It wasn't the clothes. I really love to think and write about clothes. It's how the Fay-shun business, a fat, airy planet (and it's moons and its satellites), is spangly and aggressive and (mostly) dumb. It's bi-annual (and sometimes tri-annual) stomping and performing rites are meant, I suppose, to sell and be...pleasurable. But--despite what I said at the outset-- the consumerist "violence" fell/felt flat this year. I'm not some Recession Puritan, who eschews all gross displays of wealth in these hard times. It's just, the New York factions looked to be pretending there wasn't a Recession on at all. Instead they might have, with a bit of bravado, used the dingy economic circ's to be subversive with their brand of excess...also, it's just quite apparent that NYC lags behind Paris and Milan (and Belgium). At the end of the last century, Europe was dogged by tradition, a certain narrowness, while, in attractive opposition, America was an open expanse, ungoverned, candid, audacious. These days, the tables have turned MAJORLY. We are the stiff-necked and delusional population, the ones with some great blockage.
However, I have been feeling pretty dedicated to America lately. And so have my friends. I'm pleased to look American ("unsophisticated" though it may be...?). And travel American. I'm pleased to think about American history, both proud and dismal. I can no longer pretend an America. All I can see is the actual. Though this does not leave off sentiment...
I'm getting particularly sentimental about hometowns (Memphis and the NYC) and "representation." And though I've tried to be sour about his new effort (ahem), I seem to be liking Jay-Z's single, "Empire State of Mind." It's merit is entirely due to Alicia Keys's solid, rallying cry hook--
New York!!!! Concrete jungle where dreams are made of, There's nothing you can’t do, Now you're in New York!!! These streets will make you feel brand new, the lights will inspire you, Let's hear it for New York, New York, New York!
So, it's corny for sure. And thank G-d. This is a great moment for corny. And if anyone can get away with singing baldly about things like "inspiration" and "dreams" (with exclamation marks) it's Alicia Keys, a not always stylish, but certainly earnest artist. The refrain at once uplifts, as intended, and deflates with it's exuberance, a quality made real in the song, but not necessarily abundant in this listener, in many of us, at the close of a trying, oft creepy summer. I like this push and pull. I like the conflicting emotions it draws out.
Jay's voice is one I've been feeling less and less comfortable with. I love his story and his wife, their upper upper echelon. But, over time, I've been able to read what a businessman he is, ever-cool, relatively soulless. I've said for a while (and so have others) that Jay-Z's first huge summer-jam pop single, "Hard Knock Life," was aimed straight at me and peers, bourgeois, preteen girls (as of 1998), with its sample from the musical Annie. In this new single, Jay speaks to us, now aged (alongside his subsequent Blueprints and Black Album) directly, with a verse about post-collegiate party girls errantly "addicted to the high life" (the very 'high life' he and like-others sold us?). As Alicia "uplifts," Jay declares "8 million stories out there in the Naked City/It's a pity half of y’all won’t make it." The crosspurposes persist. And Alicia's voice begins to sound desperate, as if she's trying to wail Gospel with no air left in her lungs. Our town's greatest poet (I think I'm allowed to say that) wrote, "I contradict myself. So, I contradict myself." This (teehee) high/low, up/down, brave/despondent, open/limited stuff is pretty quintessentially New York (American...human). The song may achieve far more than it set out to...
Among D.J. A.M.'s last communications before his August suicide was (sadly enough) a Twitter post that went something like "New York City ain't all it's cracked up to be." And he was right. This town reneges on promises. It is the Omni-American capital, the seat of our Big Commercial Empire, Empire of Capitalist teasing, illusions, smoke, mirrors. New York is extraordinary, handsome, tough, varied, rich, "naked," FAST. The dashing of hope, met handily by its constant renewal, marks the New York Experience. It is never what "it's cracked up to be," because the place has already shifted as a summation of it is made. These revolutions can dazzle, and they can also terrify, make one miserable. New York is one thing to a visitor (a glittering, sleepless mecca), and another to a citizen (your house, your block, your long walk to and from the grocery store). It is our home. For us, it must needs be average or below-average, at least some of the time. The mythology of the place, the thrill of the tourist, the interloper, can either boost our prodigious egos or make us smart with bitterness. It depends on one's luck, on the weather.
Here is "Empire State of Mind" and the song that accompanies it on my current favorite playlist, bang--
However, I have been feeling pretty dedicated to America lately. And so have my friends. I'm pleased to look American ("unsophisticated" though it may be...?). And travel American. I'm pleased to think about American history, both proud and dismal. I can no longer pretend an America. All I can see is the actual. Though this does not leave off sentiment...
I'm getting particularly sentimental about hometowns (Memphis and the NYC) and "representation." And though I've tried to be sour about his new effort (ahem), I seem to be liking Jay-Z's single, "Empire State of Mind." It's merit is entirely due to Alicia Keys's solid, rallying cry hook--
New York!!!! Concrete jungle where dreams are made of, There's nothing you can’t do, Now you're in New York!!! These streets will make you feel brand new, the lights will inspire you, Let's hear it for New York, New York, New York!
So, it's corny for sure. And thank G-d. This is a great moment for corny. And if anyone can get away with singing baldly about things like "inspiration" and "dreams" (with exclamation marks) it's Alicia Keys, a not always stylish, but certainly earnest artist. The refrain at once uplifts, as intended, and deflates with it's exuberance, a quality made real in the song, but not necessarily abundant in this listener, in many of us, at the close of a trying, oft creepy summer. I like this push and pull. I like the conflicting emotions it draws out.
Jay's voice is one I've been feeling less and less comfortable with. I love his story and his wife, their upper upper echelon. But, over time, I've been able to read what a businessman he is, ever-cool, relatively soulless. I've said for a while (and so have others) that Jay-Z's first huge summer-jam pop single, "Hard Knock Life," was aimed straight at me and peers, bourgeois, preteen girls (as of 1998), with its sample from the musical Annie. In this new single, Jay speaks to us, now aged (alongside his subsequent Blueprints and Black Album) directly, with a verse about post-collegiate party girls errantly "addicted to the high life" (the very 'high life' he and like-others sold us?). As Alicia "uplifts," Jay declares "8 million stories out there in the Naked City/It's a pity half of y’all won’t make it." The crosspurposes persist. And Alicia's voice begins to sound desperate, as if she's trying to wail Gospel with no air left in her lungs. Our town's greatest poet (I think I'm allowed to say that) wrote, "I contradict myself. So, I contradict myself." This (teehee) high/low, up/down, brave/despondent, open/limited stuff is pretty quintessentially New York (American...human). The song may achieve far more than it set out to...
Among D.J. A.M.'s last communications before his August suicide was (sadly enough) a Twitter post that went something like "New York City ain't all it's cracked up to be." And he was right. This town reneges on promises. It is the Omni-American capital, the seat of our Big Commercial Empire, Empire of Capitalist teasing, illusions, smoke, mirrors. New York is extraordinary, handsome, tough, varied, rich, "naked," FAST. The dashing of hope, met handily by its constant renewal, marks the New York Experience. It is never what "it's cracked up to be," because the place has already shifted as a summation of it is made. These revolutions can dazzle, and they can also terrify, make one miserable. New York is one thing to a visitor (a glittering, sleepless mecca), and another to a citizen (your house, your block, your long walk to and from the grocery store). It is our home. For us, it must needs be average or below-average, at least some of the time. The mythology of the place, the thrill of the tourist, the interloper, can either boost our prodigious egos or make us smart with bitterness. It depends on one's luck, on the weather.
Here is "Empire State of Mind" and the song that accompanies it on my current favorite playlist, bang--
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