Sing, Sing a Song

I had discovered the crowning error of the city, its Pandora's box. Full of vaunting pride the New Yorker had climbed here and seen with dismay what he had never suspected, that the city was not the endless succession of canyons that he had supposed but that it had limits. From the tallest structure he saw for the first time that it faded out into the country on all sides, into an expanse of green and blue that alone was limitless. And with the awful realization that New York was a city after all and not a universe, the whole shining edifice that he had reared in his imagination came crashing to the ground....So perhaps I am destined to return some day and find in the city new experiences that so far I have only read about. For the moment I can only cry out that I have lost my splendid mirage. Come back, come back, O glittering and white!" - F. Scott Fitzgerald, My Lost City

Today I saw the Maestro for my first vocal lesson in 4 years. It was like riding a bike. In fact I'm just as good, if not better than I was when I left. Just like my pilates teacher, he mentioned that muscle memory is a powerful thing, which made me wonder what I still hold on to and how much of that does me or anyone else, any real good. How do you know when to let the memory fade? How do you know when, if ever, a memory should cease to be a part of the various aspects that make you who you are?

After my lesson we went out for brunch. It was our usual marathon gab session in which we updated each other on our travails, and talked about arts, politics and our plan for saving democracy as we know it. The Maestro said I had changed, and was still changing he was sure. I seemed braver to him, more sure of myself, less apologetic.

I'm finally "getting it" on so many levels and told him that in a strange way, I feel like I am finally settling into myself and becoming the real me. It's as if everything up to now had been a mirage of sorts.

"It's great isn't it?" He said smiling at me.

It is. The fog of failure is lifting. This is how I have perceived my life on so many levels up to now. I mentioned to the Maestro how the Marine and I have been working our way through Ric Burns' incomparable New York documentary. We never get tired of watching it. Last night, we watched the episode that focused on the Roaring 20's, outlining how in the dazzling 11 years that proceeded the stock market crash, the cultural firmament of the city would come to define what we now know as America's modern consumerist culture.

And then I told the Maestro of how it hit me. I saw a shot of a street, the expanse of cars and concrete that went on forever and I turned the Marine and said "You know. I just realized now what I did. I can't really believe I went off to that city at age 22, all on my own, and lived in Manhattan. That took a lot of balls." The Marine agreed.

New York was good to me in a lot of ways, just not in the ways I had imagined. I expected one kind of tour. Instead she showed me other sights. I walked up fifth avenue on my way home, only to see the helicopters swarming over the apartment complexes in Harlem at night. All in one day I saw how high you could go and how low you could be. She showed me how concrete and steel could make chaos functional, allowing a populace of disparate intentions to live together. She broke my heart, and let me learn what real and true loneliness felt like. But her greatest gift was that New York taught me I was a lot tougher than I ever thought I could be.

I remember how much it hurt to not get invited back to second year at acting school. My best laid plans were in ruins. It was the first time in my life I had worked my ass off only to end up with nothing. The irony was overwhelming. How I had hated New York at the beginning, only to be devastated that I wasn't going back. She taught me that in its own way, life asks you how badly you really want something.

I remember getting my final New York City telephone bill. It was less than four dollars, and already feeling bitter and bored, I didn't see the point of going to the trouble of getting a money order in U.S. funds to pay it. My mother thought otherwise.

"Pay the bill" she said "and don't leave any loose ends in New York. You never know when you might have to go back."