Farewell to New York

Ciao, Tutti!

And arrivaderci, New York City.

As of 4:55 tomorrow afternoon, I will be on my way out of this cubist sculptor's paradise, finished with college as of yesterday having never truly diving into college life. And it makes perfect sense that I will be going out on a mood swing; New York is a giant mood swing in itself. Example: this morning I helped an older man open the gate to his jewelery shop and we shared a good laugh before I was to walk on, the green light on my side, and get my ears blown out by a taxi driver making a sharp right and speeding off at 40 miles per hour. Mood swings. New York can't decide between angry and jovial, overwhelming and accepting, antisocial and agoraphobic, and the city jerks like an awkward drunk between these poles.

And here I am, leaving in a mood swing of my own. I can't deny my hating it, as I always have, even though it's been years since I've last left a love life on the left coast. I've never liked cities, I've never liked concrete, and I've never liked large groups of people. But, despite all the obvious reasons for my refusal to like New York, I am drawn to it, falling under its spell. Because it's main attraction is people. The impressive buildings are only tall for a few days - the experienced New Yorker looks up only in surprise for the rare instance he sees the sun. The museums are so numerous that Miró begins to look like Michelangelo who begins to look like an ancient Egyptian temple. There are so many concerts that they are all mediocre with the pressure of cranking out 250 each night, and music veers away from innovation and towards survival, as all New Yorkers must learn to do. But once you get to know some of the individuals who somehow found their ways here - from the suburbs of Chicago, a mansion in the middle of nowhere upstate, a tiny town 45 minutes from Flint, Michigan, or from a Jewish Nashville outlier - and all have crazy or normal lives to lead them here, I can't help but become attached.

So it's not New York that I've grown fond of, just the strange collection of friends I've made like unpolished colored marbles. And yet, how can I separate these things? The friends are in New York; they live here as I have. They exist in this suffocating atmosphere and we are united by our survival instinct, our tenacity in keeping from being swallowed by it. Our comradery is not formed based off our unified weathering of a magnificent storm but in our communal strength in avoiding the storm altogether, the beautiful fact that we were all driven to suspend the storm from reality within each other's company. And this is what makes some of the people of New York so wonderful once you get to know them. They suspend the awful and smelly habitat of the city and replace it with a warm cooperative of their own. New York ceases to exist, but that which takes its place could not come to pass without the city laying the groundwork first. If only it weren't so! And yet it cannot be any other way, I and I try to have no regrets.

So I will leave this city and the people in it. I will miss the people in it and forever loathe the city, but I'll have to put up with it whenever I want my old close friendships back.

- Sam goldsmith