Coming up to one year in the big ample
I never thought the day would come when I'd be saying it's almost a year since I live in New York. It's been a whirlwind of intensity. And yes, I let myself get swept up in it.
Imagine being raised in a country with a population that equals half of New York. And then imagine a fifth of that live in your city, Tāmaki Makaurau. And then imagine when you’re a kid, one of your favourite bands release a song that’s the same name your parents called you growing up. Supporting main character energy was part of my M.O. since 5eva. And now I’m here, queer, and I don’t want to disappear.
It’s giving girl infatuated with the big city. When I started out, I moved six times in the first two weeks. I had to move more times than the number of identities my whyteness affords me. German, Irish, Baptised, English-born, Pākehā, with an Australian dad. Actually, I moved exactly that many times in the first six weeks I was here. If someone asked me what I was doing tonight, it was almost always packing up my sh*t and moving to the next squat.
There is a spirit of Kiwis helping kiwis. So yes, I was able to have a half price sublet for a decent chunk of that time, and yes those people are part of my tight knit here which without I would’ve fallen on my face. Flat. I feel a deep sense of relief knowing that those first six weeks are done because they blistered my idea of living in New York. All the writing accosted to me was time for a sentence a day which I stopped as soon as it struck September. I will show you what those sentences looked like but I won’t show you the first Feeld date I brought home to my sublet in Greenpoint. Even if they did mistakenly think Aotearoa has a total of ‘4 Jews’.
5.30pm land at JFK and after getting asked what my job is by customs, I’m good to enter.
18 Aug 2023
Weed dispensaries are the new starbucks.
19 August 2023
John Cale’s free show at prospect park brought me to tears, whether that was jetlag-induced or because he played ‘Waiting for the man’, who’s to say.
20 August 2023
Wondering how living here is possible after spending USD104 at a Greenpoint supermarket for less than a week’s worth of groceries for one person.
21 August 2023
Met the person I was supposed to move in with for a year but there is no way I am signing that lease.
22 August 2023
Went to the wrong office to apply for a social security number and then went to the right office and applied for a social security number.
23 August
The carpark at Jacob Riis beach is the size of the North Atlantic Ocean (NB: Pending citation).
24 August
Saw performance art at Last Frontier which felt like what the Factory must’ve been like.
25 August
Ate anchovies at Achilles Heel in Greenpoint which were served like crispy little chippies with faces.
26 August
Even after over 25 years of training in NZ sun, SPF 30 is not enough to protect me from the burns I just got at Rockaway beach.
27 August
Queued for tacos you garnish yourself from bowls of ‘cilantro’ and other toppings at Taqueria Ramirez and what New York lacks in fresh seafood it makes up for in the best Mexican outside of Mexico.
28 August
Went on a date with the most uncanny Woody Allen lookalike, talkalike and actalike that I felt like I was metamorphosing into Annie Hall just standing next to him.
29 August
Realised living here is more possible than I thought back on August 20, after walking half an hour to Trader Joe’s, to spend half as much on the same amount, if not more groceries.
30 August
First bodega sandwich and the $9 chicken parmesan roll paid for in cash, thanks to the kind cashier insisting I tax evade, was more worth it, I imagine, than the $5 takeaway cup of tea.
31 August
Performance artist Crackhead Barney’s doco launch in Bushwick was just the right amount of weird to be inspiring and just the right amount of
1 Sept
After arriving in
—
Okay so it petered out in the flurry of house hopping. You get it. If I had a sentence for every day now, I’d be in the 300s. While I have been here, I’ve given up on my dream of owning a typewriter, Tom Hanks can have his hobby and eat it too. And I can make the most of borrowing Jill and Hoke’s iPad at Grace Exhibition Space to film and document performance art, if they forgive me for opening a night of performance art in the nude. Because my truest self is released without anything but grass touching her feet. And forgive me for intention tremor when I hold it, adding a sense of nervous energy only an honest kiwi could quiver with.
I didn’t realisze just how much I’d fall in love with the undercurrents of creativity in thanks to this city’s poetic bodies expressions. That has its bounds of course but I am in the epicentre of the best performance art, motion graphics - I’m talking coded art, and ‘I’m talkin’ here’ is my zine I released after six months of talking to people and listening to what lovers and haters taught me. Not instructionally but through the lens of intuition. If you’d like the zine, make me a thing and I’ll send you a copy, or drop it by.
Sophia