Gotham Magic

New York City has been calling me back for a few years now. It literally tractor beamed me in a couple summers ago on my way to Rhode Island- one wrong turn and I ended up driving the entire length of Manhattan in rush-hour traffic in my long bed stick shift pick up truck. Oops. But this little bite-size snack reminded me of how badly I needed to revisit one of the most energizing cities in the entire world.

Every city has a distinct energy and magic, or lack thereof (i’m looking at you, Gary Indiana). A year ago I was visiting a very different kind of magical city, that of New Orleans. A city that will have even the most uptight white person letting their hair down in public. The energy of Pittsburgh is that of a worker bee- but a worker bee with horse blinders on, never deviating. New York has a similar worker bee vibe, but a more ..cultured bee.. shall we say. Many more possibilities.

I could never LIVE here, but I do love letting this energy stir things up. And it has. New York’s magic has certainly been at work on this trip.

I can’t help but laugh and marvel a bit at the irony. Decades ago, young, eager, clueless and with no plan, I stomped this very same pavement for the first time wondering what could be. Life ushered me in a very different direction- one which I could afford on whatever pocket lint I could cobble together and which allowed me the space for personal development without getting absolutely chewed up and spit out by the rat race. I un-subbed from the well-trodden idea that “making it” as an artist required living in (or being otherwise based around) a major city. And yet here I am, totally by chance, in the garment district of all places enjoying a career validation I could never have imagined. Tell me that’s not magic.

A flip decision, a change of mind, a step retracted and re-oriented…. Might just land you where you were always meant to be. And maybe a cameo in the New York Post too!

Do you believe in magic?