Today I took my habitual early evening walk to central park to close out another workday. The autumn light was already fading, creating an unexpected luminance within the rustic tones of the trees which were framed by the grandiose buildings of 63rd street. Just then the first light snow of the year appeared dancing without conviction around me, making me grin as winter starts like this every year; metallic breath, lightheaded with the chill, bitter wind on tender skin and a race to get home to the warmth. The lights within the solid Beaux Arts buildings around me briefly exposed their extravagant contents, did I imagine the top corner of an old master drawing or a glimpse of a mannerist painting? or see quick fleeting shadow or just a stillness within suggesting their inhabitants have already settled in, hibernating for the endless season to come.
I love this time of year in a city like New York, one large enough to make you aware of your insignificance, a city that allows you to get lost within it, to disappear almost without fear of running into someone you might know. Yet at the same time there are people all around, just like you, absorbed in their thoughts and possessing their own dreams, sidewalks dense with unrealizable desires, rushing home from work and back to their authentic selves as they detach from the roles they are forced to play and the business hierarchies that bind them for eight or more hours each day. Some are shop workers or doormen, angry from a day of servility maybe, others who are in the professional class are no more advantaged and share the dilemma but on a different scale or cadence, I include myself in this category.
In NYC you brush shoulders with criminals and doctors, architect’s and sex workers, waiters and deli owners, inadvertently rest your leg up against them on the egalitarian subways where there remains a veneer of respect as you know little about who you are next to. In my case I take exaggeratedly and almost comically deep breaths once in the park, in this newly cold city, which are a both metaphor for a sense freedom and a cure of sorts. The people I pass are a comfort, connect me to a wider world and the crisp cityscape is wonderful on the closing of a cloudless day. Those snowflakes are just the opening act of winter which has two parts, the first which is now, the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, one of hope mixed with nostalgia, the second which takes place in the first three months of the new year is one of regret, austerity and work. This city is a reliable place, we know what is coming next and our small world takes on a repetitive pattern, seasons change as do our sentiments towards them, our emotions seem to surf on their waves.
Some years ago, when visiting the fashionable East End of London, we stopped at a restaurant which was shadowed by a billboard that said “Eat, Shop, Play” apparently a summation or a mission statement. Its message could reverberate across all large western cities which are vessels for the wealthy and for the tourists who emulate them for the week or so that they can afford to. At the time we laughed at its crassness and its truism for that certain class of entitled individuals where eating, playing and shopping was the norm but for the majority of city dwellers it is work opportunities, the need to make ends meet that draws them even in the age of the remote working. At the time we found the banner funny, but how many of the city’s workers see it with resentment, a city can also be a trap, a prison if you let it.
For so many years my walk to Central Park has taken the same route which until February took me through the tight lane leading to its small zoo. I chose this route because there is a section where you could see the caged owl nicknamed Flaco, a voluminous Eurasian Owl which has a wingspan of over 6 feet. From time to time, I would photograph it and at others just stare in awe thinking that it might be used in an argument for or against Darwinism but never atheism. In February some still unknown vandals (or hero’s) cut a hole in the stainless-steel cage and the owl escaped. Since then, it has been a dark presence in the park sometimes venturing downtown but mostly staying hidden within its folds. I sometimes imagine it riding the cities thermals while park professionals fret about its safety, fearing rodenticide from the poisoned rats it is eating.
Shortly after the escape when it hit the news media I saw groups of bystanders and photographers with tripods and telephoto lens gathered on my normal route in the park I would occasionally join them to chat and to follow their sightlines in the hope of seeing the owl but never had success, such was the its adaptability in the wild, but also leaving me with doubts about how I would feel seeing it in such different circumstances, out of the context of imprisonment. Mainly though it is the thought of it being free after a decade locked in a small, windowed cabin to the wildness of the city where there are few natural predators only the danger from man, toxic rats and fast vehicles. The saddest part was the fact that it rarely leaves the area around the zoo and the cage it lived in, secretly perhaps, we are envious of its freedom or maybe we recognize something of ourselves in its conduct.
Its timid behavior has been much on my mind as I slowly approach my retirement from work. Like most in this situation, I’m in an overly reflective and slightly nervous mood, wondering how I will manage this change emotionally. There is a tendency amongst people of my generation to think of work, particularly corporate work as a waste of our talents and it’s true that I’m occasionally filled with a sense of loss and of failed opportunity and at others, more realistically, feel that the positives outnumbered the negatives. I’m a realist, but there are many things that I wish had been different, the most significant is the sense that modern day work requires full commitment and little time for anything else except relaxation in evenings, weekends and during the four-week annual vacation which becomes a rush to cram in as many sights and experiences. This model for living feels increasingly unsustainable and its worth comparing it with ancient Greece where I recently read that they delineated their days between paid labor, work, contemplation, play, leisure and engaged in cultural and political community activities. For me it was mainly just paid work and leisure (I might add shop and eat), simply an “on” and “off” switch, and I occasionally here from my friends that it is sad that I was forced to take this route in life, where I didn’t exploit my creative talents or take more risks. An old girlfriend this summer, who has just cause to be angry at the world, asked dismissively what my “wanky” job title was (the term far from complementary) proving to herself she still retains the power to hurt me a little and I the impulse to always forgive her.
