Sunday, April 20, 2008

Wake Up and Pay Attention


I never look up in the city. I am always looking straight ahead or down at my feet which are moving as fast as humanly possible to get me to my destination.

After my last post I realized I am utterly clueless to my surroundings. When asked what restaurant a friend and I should go to for dinner I just blinked. I. Had. No. Idea. I just walk through my neighborhood to get from one destination to the other, I never stop to look around.

Case in point. My previous post about the subways and the musicians. The other day I saw a veritable onslaught of permitted performers with their own signs. I guess I have become so accustomed to looking down and getting myself to my train that I never actually took the time to look up. Just this week I saw a man play that awful Celene Dion/Titanic song on a saw. YES!!! A SAW!!!! I was impressed.

So why am I now looking up? What gross realization did I have that suddenly made me wake up and take notice to my surroundings? Ground Zero. Pure and simple.

I am a graduate student in Global Affairs at New York University. I study the hard stuff like terrorism and development economics. I spend most of my days either watching depressing documentaries or writing papers or reading about personal accounts of genocide. Its grueling, its enlightening, and it never ends. But the other week my first graduate class completed and we were asked to take a walk with my professor (who is a specialist in terrorism). He walked us a whole two blocks away to Ground Zero and told us to look at it.

Everyone looked down into this big gaping hole. Stared down into the depths of the city, hundreds of feet down. Everyone looked down. We continued our walk and he asked us to look again. Everyone looked down, us New Yorkers are well adjusted to look down. But suddenly it occurred to me "LOOK UP!!" So for once, I looked up. I stood at the precipice and stared directly to the heavens, it was so empty and vast for a new york city sky and I was in awe.

After a moment of my revelry my professor spoke. "I told you to look at Ground Zero, and so few of you looked up. You are staring at the onset of a new way of relating to the world. You spent weeks and hours of your life studying frameworks of international relations. Wake up kids, this shit is real. Some day you may be on one of these consulting firms that gets asked by the UN, or the United States whether or not we go to war, whether or not we bomb a country. Lives will either be saved by you or on your heads." He stared at us squarely in the face. This man was serious.

I pushed back tears from my eyes, and looked around at the hole, ladder 10, and the emptiness that is ground zero. He asked us to take a picture of the sky, saying that this devastation is what International Relations will be based on. I have looked at that photograph every day since I took it on my iPhone.

To say the least, I have started looking up.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Things you should do this weekend....


Go to the Streb slam show in Williamsburg!!!! These action geniuses will have you oooohing and aaaahing left, right, and center. Watch people wrestle with rebar, jump from impossible heights, dance up walls, and leap 20 feet in the air.

I have seen it a few times (granted I volunteer but still...) and its fantastic. For more information go to their website.

GET YO ASS THERE!

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Music Under New York

The other day while transferring trains in the dreaded Times Square station I heard a very very melodious sound. Too melodious for a train station. As I am accustomed to be accosted by a cacophony of fairly talented musicians in the station on a regular basis, but never anything quite as astounding as this. So instead of heading to my train I followed the noise.

What I came upon was SPONSORED by the city of New York. It was by a program called "Music Under New York" and the band that was playing was a free form funk band. I can't for the life of me remember the bands name so I apologize. But to say the least I was truly impressed. And even more importantly it gave me an awe of NYC public transport. You would never even imagine seeing someone play in a bus station in Boulder, let alone supported by the transportation authorities that be.

And even more importantly, I had a photo op.