Dear Claire,
Dear C, one day you’re going to start grappling with the notion of time. Right now to you it doesn’t matter, there is only now. But later we’ll give you the concept of before, later, and after. In that regard ...
Just watching the Ric Burns New York City (8 part) doc and what struck me today with great interest is the time one enters into the story of NYC. You can come into NYC when things are up, rising from ashes of fallen times, fallen promises, tragedy, or you can come with things have reached a zenith, when the promise has reached a seemingly endless plateau, that must certainly stretch out more eternity of good, hearty, prosperous times, or you can come to NYC, be born into an age, when things are falling in all its variances. You can come just moments too late to the dance, when people have gone home and just a few desperate for good times stragglers remain, or you can come when things are plummeting to so never before known depths, only that things are going down towards a roller-coaster plummeted without rails at the end to catch you, or you can come at the worst of all times, when the piles of people's dreams lay spattered in heaps of exhausted broken hearts, when men, women, and hope itself seem broken forever, when everything from this point onward will always pale in comparison to what came before, and never rise again, that your entire lifetime will promise only one thing: struggle not for prominence, struggle for survival.
So, really it is quite a question to ask, when were you born, what were the times from which you came. You are effected by it most certainly, through and through, the energy of that time so pervasive, the sounds of it all around you, the feel of in the tones of it, be them triumphant and laughter-filled or be them full or worry, uncertainty, or worse still tied down and sunken in the tears that wont come, in the rains that wont fall, to give rise again.
In this NYC doc it seemed like quite a time when NYC was at its zenith, when it was the center of the world, the most modern, the most progressive, the most creative, and the most influential all over North America, bigger too than London, where style, fashion, politics, art, and music, and cinema were all centered in one island, Manhattan, NYC. This was the roaring 20's. Imagine going out to a restaurant at this time, the steaks so large, so full of rich warm blood. The 20's when it was the jazz age, the time when music and all of its singular originality came up from the streets of Harlem. Men just returned from the first world war, when the US went from a debtor nation to a creditor nation, when everything seemed to be happening in NYC, when everyone wanted to come to NYC, when everyone sung the songs from the streets of Broadway, when everything was lit up, so full, when the radio beamed its first programs, when advertising and consumerism began ... everything was beyond a sky full of fireworks, it was a time almost godly, when the stars themselves were pulled down to light the skies of NYC all on their own, an exclusive time, an exclusive place ... and then it all came horrifically crashing down.
Imagine now coming to the city then, when all that was left was coldness, threadbare children, and not enough of anything to prosper: food, work, materials, promise, or laughter. A time when everything was vanished, everything moved on, when the stars and the gods had seemingly had enough, and as quickly as they came, they left, and they left nothing in their wake. The city which had the worlds ear, the worlds imagination, the worlds curiosity, now had only itself to listen to, to be inspired by, an age when you do things for yourself, for your own personal reasons, not because everyone is watching still, when everyone cheers for you, no, this is that lonely time when the dance has left, your music is no longer en vogue, but its the only music that comes forth from your heart, it's your music, what else can you sing or play? What would it be to come from this time, in the clutter, from the abandonment?
And what would if mean not to come, not to be born into one or the other time, but to have lived through so many of them. To have see it all rise, seen it all fall, and seen it rise again. And what still I began to wonder about our time. We've seen mini-rises, mini-falls, but more or less a stableness to everything. And yet, not a day passes where a news story comes forth, a meaningless pop art fad explodes, when it seems as though the roller-coaster is falling downward, we're not climbing upward, we're not being pulled towards some wonderful new vantage point, some rise never before stood, no, doesn't it seem specifically not like that in this particular time? Doesn't it seem like we, my generation or there abouts, came after another great time (the 60's) and for some time since we've never been able to fulfill that time's promise, that time's hope, that time's illuminating vision? And now, maybe, we're so far gone living out that 60's hopeful vision, we're so far removed now from that burning fire of change, we're gripped in something else now, like we turned our back on that, never saw it to fruition, and now the roller-coaster is at the point where in your gut you know it, you're anticipating it, this thing is going to go downward, and quickly.
And yet ...and yet ... no matter what the times there are these other things, these timeless things, and maybe that's indeed why we call them timeless. Tonight our baby girl Claire fell asleep on my chest as I sat in a rocking chair. One of her little hands held mine. What time was it? What time ever mattered at this moment? You want this moment to be frozen in time, and indeed it is, in our hearts, in our total beings. "This is the time" you whisper in your mind, "this is the time." Your heart breaths a little deeper, to the very depths of itself, to where tears are pulled forth, "this is the time." And if you never look ahead, never look back, it can be the only time you ever know.
_______
PS - as a aside on time, this video is 12 years old. Seriously. 12 years old. I can’t fathom that yet. But I can fathom “been so long since I’ve seen the ocean, I think I should.” I want to see little miss C in the waters splashing about.
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