If oftentimes happens that a movie or a television show glamorizes and romanticizes a place to such an extent that I want to go there, live there even. Eat Pray Love made Bali look so stunning that, given the chance, I might visit despite the desperately long flight.
Music, though, doesn’t have the visual edge while making its case for a place. Still, one of the more evocative songs I’ve heard in a long time celebrates New York City. It’s Jay-Z and Alicia Keys with “Empire State of Mind.” Her soaring choruses really make me want to be right smack dab in the core of the Big Apple… and I’m not really a fan of that particular apple.
I’ve spent a reasonable amount of time in New York City over the years, enough to not feel like a tourist. When I was in seventh grade, we relocated to Queens from Louisiana for two weeks, one of which was spent at Disneyworld. I went to Joseph Pulitzer Junior High School for two days. That was plenty. Three days later, I was back at Tioga Junior High.
Then, in 1995, I spent two August weeks in Manhattan, two steamy, sweltering, awful weeks. My hatred for the place grew exponentially. When I made my home in the Catskills a couple of years later, I was able to make peace with the city with occasional day visits. That was reinforced during a nine-month Westchester County tenure, as well, and beyond. New York City and I found our balance.
But, every once in a while, I hear that Jay-Z tune or maybe it’s one of Joan Osbourne’s odes to her adopted home (“Hallelujah in the City” or “Bury Me on the Battery”), and my heart flutters just a touch. I know full well that I could never handle living there, though I have now and then considered settling into Westchester, the Hudson Valley, or the Catskills again. It never comes to pass though. I don’t have the fire necessary for survival in those parts.
I think R.E.M. nailed it when, as I was driving away from my Catskills home in 2004 headed back to California, their “Leaving New York” was the first song that came on…
You don’t need me
to tell you now
that nothing can compare.
You might have laughed if I told you.
You might have hidden a frown.
You might have succeeded in changing me.
I might have been turned around.
It’s easier to leave than to be left behind.
Leaving was never my proud.
Leaving New York, never easy
I saw the light fading out.
And, yet, my heart still flutters at the thought.
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