Visitors to New York City might be surprised to find the main, and second most famous thoroughfare, 5th Avenue stop abruptly as it approaches the West Village at seventh street. Instead of carving through the tenement buildings further downtown which it once nearly did, there is a grandiose triumphal arch and a small neat park celebrating George Washington, a piece of urban planning which only makes sense if you try to visualize how it would have been a hundred and twenty years ago when this was a city of horses and carriages rather than one of cars and buses. If city officials had their way it might have been otherwise, traffic of all kinds would have been able to drive straight through but various local campaigns and civil activism prevailed and we are left with a meeting and performance place in the heart of downtown New York which in some ways neatly represents its societal and cultural shifts and might even be considered a microcosm of the city itself. There is an irony to such a victory in this city, one which has been built on the very idea of excess, the absence of planning, allowing the closely positioned and competing skyscrapers that give the cities character one of exuberance and dynamism.
Three hundred years we would have found a tribe of Indians camped close to this swampy patch of ground, thanks to the Minerva creek it was a source of water and peacefulness at least for a while. This community was replaced by the Dutch who transformed it into a military parade ground and following that its marshy foundations were used as a burial place for yellow fever victims. Eventually in the gilded age it became a meeting place for high society and its status was confirmed in 1895 by Stamford Whites arch, a bit of Parisian glamour and formality in the newly prosperous city. On the north side of the park there is a row of illustrious houses built around the same time owned by entrepreneurs and prominent citizens enjoying their newly minted wealth who had benefited financially from the accelerated volume and intensity of the city and also maybe also from its corruption. If you have sharp eyes you may see the Greek details on the building’s façade’s on the North side, I’m being crass when I say they are the architectural equivalent of a modern day bumper sticker asserting beliefs, signaling something beyond fashion or good taste, positioning the owners allegiance to poetry, dance, theatre, the arts, philosophy and above all democracy. The houses generous windows overlooking the park will have brought in the characteristically weak Northern light during the harsh winter months and will have been heavily shaded for those in the Summer to prevent the mid-Atlantic sun bleaching its furniture, I like to imagine its owners over the year staring out, witnessing the bewildering changes in society over the century with that Greek virtue, stoicism, or at least the new American virtue to accept and tolerate.
In the post war years it became a focal point for a new American identity, folk musicians and politicians, pot smokers and Vietnam war objectors, a cauldron of ideas and strategies. Even up to the early 1990’s it was dangerous at night and Mary would clutch my hand if we walked through it after dark, jumping a little at the soft Caribbean voices offering “smoke, smoke” from the darkness of the tree’s. Today it is equally reflective of our times, occupied by well off students from NYU and local residents who are somehow able to afford this neighborhood, a place where nostalgic people come to perform, there is usually a piano here, several aspiring musicians with guitars are worth making a detour to avoid, and on summer days entire jazz quartets are known to gather crowds for a free performance. A park like this is a necessity in New York’s urban landscape, apartments are typically small, frequently without any outdoor space, built to house workers for the factories and larger households that used to exist here.
I was in the park on a sunny but cold Saturday a few weeks ago. I had ridden a bicycle from home down an empty Park Avenue, cutting into fifth at 14th street and then breaking protocols by mounting the footpaths within the park itself much to the annoyance of several New York pedestrian’s seeking someone or something to despise on such a lovely day. It had been a disjointed ride, I stopped from time to time in a sunny passage to warm up my hands before heading back into the shady and windy streets, rejoicing in the contradictions of a typical New York Spring day. The roads are treacherously pot holed and poorly maintained, and some streets had the photogenic wisps of smoke emerging from below ground, the cities infrastructure unsurprisingly unable to keep up with its constant abuse and as a cyclist, the universally accepted rule, that you occupy the lowest place in the hierarchy of road rights.
