'K.C. Jones', Mississippi Fred McDowell
Lots of folk come here from somewhere else. There's alot of other great cities of the world that seem to magnetize escapees, yet i reckon this is different. Here, even the locals, those who've been here for generations (plural) want you to think they just got off the Greyhound from some far flung, dust swept town, nestled hard up against the border. Where i come from, Melbourne (that's Melbourne in "I can't believe they have Jews in" Australia) , a city defined by it's various and multi stages of immigrational flux, those that have had the 3000 postcode for over 50 years, wear that distinction with, well, distinction. But here?.....not so much.
I'm not sure if i entirely understand it, but i certainly like it. Everyone likes a story. Nay, everyone needs a story and why let the truth get in the way of a good one.
The other night we had a group of Australian girls in the restaurant. Once one adds alcohol into this mix, there is a certain audio similarity between such a group and cackling flock of itinerant seagulls fighting over an empty chip packet on a windswept beach. Amongst the sonically blurred high pitched strains, this one sentence emerged -
" I tell people that I'm ORIGINALLY from Australia"
What the hell does that mean??? That you originally came from a place so very underdeveloped, yet now I'm a New Yorkerer and as such my personality has expanded in so many facets?? "Oh, please don't judge me as an Aussie, but rather see as one who has done much to reform and grow beyond such limitations."
Well - fuck you, dear!!
Everyone in this town originally came from somewhere else. Even the godamn locals. That's the whole point. It's the city that takes the weary and the tired. But it ain't the city that makes the people. It's the people that make the city. If you in fact have grown beyond the vile underformed creature you arrived as, it ain't because the over-chlorinated water and smog filled air gusts have generated a meta and bio-chemical reaction that has manifested into a higher consciousness. It's because the need of the 21 million people around you to grow, to reach and to overreach beyond where they have come from is contagious. So contagious that even you, a lost and self-unaware 'beach-rodent' (too harsh?) have been swept up in it's fury.
So, my little lost bogan (Australian slang - look it up), don't try and impress upon others that you are something you are not - a local New Yorker. There's no such thing. Just those that arrived earlier and those that arrived later and of course those that just off the Greyhound......or did they really?
Lots of folk come here from somewhere else. There's alot of other great cities of the world that seem to magnetize escapees, yet i reckon this is different. Here, even the locals, those who've been here for generations (plural) want you to think they just got off the Greyhound from some far flung, dust swept town, nestled hard up against the border. Where i come from, Melbourne (that's Melbourne in "I can't believe they have Jews in" Australia) , a city defined by it's various and multi stages of immigrational flux, those that have had the 3000 postcode for over 50 years, wear that distinction with, well, distinction. But here?.....not so much.
I'm not sure if i entirely understand it, but i certainly like it. Everyone likes a story. Nay, everyone needs a story and why let the truth get in the way of a good one.
The other night we had a group of Australian girls in the restaurant. Once one adds alcohol into this mix, there is a certain audio similarity between such a group and cackling flock of itinerant seagulls fighting over an empty chip packet on a windswept beach. Amongst the sonically blurred high pitched strains, this one sentence emerged -
" I tell people that I'm ORIGINALLY from Australia"
What the hell does that mean??? That you originally came from a place so very underdeveloped, yet now I'm a New Yorkerer and as such my personality has expanded in so many facets?? "Oh, please don't judge me as an Aussie, but rather see as one who has done much to reform and grow beyond such limitations."
Well - fuck you, dear!!
Everyone in this town originally came from somewhere else. Even the godamn locals. That's the whole point. It's the city that takes the weary and the tired. But it ain't the city that makes the people. It's the people that make the city. If you in fact have grown beyond the vile underformed creature you arrived as, it ain't because the over-chlorinated water and smog filled air gusts have generated a meta and bio-chemical reaction that has manifested into a higher consciousness. It's because the need of the 21 million people around you to grow, to reach and to overreach beyond where they have come from is contagious. So contagious that even you, a lost and self-unaware 'beach-rodent' (too harsh?) have been swept up in it's fury.
So, my little lost bogan (Australian slang - look it up), don't try and impress upon others that you are something you are not - a local New Yorker. There's no such thing. Just those that arrived earlier and those that arrived later and of course those that just off the Greyhound......or did they really?
