took on the rest of the galleries, absorbed in Van Gogh’s postman, enlivened by the Klimt and, especially, the fantastic design section which again highlighted the fact that the 20th century was a battle won by mass production, the individual object is nowhere in comparison. My reflections gave me the sense of having discovered the meaning of life, which I found to be all about the here and now, but a here and now that is made more interesting by thinking about the future. This is something that I want to expand upon at a later date.

For dinner we went to Dave and Busters, a horrible place of loud music and dark lighting, and had burgers, big fat greasy half-pounders. Not good, but very tasty all the same. I wonder if really healthy people ever take a holiday from themselves in the way I am. Or perhaps this is my real self and I am ordinarily on holiday. Either way, I felt quite bloated as we walked across to the arcade, which was the reason I had wanted to go to the restaurant in the first place.

We played racing cars (I won), shooting (i won), we won coupons which we spent on an “I love kitty” sweety tube, we played basketball and then felt so distanced from the whole thing that we had to go home. In the evening we went to Brasserie, a horrible bar with supercilious and disdainful barmen where we had a horrible argument about stuff. I think it was sparked by going back to the Manolo shop, I said I felt that Laura’s PhD was coming to dominate everything and that I was starting to get mightily bored of it. This brought recriminations and a sense that we couldn’t relate to each other. There was no love only a sense of distance. Fortunately, this blowout was a good thing, we resolved things we reached a deeper understanding.

Thus ends day three.

After the dramatics of day three, Laura and I were cautious around each other. It was all about what I wanted to do . . . even so, we ended up in the pricey diner that Laura wanted to eat at. I had three eggs - I wanted poached but they could only fry - and they said any way!

I admire people whose principles are stronger than their curiosity, but don’t know how they do it.

Today we went downtown, going all the way to Ground Zero, but ending up getting off at Canal St. The tube was motionless inside a tunnel for twenty minutes. It got pretty hairy inside my head for a while. We got out in the heart of China Town and wandered towards Ground Zero.

I had hoped to be moved in a way that I wasn’t when they thing took place. At the time I laughed, exulting in the fact that big imperial America had been taught a lesson by the oppressed of the world. And I still feel that, I’m afraid. The innocent lives thing fails to bite when I think of the implications of American economic policies. Laura took pictures, I kind of tutted.

We had a tea then walked down to the water, to where the Statue of Liberty looks over the island and wandered peacefully along the path. It only really strikes you quite how noisy and awful mid town New York is when you finally get some peace and quiet.

Walking up through Little Italy into Soho and Greenwich Village, I realise that this is my NY. It is bohemian, relaxed, quite cool, has nice bookshops and people. Cafes, I love cafes.

Anyhow, we walked through these areas and ended up in Housing Works Bookshop, sipping wine talking to a student who was procrastinating on her essay about Indian Sri Lankan politics. Then up through Greenwich VIllage to Washington Square, a delight of chess playing black men, 20s jazz bands, emo kids, dogs penned in, and lots more. Fearing the chess players in the park, we went to the chess playing cafe down the road and had a couple of games. She is still rubbish, but managed to beat me with a move I completely missed. I’m going to have to keep my eye on her.

Then to the Irish bar from a couple of days ago and then straight off to bed. So tired after a long day of walking that it was about 10.30 when my eyes closed on me, meaning I missed the midnight arrival of my birthday.

Thus ends day four of our trip to New York.

So impressed were we by down town that we resolved to explore more of the area on day five. Different parts of New York appeal to different personalities. Who you are can be determined by which areas you like the most. I am, despite myself, most at home in the bobo havens of the Downtown. Before any of this though we had a date at Coney Island.

Despite the 45 minute tube journey - thankfully without problem - Coney Island was great. It was as shabby as I hoped, with lots to do, plenty of scary rides and the oldest rollercoaster I’ve ever seen. The Cyclone paints itself as being a classic unique experience. And it is, but for all the wrong reasons. It is bone juddering, brainshaking, bruising, back disconnecting nightmare. There is no suspension at all on the wooden track, making it so painful. Laura was good, especially after she had been such a wimp by closing her eyes on the pirate ship.