In the park that day was an elderly, apparently homeless, African American man in a wheel chair, his possessions strapped to its side, a voluminous bag on his lap. What caught my attention was a hand painted sign which I only partially remember; ”Be thankful, Be original”, followed by two or three more lines which I’ve unsuccessfully attempted to recall before finally “Don’t leave a mess behind”. I guess it was intended as instructions for the performer’s in the Park but its message resonates more widely now in these post covid world where many people I know seem to be seeking purpose and direction. I’ve gone back several times to find him again and see what the missing lines were but it seems unlikely so I’ve added my own, “Be authentic, Be kind, Be open…” but suspect I’m already heading blindly into Yoga studio cant.
One enduring characteristic of our species is that we crave order, rules and instructions for living our lives, sadly we seek leadership and are constantly disappointed, and so it’s hardly surprising we are now unenthusiastic about today’s organized western religions; that triangulation of power, money and art. Yet describing ourselves as atheist or agnostic is equally unsatisfactory, it doesn’t feel right to participate in any group with certainties or regulated sets of beliefs. I’m still surprised at my own early, precocious rejection of religion, maybe I sensed my own parents insincerity with a stroke of childhood intuition, when pushing me towards the church, it was just a “thing to do” in order to be a good member of a small rural society. The few Church services I attended were threatening and formal, saturated in dire warnings. At about seven or eight years old I was forced to have a short interview with the local vicar who had the scent (damp wool, leather, beeswax), ambiance and slow, dreamlike unhappiness of the elderly that left me even more afraid of the world and suspicious of its bewildering institutions. With the swagger and arrogance of youth I announced that I was a non-believer, one of the few attitudes that has struck all these years and still a source of pride.
Once, in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, I found myself visiting a rug dealer on the side of steep mountain having been cajoled by a guide we had somehow picked up facing the lengthy and tortuous sales pitches as each carpet had to be examined, touched and complemented, I had to increasingly hide my impatience. They offered tea to prolong our stay and asked what religion we worshiped. Mary, ever one to walk fearlessly into a conversation offered Catholicism, but when it came to my own turn I said I am not religious setting off a commotion “you don’t believe in anything???”, the rug dealers looked at each other in astonishment, then laughter followed, they had never accommodated such a fool and looked at me with real curiosity. Later as we walked down the mountain our guide had lost his prior high spirits, he became introspective and withdrawn and glanced at me coldly, I don’t think it was just the lack of any commission from rug sales he was hoping for, I was meant to feel like an outsider. I should have named any religion and I think they might have accepted me as one of their own, being religious says you are subject to higher orders, that you are a humble servant and don’t possess idea’s above your station, there is a reason why football players who have never stepped inside a church affect the sign of the cross when they run on and off the field, why politicians carry (and sometimes sell) Bibles.
But I cannot be completely nihilistic, and its Easter after all, let’s say that I respect faith but personally don’t accept any of the explanation’s, gods and holy books that have been devised and promoted with varying degrees of persuasion and violence over the last six thousand years, never submitting myself to their beauty or suspended belief to abstract ideas or mysticism, never felt compelled to imagine waters parting or sacrifices made. I prefer to live by simpler codes, ones found, for example, on a homeless man’s sign even if it does mean living a more conventional life confined by facts and deeds alone, compromised by what we might call reality, in denial and even fearful of spiritual euphoria and the paths that this may lead you down. Its sometimes a lonely and melancholy place to be, it taints my appreciation of art and antiquity, and so sometimes a degree of capitulation is in order. For the holiday weekend I took the Amtrak south to Philadelphia, sitting in the substantial leatherette chairs, allowing myself to get distracted from deeper concerns by its visual language and aspirations of a 1970’s muscle car. There is something almost reckless about the speed in which it runs down the North East corridor of factories, strip malls and warehouses, the shipping containers stacked high, ephemeral cathedrals to consumerism and globalization. I attended an Easter Sunday dinner where we greeted each family member with the words “Happy Easter!” and took Marys mother to lunch where she kissed the cross around her neck reminding me of the continued power of these institutions and the hold they still have on us.
jnmanson 