I am leaving the paid corporate workforce with the strong feeling that it will change in the future, that there will be not just opportunities for sabbaticals, personal projects, play and different models of working which may even be mandatory; senior jobs to have term limits, organizations forced to have cognitive diversity through more studied and enlightened selections of teams and executives. I am hopeful that the search for talent will not be limited to traditional ideas around formal education and relatively new ideas around diversity and inclusion but will go beyond this to include examining background, privilege, formative experiences and current circumstances with greater understanding and empathy.
One of the most repeated cliches is when an older person gives advice to someone choosing their path when they say, “do something you love, and you will never have to work”. It infuriates me because (I want to shout) the world is full of people who failed to be successful artists, actors, musicians, film directors, interior decorators, designers; you can name any creative profession that someone may select at a young age. And what of those few who did choose the thing they love, gained enough success to live comfortably of it, are they contented and happy? At this point I don’t think that anyone seriously believes that the various art worlds and media worlds are happy places or ever were except to a small handful of those in power.
About a year ago Mary and I was invited to a party in Brooklyn. It was a late autumnal day, still warm enough to be coatless and I was looking forward to the promised intimate dinner with Mary’s Pilates instructor and her film maker husband. We took the subway which rattled and intermittently stopped from time to time for its own mysterious reasons eventually releasing us to an unfamiliar part of town where we clownishly fumbled on our phones for the right address, irritated with each other and by the lack the gridded streets we have grown far too accustomed to. The ride was harrowing, with the poignant presence of a young beggar then an athletic dancer break dancing to hip hop music from a boom box which was disregarded by the riders, engrossed with their phones and protected by the ubiquitous white earbuds. I was an audience of one and in helpless embarrassment allowed myself to be occupied by an empty Fanta bottle which noisily rolled the length of the carriage with each acceleration and deceleration of the train, and which was studiously ignored by everyone else.
We arrived at the same time as a tall pair of African American men who were going to the same party and I gave Mary a sour, deliberate look that said, “just the four of us”? We were led upstirs to a wide roof deck with a long central table decked with flowers and surrounded by about twenty people. If Hollywood was to caste a New York crowd of young, hip creatives, this would be what they would imagine. There were the mixed skin tones and physiognomy, fashion statements and glamour, nods to the academic world and, as I found out when I was placed between the two men we had entered with, to music as one ran a gospel choir in Harlem.
It was the magical time of day when the sky retreated from it gradient blue to peach, and the dynamic of the houses surrounding the deck changed and now it was our turn to be on stage, to be observed with curiosity. The guests were mellow, as if we had all signed an agreement not to be overly loud, not to shriek or raise our voices too much and the soft tone of the evening woke a voice in my head reminding me to treasure moments like this. But I also needed a drink and went to a makeshift bar where there was a single guy doing what I normally do, scanning the party but enjoying his own company.
We chatted about the location and the evening and soon discovered countless things we had in common; we were roughly the same age, relocated to the USA on the same year, share a love of Los Angeles and America generally, were raised very close to each other just outside of London suburbs and had the same taste in music. I enjoyed our conversation; it was unforced, and the main topic was our shared experience that whatever success we might achieve in the USA will never mean much back in the UK, he told me laughingly that when he returns to the UK his brothers are a huge grounding force, ridiculing any success he achieves.
We talked easily about favorite hikes in Los Angeles that we both take, about musicians now we admire like Nick Cave, our musical roots of the Punk movement and I shared that Kendrick Lamar’s 2022 album was the soundtrack of our summer. I was on the verge of saying that we should listen exclusively to Black music for a while because the innovation and brilliance of this is not to be compared but suddenly a pretty African women approached us and said to him ‘are you who I think you are?’ he grinned and said ‘maybe” and when it was established that it was not a case of mistaken identity she said “I have loved your music my entire life, it’s taken me through some dark periods and good times and has always uplifted me” she then turned to me and said sorry to interrupt your conversation and left.
So, you are a musician yourself I asked, and he named the famous band that he was the lead singer for and we continued to talk for a while, but for me the joy of the meeting had now faded, something had shifted and the realization that he inhabited a different world, and from his side too I guessed, our talk moved towards his professional life, his anonymity gone, he talked almost apologetically about a new album and tour under planning. That summer we saw him everywhere, frowning from the cover of a magazine in a Barcelona restaurant as his band was headlining a local festival, performing on late night chat shows, a new song on the radio. That night in the Uber home to Manhattan I searched his name on my phone and saw clips of his early hits, dancing on television singing songs familiar in my youth. Weeks later we watched concert films showing more recent performances and learnt about the dedication of fans around the world who supported after all these decades and regarded them still as a cult band. On television he was so different from the humble, funny and curious person I’d had met. It was clear that being the singer in a successful band was work, even talking about it was something to avoid, and that if that woman hadn’t approached, I would have said goodnight without ever knowing who he was.
jnmanson 