We had a hotdog and fries, walked along the beach front for a little and then had an ice-cream covered in sprinkles. It was all pretty much ideal.

Then we caught the Q-train to Canal St and investigated more of the Lower East Side/East Village, finding a lovely old second hand bookshop, a first hand bookshop and more bohemian relaxation. Am I a bohemian? Or do I just enjoy bohemianism as a holiday from my self? What would my life be like if I were actually a bohemian? Can you be a little bohemian?

Before dinner, I bought a hat, an oatmeal trilby that looks pretty good, I think. Not too high, not too faddy, I hope that it will serve me well. I do wonder if I am a hat person, suspecting myself to be against accoutrements, but it will be interesting to give it a go.

After a lovely cup of tea at Teany’s, we went to Taj Mahal for an Indian. This was the first time we had rebelled against the recommendations of Time Out, made uncertain by the fact that another Indian on the strip had a sitar and tabla players, convinced by the street’s only real Tikka Tout that we should go to his restaurant. It was also outrageously cheap. $7.95 fixed menu. Entire meal, $24.

Down the road on Avenue A we found the Sidewalk Cafe, home to Antifolk. We saw five bands of the seven that were on. Some lesbian with a uke, Napoleon Dynamite with a pedro moustance, some incredibly dull whiney band, N Lemar, a ludicrous self-hating black with slick hair and black gloves, singing in a tedious opera wail and playing basic pseudo-classical piano. The final act that we saw, The Fools, weren’t too bad but certainly not good. If this night represents the current crop of Antifolk then the genre is dead. A waitress with large floppy tits served me the most disgusting whisky and ginger ale I have ever tasted.

For some reason I thought it was about 10pm and had no compunction in ordering a movie for the first time ever. The Prestige I had wanted to see for ages, despite disappointing reviews. It was so-so, not great but had moments of interest, not least Bowie as Tesla.

I barely kept my eyes open even though I had paid 10.99. And thus ended day five.

This travel journal has descended so quickly I am scared that I will be grunting by the end of it. Alas, we are at day six, the last full day and so a sense of sadness fills our hearts.

I am not sure that I am good at taking holidays. My anxiety this time, my inability to really enjoy bourgeois holiday activities has been striking. I wanted to be a sponge, to find out who I was, and to clarify my goals. This I have partially done. I have also vsited America for the first time. I have been part of the movie and the movie of my mind. Yet still I feel a sense of disappointment. Holidays should be about relaxation I think, not accomplishment. They should take you out of yourself. Too often this trip I have felt obligated to do things and haven’t been able to really flow into whatever I was doing.

I spoke to Laura about this trip being a climacteric without knowing what the crisis was. Now I know. The crisis is that I am now a man and have to begin acting like one. Going to arcades will only be a valid mode if I have kids, otherwise it is not enjoyable. What do adults do to enjoy themselves? Just eat and drink? That seems to be the size of it. But yes, I do feel that in future I would do well to meet up with more people when I go away. There has been something of a language barrier in New York, in Berlin we were absorbed in understanding and laughing along the way, here it is all too clear.

Things I like about New York:

Friendliness. The service staff are mainly very helpful.
Bookshops. Intelligent and well stocked.
Walking around the lower east side. Relaxed, happy, kooky.
Integration. Race is everywhere and nowhere.
Safety. Even when there weren’t a cavalcade of police, I felt unthreatened at all times.

Things I don’t like about New York:
Resentment is everywhere. Service staff acan also be incredibly resentful. A burning hatred.
Posh shops. There is a lot of vulgar exclusiveness.
Walking around Midtown. A ghastly experience, full of cars and tourists and people selling stuff. It is traumatic.
Class divides. Money and power are stronger here than anywhere else.
Jobsworthiness. I don’t museum staff telling me I can’t drink water when I’m parched (even though there is no sign saying I can’t) but I do mind HOW you say it.

