Goodbye New York, the Ghost of H.P. Lovecraft Calls
So I think I've decided to move to Providence officially. A few things have probably pushed me in that direction.
I've been living in New York City for going on three years. I have not been on one stage or really been in one band. I haven't seen too many shows, haven't found a really exciting scene and I'm starting to think it just doesn't exist in New York City anymore. One of my favorite books is Legg's McNeil's Please Kill Me. It's about a time long ago in New York City in the seventies when the revered city was on the brink of bankruptcy, when whites fled to the suburbs, when apartments through out the city were empty and rent was nominal. When people like Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye and Dee Dee Ramone and Johnny Thunders were walking the bowery, playing in dives for nothing. That's not the New York City I live in unfortunately. The city I live is overcrowded with carpet baggers and capitalist pigs, trust fund babies and their sitters. To have an apartment with an almost affordable rent, one is forced to take trains deep into the outer boroughs and hope no luxury condo falls from space landing in their neighborhood and becoming a monolithic beacon for the millionaires to come lurking. An artist cannot afford to make art if they want to make rent. New York is a hive for worker bees, a hill for ants to toil, and nothing more. Art and music is not flourishing here and neither am I.
When Moses broke down and announced he was moving back to Chicago, it crushed me. My two closest friends here have been Moses and Super Kat. I was really excited to work with them both. They both had encyclopedic like knowledge of pop music. I could say "what is that song" and Moses could sing it. And their taste was excellent. I loved being around them, constantly exposed to new music. Moses is a poet and he sang with an original voice. He loved singing songs traditionally sung by women singers. He sung like a beautiful frog or Leonard Cohen with a gay lisp. Super Kat was exciting too because he is a madman. He tunes his guitar to his whims and defiantly refused to learn what he's playing. It's sounds beautiful, melancholy and original. For the first time in over a couple years, I though I found new brothers to create and share music with. I was giddy but that all fell apart once Moses attempted suicide and realized he would be better served closer to home. My heart started to break.
Before Thanksgiving, I visited my hometown again. It was inspiring. Christ had been diligently studying guitar and sounds beautiful. Alex Vienna whisked me off to Providence, the foggy, cobble-stoned streets that the ghost of H.P. Lovecraft haunts and brought me to a beautiful art house on Hope Street. We drank and smoked and recorded backing vocals for his newest masterpiece. After recording, we stumbled through the streets, through the shadows, to an abandoned industrial space above a cute coffee shop and sat around telling ghost stories. The air was electric with magic and spirits. A.V. and Danger Dan told how they planned to transform the space into an art space, a headquarters, a music venue and I didn't doubt they would. When I returned, I was so inspired by A.V.'s recording technique I dove into art and recording new material myself. When Moses called in the middle of that night, I stopped recording so much. Why bother? Where would I play this music? Who would listen to it? Who would I make it with? It all seemed pointless.
The restaurant I was managing started to fall apart too. The business just fell of the table like a piece of silverware once the summer cooled off and the long Autumn faded. My income was third to a fourth of what it once was. I started to wonder why I'm struggling and for what point?
The original reason I moved to New York City has been accomplished. I needed to get away from everyone I knew, change everything about myself and find that nothing really changed that much. I had to see if I could break the gravitational hold of old New Bedford. And I did. I wanted to go back to school here, finish my undergrad degree, start a career, but I have no money saved, I have no career and I am no closer to those new goals. Curiously, I peeked at rental ads on Craigslist for Providence. It seemed the average rent was a third of what I pay. Over the course of a year, the savings from rent would equal a year of tuition without considering any financial aid or scholarship in all the schools I was looking at. Being close to my friends, family, a music scene I am familiar with and home would just be a bonus.
I need to go back to school, save money, take a vacation to Thailand and start a career, but I also need just as importantly to be surrounded by friends, loved ones, family, art and music. It's not happening here in New York City so I'm moving out.
Here's my walking papers, New York. It's been fun and it's been real but it hasn't been real fun.
love,
April