as i stood in the mess of times square yesterday, with my mid-morning cigarette, i was confronted with a six-story sarah jessica parker, clad in shimmery snakeskin or sequins or something, selling her new ’sex and the city’ movie. she’s pasted to the side of the marriot marquee and is skewed on a slight diagonal bustling through an ambiguous NYC blur of night and lights (not pictured above, couldn’t find the right pic on the net) like she was captured in the pose by paparazzi as she momentarily glanced up to politely greet an acquaintance while slinking out of a cab. i thought about this woman. about how her sheer presence heralds materialism - the hint of a designer clutch peeking into the frame.
i paused to think about the effect of such imagery and value-system on it’s tv-audience - the mag readers, the adolescents, the scores of women who “finally have something to cling to now that carrie and her friends made it okay to be ‘fabulous’ again” - but then my brain shifted to the second part of the film title. i was submerged in a deep fear that the boundaries of myself mirrored those of this place - this city. the city. new york.
i was down in bucks county a few weeks ago and a woman asked me where i was from and i said, “oh, i’m from the city,” suddenly realizing how egotistical that sounded. as if ‘my’ city was the only valid city - ye, the only valid place. i thought about the positive effects of this idealism on my own experience. having a home gives one a sense of purpose and something to maintain - which might manifest success in our materialistic society, while fabricating a sense of pride. but i also thought about the limits of having ‘everything at arms reach.’
the lack of necessity to ‘go far’ to experience a full range of culture can be dangerous. it might be limiting. at first the array of opportunity new york presents to its residents is stimulating. it fosters neurons to find new ways to interact. it makes your brain bigger and better. but after a while - just like a gorilla in a cage getting used to his toys, figuring out the shortcuts to his puzzles - the hustle and bustle becomes a benign wash of media and sound, flowing over you like a warm tide. it becomes a comfort. one becomes tolerant, and perhaps addicted.
my friend tina said to me yesterday that sometimes she just wishes she didn’t have to be an artist - that just going out and doing some mundane things would be satisfying enough in life. living in a place where the exciting part of the day was going to trader joe’s or taking your pet snake to the vet. i think ‘if it weren’t for robert moses, this little place would be this mountainous paradise, not this towering pile of vertical business.’
and then, what would ’sex and the city’ be? the entire value system would be devolved. without the advent of ‘fast culture’ exponentially developing in a melting pot - at a rolling boil these days - we wouldn’t be able to appreciate the kind of clothing that patricia field was able to drape over emaciated pale flesh, or the interactions with luxury that these figureheads embodied. carrie would be ‘boring’ at first glance, but upon further examination she would blossom into this mundane bouquet of banality, giving way to the surfacing of what she really was : a woman of action.
poor and disheveled, wrapped in outlet mall booty, this new carrie would be evaluated, appreciated, lauded for her deeds and not for what or who she accumulated. the materialistic tone would crack like an untrained soprano’s glissando, and a slow and epic truth would be found.
had robert moses not planned it out the way he did, there’d be no cabs to slink out of - no garish gowns to don for a wedding of ‘things’ and ‘parts’ to create a whole object, rather than a multitude of phrases and facets converging to create a beautiful and indefinite line of time.
where would carrie be then? where would we all be then?
at the cherry blossom festival at the brooklyn botanic gardens on saturday, katie and i watched a beautiful bride enter - about to take her nuptuals in front of 60,000 spectators. alas, if new york weren’t sculpted the way it was, a situation like that could not arise. but imagine what kind of intimate ceremonies would take place? imagine how much more attending anything would mean? going to a wedding. going to church. or even going to see a movie.
Tags: carrie, city, materialism, new york, robert moses, sex and the city, times square, urban planning