This is just a silly list that scrapes the surface. My real fellings about NY are rather more complex and comlicated.

Anyhow, day six. We went for breakfast to a lovely cafe that didn’t require you to tip the waiters. We had a fruit salad and a fry up. Then on to the Apple Store, a glass cube that sites a chaos of people checking their emails on the latest macs. Of course,some people are also buying loads of stuff, seduced by the potential of the macs. I remained resolute, tempted by an ipod, yet knowing that there is a new one coming out pretty soon. At least, there ought to be.

A quick tube journey uptown and we arrived at the Frank Lloyd Wright Guggenheim museum, which was covered for refurbishment. Nevertheless we paid 15 dollars and went to see what felt like the poorest show one has every seen. There is only so much art in the world and no matter how many divisonists you put up, you are still going to be spreading it pretty thin if you have five museums. There were some highlights, some unmissable canvases and a very strange video about women pulling dough through a makeshift factory but overall it was dull. I did like Chagall a lot though.

If there is one thing that I am into these days it is artists use of colour. I want to be able to bring websites alive and using colour is perhaps the best way of doing that. Quite whether my stolen photos will capture colour well enough is another matter.

It is very steep the Frank Lloyd Wright building, suprisingly so. And the guard rail on the inner curve is not very high. I didn’t feel vertigo but I did worry about someone knocking me over. Silly really.

After that disappointment we went to the Summerstage in Central Park for the disappointment of the Television concert. First up were Dragons in Zynth, a group of whiney black indie kids whose dullness exceeded words. I had the sense that they were doing a rain dance. And so it was that the heavens opened in time for Apples in Stereo to take the stage with their shallow summery power pop.

Television were late on and late looking, the youngest was something like 55. They noodled their way pleasantly through their old songs, but I couldn’t be bothered to stay till the inevitable playing of their Marquee Moon hits. I like them too much.

What was quite interesting was people watching, literally. Looking at people and then saying to one another who - out of the people we know - did we think they looked like.

We went back to the Apple Store so that Laura could buy a bag, much to my disapproval, then caught the 6 train to Astor Place where we found a multitude of characters closing their shops for the revelry of the weekend ahead.

Managing to squeeze into a small Mexican restaurant, we had some delicious food; chile ribieno, a nice salad and a sprightly magarita. Lovely stuff. (but I’m bored of food).

Following Luke Haines’ recommendation, we went to the Grammercy Park Hotel bar. Apparently it used to be full of trannies and members of Suicide, now the drinks cost 400 dollars. Or rather the bottles do. Of course, when I went to Maze, I was forgetting that people list their cognacs by the price for a bottle, not the price for a glass. Rich cunts. Either way, I made our excuses and left.

Back to the hotel to watch the end of Legally Blonde and a bit of late night poker, then to sleep. I don’t like a TV in the room. It drains one of all will.

Really, how can people watch TV in AMerica. It is amazing the amount of adverts there are. Statstics say that A,ericans watch 5 hours of TV a day, what they don’t tell you is that that 5 hours was spent trying to watch a 1/2 hour sitcom. Jesus.

Then to sleep, exhausted again. Thus ends day six of our holiday in New York.

New York is doubtless the most cinematically depicted town in the world. Its people have been vampirised by the cameras until they themselves are zombies, enacting the script of Hollywood’s devising.

Fortunately, there are places that escape, which you will find when you can. It may take a few days, but you ought to find in New York a neighbourhood where you feel at home.

Philip K. Dick thought that the Roman Empire never ended. I am inclined to agree with him. But the centre of the empire is here in New York. Nowhere else is there such an astonishing range of desperadoes coming into town and selling their wares, all the bread and circus, all the resentment, the riches, the naked power and terrible aggression.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

---