NEW YORK « In Which We Take A Quick Trip Back To The Place Where Things Stop Feeling Familiar »
Monday, June 4, 2012 at 10:49AM 
Sincerely
by JANE HU
It's still a really big mess thinking about "me" right now, especially in New York.
I want to say:
1
The city feels so, so permissive, but also the opposite of that.
2
Banter and cleverness is basically just a way of levelling out affect — one communicates the possibility of mutual understanding through a performance of dialogue. Really, it's just a way to avoid awkwardness — to keep conversation going (what New York is best at?) without giving any of your true affect.
3
New York is defined by its skyline — but it is just as sprawling as it is vertical. When you're in the midst of New York, you're psychologically as well as physically on the ground. If you're a newcomer, like most of us are, you often have no clue where you are.
4
As a 23 year old who came here mostly to write, I feel like introversion no longer works, especially with the internet.
5
Since this city doesn't feel like its ideology (find your essence! be your best self!) has changed since the 1950s, we need to think about what the internet does to our sense of self in New York. Especially when you can be creative anywhere.
6
I might never write a very confessionally thing about New York. Maybe after I am out of New York, and clear my head and figure out how to approach it.
7
What is your reason for coming down to New York if you're simply going to sit inside and read books and screens all day? What is anyone's reason for coming to New York?
8
Native New Yorker means alien everywhere else. It's a weird thing to belong, as though rooted, to this place - but since this place is the epicenter of what represents the good life elsewhere, you feel so safe but it must be stressful.
9
Where did people get the idea that one can find oneself in New York? This city makes me physically, as well as emotionally, dizzy/unmoored.
10
It's the absolute worst place to figure yourself out because it runs on frenzy - it's so fast all the time.
11
In a room with writers and thinkers in New York, you constantly banter without risking anything. No one is showing you what they think about you. No one will validate your feelings or show you when you're acting off-script. Right?
12
I connect to the West Coast more. I'm not sure why. It's just as fake, but at least it acknowledges that or embraces it in another way. I think I'd like the traffic.
13
So you're in New York to become an intellectual and you realize everyone around you is doing the same and doing it better and doing it maybe (maybe not?) without going home each night and fretting about it and wringing their hands about it.
14
I compare myself to others so I don't end up being swept into a stereotype because other people in New York are generally holding onto something old and really problematic.
15
There is very little room for just staying because staying is not only financially impossible. Staying, in my situation, is a form of failure. And also a form of being alone.
16
You can't own your privilege/narcissism, and still get to comment wryly on how you know you're a narcissist. At least the 20-somethings do this. I want to go to a party where it ends with everyone crying.
17
I hate the sexual politics happening in the room.
18
All New York stories are about coming and going. I want to know what it's like to talk about staying. Because that's what I want for myself. A place that will let me come and go, but also would let me stay too.
19
The worst part about all this is: I feel like a cliché!
20
I just can't self-consciously write about my Feelings about this anymore. Because then it feels like a performance which is the opposite of what I want to be. That is what I think New York lady writers do: perform their feelings.
21
Do you know how many e-mails have prompted me to burst into tears this month?
22
I think I am leaving for real pretty soon.
Jane Hu is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Montreal. She twitters here, and you can find more of her writing here. She last wrote in these pages about her summer reading. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here.
Photos by the author.
"Fiddle" - Olivier Jarda (mp3)
"Tendencies" - Olivier Jarda (mp3)
The new album from Olivier Jarda is titled Good Luck Cartel.
Reader Comments (4)
Signed, native New Yorker, not currently living there.