I can't stop listening to the new Jay-Z cd. More, I can't stop listening to track five, which is his ode to New York. The beats mixed with piano, the lyrics...it all mesmerizes me, takes me back for a second. Back to a time when I had everything at my fingertips for the taking. Ah, New York City, a place I once called home, which now feels like a lifetime ago. I've almost forgotten what it felt like. The anticipation, the excitement, the fact that for a moment I was doing exactly what I wanted at the exact time I wanted to. And I miss it.
I wonder sometimes if I'll ever go back. I don't cancel it out, though I think I did my time. Don't think I was made to be a New York lifer. I miss the people, the bright lights that they always sing about, the possibility you feel, it's no lie. Everyone loves you without knowing you. They disregard you in the same way. The city draws you in like a first love and in a second it's on to the next thing. And it doesn't matter because the next day, you see something new, you can become a different person. Always living for the future, the next. The past was something you could barely remember. It was the kind of communal anonymity that you can't experience anywhere else in the world. Or at least anywhere I've been thus far.
In one of his verses, he talks about girls who go to New York and follow down the wrong path, they fall into all the temptations that the city has to offer. I was a different person when I was there and while I never did anything I am ashamed of , some of it is not something I'm necessarily wanting to relive. That's the beauty though, there's no need to. And even on the days the city kicked my ass because of the floods that always seemed to happen in Grand Central whenever it rained or the days it was so humid that I'd arrive to work just wishing I could turn around and go shower, I loved it.
I loved the bagels, which really do taste different. I loved that New Yorker's have their own language and each borough has their own slang off that. The food, the street fairs, the cheap beer, the expensive clubs. The fact that you could walk down 5th Avenue and feel like a celebrity because the doormen would do that slight bow to you, the store clerks would treat you like you were someone to know because for all they know, you are. I loved the eccentricity, the grittiness, the history, the architecture and listing it all right now, it makes me smile because I think, man, I was just a baby then.
Just like everything else in my life, New York has helped prepare me for all the things that I have yet to seek out in my life. It gave me confidence to actually pursue things without thinking twice about other people's opinions. It let me know that it's okay to turn to plan b or c or d, and it's truly the kind of city that welcomes you. You feel part of it the first time you step off that plane, get into your first cab, you feel like you're home. That's how it was for me.
Maybe it's listening to the song, maybe it's remembering my experience there and maybe it's a little cliche but it helps put a little swagger back into my step. It helps remembering what it felt like to not be able to go anywhere but forward because the number rule that the fast pace of New York City will teach you is to keep that shit movin'...
and so I do.
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