new york city
i've survived upstate NY, the trip down to the big city thru the country and stops at waterfalls along the massachusetts new york border. road trips with photographer friends, euro-tourists, french film artist woman and panamanian rasta mystic. we sit on rocks, stare at the water pouring down, smoke tobacco. i spit sunflower seed shells onto the rocky dirt banks of stream.
i survive weeks in new york city, to open mikes, up to queens, down to bay ridge brooklyn, in basements of diner cafe owners playing music thru amplifiers and drum kits, over to the east village for bars at night, downtown, uptown, always back to union square. sitting on "Buy Art Today" suitcase, photographers taking pictures of my beatnik posture, strangers, travelers, coming to talk to me. "what kind of art do you do?"
"i do poetry. poetry is art too."
"oh, i thought you did something visual. you know, like a painter or something."
yes.
make new friends from different places, possible leads to go visit in the future. new friends in texas, florida, south carolina. the trip is working. the goal of putting yourself out there with intention on making new connections to sustain the never ending road trip across america, to gain the perspective necessary to become a true american poet. what right do you have to speak of this land, do you know her terrain and the heart of her people? are you qualified to open your mouth? to pick up a pen?
the money i make flows thru me quickly. five dollars here, there. it all goes back to the metro transit authority. 2 dollar subway ride into town. 2 dollar ride back to crash pad. save another two dollars for the trip out tomorrow. i go out to the union square in mahattan, spending my last dollars on the faith that if i hang out today i will meet some new people, i will sell some more poetry books, i will be taken care of. i will make new friends, who may be broke but who may share their food with me later.
we eat in groups, clustered around fruit bowls lifted from whole foods across the street, eat cups of yogurt, humus and falafel from a pita place, soup and candy, sharing with street friends and passers by. we sit and talk about where we're from, what we're doing. what new york used to be. in the nineties before guilliani anmd heroin chic, how the squaters in tompkins square would have their whole scene, before police in tanks and calvery horses would decend on them with batons, to strike away the filth and dirt that scared away developers and yuppies. everything we're doing now is like the last embers of that fire that once glowed bright and excited the artists, the war on artists has got us cornered now. washington square, union square. here we are, sitting around. what to do now?
i survived the trip to pittsburgh, a friend called, "can you come down?" she bought me a ticket. i told her "why not tonight?" and that was that, hours later i was on the bus, for the 10 hour greyhound stretch, legs cramped, talking to poor people. gotta move with these opportunities when they develop. if someone offered me a trip out of town now, i would take it, in a heart beat. pittsburgh conservative and unfriendly. nice to look at, but the culture antagonistic and fratty. football fans glare at queers and bohemians. if you grew up here different, woe to you. happenings restricted to one or two organic coffee shops. a couple weeks in town, some efforts to make new friends. hang out on college campuses, sneak into a talent show for freshman in orientation week, perform poetry, they love me, want me to show off for the incoming class. too bad i don't actually go to school here (also would be more impressive if i was actually only 18 years old). stay in town a few days later just to do one open mic, the owner of the shop supports what i'm doing, purchases a book. then off to the 1:30 am bus ride, express bus, only one stop for a meal break, makes NYC in 7 and a half hours. then i am back in town, text messaging all my friends at once, "lance robotson back in NYC!"
stop to visit friends, drop off bags. fresh in to town with 100 copies of my booklet. courtesy of an old friend in pittsburgh, who i used to work with in minneapolis some years ago, a friend who helped me out before as well in california, we've met up multiple times now in different cities, him with his office supply store job and me with my suitcase of poetry. now back to NYC to get rid of all this weight.
go to open mics to perform, hopefully girls will like me on the merit of my word. be intruiged by my story. meet college kids who have to sign me in at the security desk at their dorms, if the guard is uptight he won't accept my expired ID. i just turned 25 last month, quarter of a century, need to renew my credentials. the doormen at bars in this city don't care, but the security rent-a-cops wield their power excessively.
hang out with poet girls, compare notes, styles, forms and content. take long train rides sharing the same unlimited metrocard, have to wait 12 to 18 minutes to use it again at the same train station, as the machines poll the central server once every 6 minutes, so depending on when you catch it you must wait for 3 cycles of 6 minutes to use the card twice. this is to prevent missuse. we don't care, we're broke, and it's worth our time to be together.
it's starting to get colder. i must make preperations to leave soon. i want to go to atlanta. i have to email people there to see what's what. i have 70 books left in my estimation.
sometimes i go out late at night, to go on dates, with girls who i don't want to ask right away if i can stay the night with them, and then by the time they tell me that they can't have me overnight, i discover that it's rather late to be calling any of my friends, so i stay up all night and sleep in a park in the day instead. don't want to sleep outside at night, that's sketchy. instead i'll talk to bums and drunks and read novels until day break, and open my umbrella on the green of the park, when it's legal to lay there, and sit underneath my portable shade and rest my body and eyes, and mind sometimes too, for a few hours. waking up refreshed, surrounded by studying students and workers on lunch breaks, eying me like i am alien, foriegn to them, waking up in the park, in 4 days unwashed clothing. me loving life. them prisoner to the world. who is the one who is unlucky?
sooner or later the tension has to break. after a long night of snuggling in stairs and stoops with a cute girl who must sleep alone, after following young women into bars and showing english majors my work, after drinks and food they buy me because they dig what i'm doing, i make my way to the long 11 hour delusional stretch of granduer that comes from sleep deprivation and the over the counter dissassociation of a long night in a city that won't let you rest. and then the poetry bums, one young neophyte like me, and a 61 year old man, sit in tompkins square smoking cigarettes together talking about the history and the poetry and the beats and the kings of the streets in the past, while the monk of hare krishna circles around his trees saying his morning chants, and we discuss his religion and the religion of others, and how strange it all is, and i buy him tea, and he makes me a drawing, and we go on our seperate ways. and i travel back to washington square and spend my last dollar on 4 bananas and walk up to the young man displaying his paintings, working with brushes on a new canvass, and i say, "do you want a banana?" and he says, "sure! good food, good brain food.." like my grandfather used to say. and i say, "i've been seeing you out here for a while now man, how's it going? i do poetry myself..." and he says maybe you want to set up your wares here with me? so i sit with him, and listen to him complain about the life of a street vending painter, and share with him the life of a street vending poet. i say, "new york ain't really new york anymore man..." and he says, "i know."
"what are we going to do about it?" i ask him.
and he replies: "i think we have to start a movement."
in my grand delusion: a large rally of poets and musicians and painters and artists, taking to the streets to have the party of the century, in these sensitive times after nine-eleven anniversary, and we bang on buckets and water bottles and sing and scream poetry and keep the spirit alive, for this new time of the war on artists, the war on difference, the war on spirit and the war on human. these times are vicious, and i think the only thing left to do is to celebrate what we have left, each other.
posted by lance robotson at
12:05 PM
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