Tomorrow morning, at roughly 11 in the a.m., I leave for London to catch a plane. A plane that will eventually take me to JFK airport in New York.
When I became aware of how much more of the world there was to see, I had 3 places on my list of places I had to visit before I ceased to function. Number one was Hollywood, number two was New York, and number three was Egypt. Number one is now crossed off my list. Its gone, many times over. Hollywood was not what I thought, but I still loved it, and thinking about it now, I kinda miss it. Frenzy have spent weeks there, using it as a base from which to tour, prepare to tour, and hold fruitless meetings with people.
So New York was elevated to the number one position. Boom. With a bullet. Many times in the past we have been making plans to go to New York to play, but they sadly came to nothing. At least this time, my ass has a space booked and paid for on that plane. I'm going. Even if I get turned around by customs. Even if the gig doesn't happen. Even if it happens but I don't get paid.
No matter.
When I was a kid, I heard a piece of music on an advert for a chocolate bar. It turned out to be Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue. There's only a small piece of it that caught my attention, but for me it soundtracked a city. Not the commercial parts of a city, but the back alleys, the blinking neon signs, the dumpsters, the shadowy figures in hats and trenchcoats. All the stuff from detective novels and film noir. All the fantasy stuff that didn't exist now, if it ever did back in the 30's.
As I grew I became more entranced with big cities, being a boy who grew up in the country. Both alluring and frightening, New York seemed like the Big Daddy of cities. It made sense to go to the biggest and baddest, to get the best experience.
Plenty of films depict the same city in many different ways. Taxi Driver, my most favourite film, describes New York almost as a living organism, but one that is infected, decaying, and rotten. It almost holds the city itself responsible for the actions of its inhabitants, as if it somehow turns people bad. When I was 14 or 15 and deeply into comic books, the streets of Gotham City just felt like they were really New York to me. Like Bob Kane just couldn't really call it New York because he didn't want people to grief him over it. Most obviously, Manhattan, the movie that itself linked up Gershwin's music to the cityscape in a way I'd only previously saw in my head. Manhattan romanticises the city, just as I was doing, and the black and white used in the film only adds to its dreamlike qualities.
We only have a few days in NYC. The Empire State is high on the 'must do' list. However, I shall be bitterly disappointed if I don't also see the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. The gig itself feels like a minor inconvenience, and I fully expect to have little sleep during my stay. I don't see the point with so many other things I could be doing.
Its time to begin packing, to tick off another one of my ambitions. After this, Egypt is the last one left in my top three. Can't see us getting a gig over there somehow.
