I was invited to move to Brooklyn in September of 2001 to have a five year lease on a huge studio space.
It was lined up the weekend before the - I can't figure out how to write about that. I don't like the numbers nickname. I called it the day the world blew up. Maybe that is a limited view, but those explosions did seem to start the downward political movements that have not stopped.
I had just gotten back from a summer film job in NYC. I'd spent a lot of time downtown, because I'd stay at the production designer's apartment in Greenwich Village. Our schedule was so intense and filled with people that I often ran downtown late at night because it was - for that city - very clean, still, quiet and safe. There were no people at night and I could run all the tension and density out. I liked those tall buildings then. They oriented where south was, since most of the time you'd be north of them. And there mass and at night- just dark, absorbing, massive past real comprehension.
The day of the planes I had to work on a Dremel Tool commercial in a suburb of Milwaukee. It was sunny and surreal and I felt ill. Everyone was slightly quieter but just went about silly commercial crap. But I guess I don't know how you take a time out in this world.
How you take time to be scared or sad.
You don't. You work.
You move the economy forward.
I didn't feel scared about moving, maybe at the time it deepened the connection somehow. I worked hard to save up as much as I could and then cut it - it's hard to stop working when you're making money in one spot and have nothing lined up in the next.
It was the third week in October, I drove a truck out with a new furry friend, an ex-street tough named Meow Meow, who'd been roaming my neighborhood meowing alot and looking for love... right before I moved.
2,000 sq' of space all to myself at first. Not sure exactly how I patched it together in the beginning. I worked some film jobs and as a prop shop, making things for film. Then built out to studio spaces to rent as art studios.
This is too step-by-step explanatory.
I moved to this big space in this big borough of a big five part city.
A city I loved visiting, going to see and adventure everywhere I could.
I felt tough and thrilled. I thought, if I was a writer, I could move here.
I could have a tiny little apartment and live off of the people and the
energy and write.
I don't think I really thought about nature as an entity to have or not have back then. I just thought - space.
If you want any of it - do not move to New York City.
And then I was offered this BIG space
And I needed to move away from the situation I was in. This was the magic rabbit hole. How could I not move? There are those moments that feel like fate and you look around to see if there is a more logical or more comfortable path to take and seem to find none and so you jump in. (not anymore, but...)
Neil came aboard my makeshift pirate raft in the can factory in 2003 and let me know my cat's name was really Jeff. Jeff? I resisted. Firmly. But it was true.
Jumping forward in time for now... we need to get away (peel ourselves away) from this dense city. This incredibly unsustainable economy, layering of humans and all possible matters of profound pollution that are not even acknowledged here by the majority who own million dollars apartments and want nothing of it.
You can have all the money you want, you can drink fancy water shipped from other countries, insulate yourself in wealth, filter the air in your private apartment big or miniscule and take nothing but car services for daily travel, but you are ALL breathing the same air. When you step out side. And you must. And oddly, in all the inumerable posh restaurants and even in Bergdorf's, they are still not pumping in air from the Green Mountains of Vermont, straight to you. You cannot buy that. Rich or poor, you cannot buy healthy air in New York City.
And there is no move towards planting on all possible rooftops and surfaces. It is of this moment and for this moment and when it crumbles, hopefully you have enough money to jet away in time.
At the same time there are brilliant people here, driven, fascinating humans of any type you can imagine to meet. Of every background, ethnicity, belief systems, income. In that human sense, there is nothing else like it and that humanity is amazing.
For us we need out of here and have only stayed this long to save for our future. To breathe clean air, hike, animals, garden or farm, build our own little cob house, a root cellar, hold the reins on our own modest economy.
To live sensibly with an understanding that really we are just animals. Perspective.
