Let Me Tell You What I Mean Too
What The Fuck Is Going On?
There comes a time in life where the shift in a desire to stay in overwhelms the want to venture out. Let me tell you what I mean— New York has got me tired.
Maybe it’s the ten-year itch around the corner one earns to be called a ‘New Yorker’. Though I am of the belief it takes much more than that.
As the coldest winter before the pandemic came to a close, and the half-way mark of the year comes bustling down the avenues faster with each passing age— What the fuck is going on?
A dead end conversation of a few empty promises with a guy on Hinge got me to say, “I wish you could have seen a pre-pandemic New York.”
My mind scattered down pathways of too many lives lived and what needed to be accounted for to barf a cohesive answer.
I often think about my past life in San Francisco. My best friend Kurt jokingly says, “we experienced the last summer of love.” It was on its last breath. Remnants of its soul still lingered. Mission St still busy with city kids going about their day. Bars frequented by locals on industry days. Dolores Park burned at both ends. There was never not a party, even on a week day. I know as I worked at the adjacent cafe on the corner.
I cannot wax poetic on living there at its best times. I can only say I caught the tail end of a city in the throes of transition ready to morph into an immersive playground for the tech industry. It wiped The City clean of its soul and character, gutted its communities of affordable living, created hostility for artists and supplanted it with socially anxious techies who dwelled just enough to get wet as many bused to Silicon Valley for work.
They wanted culture and community but could not give it back because they had none. A city on the cusp of irrevocable change.
Someone once told me at a party, “New York will always be in a state of flux. You either accept it or you leave.”
I bore witness with childlike wonder devoid of jaded morale or tied biases on first arrival to New York. Those years teetered on the edge of a pandemic no one could foretell. The city in the last years of its twenty-teen decade. I lived on the precipice of what remained simultaneously with what was becoming.
Once again in the midst of a city in transition. Caught between two worlds.
“Covid sped up what was going to happen anyway.”
Now a city full of TikTokers and the infinite lines they amass. An event you attend where the question of “are you a content creator?” gets lobbed often and soullessly. Where does the line of artistic work and content meet? Thirty-second videos of New York according to an influencer open the flood gates to whom? Access to this city without communal connection feels easier than ever.
Have we adapted yet to the mechanisms of modern life? The fight is internal as much as external.
As winter swelled at the start of the new year, I found my way to the films of Michelangelo Antonioni.
An off-the-cuff weekday Metrograph screening of his 1962 film L’eclisse felt as if I ran back into the arms of my jilted Italian lover!
Those who are certain of who I am know of my love for the movies. As a child, it gave me permission to dream of a bigger world outside of my circumstances. To communicate in the language of cinema exalts me. My first love, still, nothing compares.
With the movie industry in disarray left to pick up the pieces after the wake of Covid while the proliferation of streaming content dilutes cinema and the theatrical experience, it would be lazy to argue the artistic merits of filmmaking from the sixties above what it is today. Have you not gathered I love a difficult opinion?
Antonioni made movies in a post-neorealist Italy. A move away from the harsh realities depicted on screen of a war torn country (The Bicycle Thief, 1948) into the economic boom thus social malaise and existential readjustment to one’s place in a shifted culture.
At the peak of his influence, he directed what many have come to call
“The Alienation Trilogy”— L’avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), L’eclisse (1962).
“While most movies celebrate the way we connect with one another, the films of Antonioni mourn the failures to connect.” — Jack Nicholson
A triptych telling of multiple lovers as they face “the difficulty of connection in an alienating modern world.” One comes to expect slower narratives, lingered shots, '‘a slice of life’ with European arthouse cinema. Antonioni does such, though he washes you with emotion over ethos. Meditation over plot. Languishing his camera with abandonment for nothing but the moment and its feelings. Poetically framing his characters amongst the landscape of an Italy caught between two worlds: classicism and modernity. Characters interwoven with their surroundings so profoundly it dictates every feeling and consequentially every decision they make.
He asks of us, “How does one embrace love in an environment of disillusion?”
Art ties to moments in time we will never forget
At the beginning of this year, I made a conscious decision to actively pursue dating. The reality of which I never chose to do before. Every one of my relationships thus far formed without seeking. New York is rough though. Most things do not happen organically here. Competition is steep and the train of life often feels as if it has passed you by.
Inevitable capitulation to Hinge is even resented by the ones who participate. And if you freelance, the unpredictability of schedules create a life of inconsistency with yourself and others. So one must put themselves out there with a calling card to signal availability or it just doesn’t happen.
I just unraveled from a Hinge connection that began on the first week of the year.
Much can be said about him, but my interests lie in the connection itself. (Kissing and telling is reserved when the passage of time softens the blow. And besides, one shouldn’t speak ill of the elderly.)
On our first date, next to a sunlit window on a busy Saturday afternoon in Soho, an inner voice spoke, “Why do I feel I was meant to meet you?” Again, “We share a similar past life.” Unsurprisingly, not a foreign feeling though slightly discordant. Not a “I have known you forever” or “this person gets me” but more so a reflection present at the table as an unwarranted third party.
This knowing presence continued in the ensuing weeks. Synchronicities in feelings, thoughts, and reality. Shared truisms. Parallel lives traversing separate tracks to arrive at similar destinations. Hopeful for the potential of love as New York has gutted me from such.
All while under the influence of Antonioni.
“But you know, people don’t always understand what’s happening to them. Sometimes they can’t even see the tragedy of the situation in front of them.”
— Lyudmila Petrushevskaya
As he took his time to respond out of self-preservation, I projected Blow-Up (1966) and L’avventura at home. When those fears consumed his insides and he chose not to stay in touch, I ended the trilogy on La Notte.
Much like the characters in the movies, so too did I witness the disintegration of connection before my eyes in a world of isolation by way of modernity. Societal alienation in shambles after cataclysmic change with a new world order afoot.
As addiction to our phones heightened during Covid it sprouted fractured realties growing an attention economy and submission to the algorithm. Endless forms of communication tragically create a paradox of not choosing. Effectively paralyzing reciprocal connections for parasocial ones.
When he chose to reach out via Instagram instead of text, it dawned on me the tragedy of society and its current circumstances. Access to me through a superficial, arm’s length platform instilled less meaningful action. Unintentionally as all he had to do was thumb an app and hit the story circle to gain closeness. Replies of “Happy Birthday! Happy Valentine’s!” to signal interest with just enough emotional distance is the trait of the mediocre.
You couple that with living in a densely populated city like New York and the feelings become tenfold. Disillusionment is exacerbated. Everyone too busy in their own shit, their own timeline trying to pay the man.
We may be well intentioned but the inevitable fight of human nature vs manmade creation befall the best of us. Where do you stand?
“One needs to respond with one’s own language and if this language touches on being art it will have accomplished a valuable social responsibility because today more than ever art appears as the most human of all happiness.” — Michelangelo Antonioni
Do art as a compulsion to wonder. I will continue to write so I never forget.
You can also find me on Instagram— @michellephanh
I like your art, Michelle 🙂