Hi y'all. Kirk asked me to post this:
The NY shows have been great and of course the city is still amazing, though much cleaner than you may remember, or than you might imagine. But I will say this, there are still a lot of people here who aren’t what you would normally call white.
Now I’m the first to admit that most of the places I spend time here in the city are populated by a fairly homogenous group of bourgeois twenty somethings, but when it comes to the laundromat, the deli, the subway, the newsstand, the pay phone, and yes even the so-called internet café where I’m writing today, what I see are people of different ages (we’re basically all varying degrees of brown by this time, right?) in all different shapes and sizes. What I hear them saying is usually familiar to me, but occasionally it’s totally incomprehensible, and what I feel is -- liberated from the senselessly narrow world that somehow grew up around me while I was busy trying to get some things done.
In this small place where most of us live we do have options, but the general atmosphere of conformity and consistency exerts a sort of gravitational pull that draws us in and occupies our consciousness, not long enough to nourish us really, just long eough for us to forget that there are other options, more choices, better answers, and different explanations.
We seem hellbent on growing more and more alike, without even trying, but we do ourselves a real disservice by not making the effort to resist.
I’m not advocating any grand plan or anything. I’m just saying it’s cool to be around other people now and then, if for no other reason than to remind yourself that you’re not the center of the fucking universe. It’s a relief actually.
