New freaking York!

I felt like I was walking through a copy of Vice magazine. Or an episode of NYPD Blue. I play DFA compilations on my i-Pod for extra added effect. It’s impossible to see the city naked. Our view is distorted by a hundred thousand pop cultural references. Ahh America. The home we know so well yet never stepped foot on.

After comparing Australian TV to British TV, one realises we really do have an absurd amount of American content on our air. And TV is the most powerful definer as well as broadcaster of a nation’s identity. Hence everything in America feels strangely, vaguely familiar. But now, rather than being small and flat on the box, it’s 3D and loud and in and around my face shit! I’m touchin’ it baby, I’m smellin’ it (and often it smells like toilet), it’s nuts, it’s crazy, what the fuck?!

And even more insane, the most insanest of all, — is that fact that I am in it. I mean there’s all those millions of pictures of New York from magazines, music, television and movies in my head, and never once was I in the middle of it, but now, I can see myself in the reflection of the train window, trying on that look of disaffected boredom they do so well, they those special breed, Big N Y New Yorkers, — shit I’m here! In this unreality.

I wanna pass as a local, I want to be invisible and momentarily adopt their skin. So I try not to look quizzically at street signs or maps, or show my inward glee at doing the simplest of things (shopping, taking subways, crossing streets) despite it all being an incredible novelty. And I do like to think I will graduate from tourist just a little. After all I’m (1) Living here for a month (2) In an apartment with local New Yorkers (3) Doing work experience, a.k.a. doing work with New Yorkers.

And of course, it is being with the New Yorkers that’s coolest of all. You never really understand a nationality until you see them in their home territory. Suddenly a light is shone on their personality. While I’ve met Americans before, to be in New York is to be surrounded by them, and a certain kind of American. Most Americans you meet will have a neutral accent, but when you hear a thick New York twang, especially, oh so delightfully, a BROOKLYN accent, then you know you really must be in NY. Kind of like when you’re in Paris, you don’t ever really feel like you’re there until you’re standing in front of the Iron Lady eating a croissant. The Brooklyn accent is “authentic New York,” you can’t find it anywhere else in the world and rarely will.

(Ditto with the Cockney accent in London. I mean you meet English people all around the world, but how often do you hear that full blown East Ender accent? Like never!)

More soon…