For 40 years, New York has been the untouchable, iconic mystery to me. The obsession started with Sesame Street, was only fueled by The Cosby Show, then cemented by Friends. And of course,there were countless books, other shows, and movies along the way, all adding to the NYC question in my mind, creating a vision for it in my head.
Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve. Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I have 40 years worth of piecing together two-dimensional images and creating some kind of imaginary framework for them in my mind.
It’s important to me that I record all this before we get there because I know that everything that I’ve seen and believed to be true up to this point — everything i have imagined — will change soon enough. It will pale in the face of the reality. And then I’ll look back and wonder how I ever saw it differently, how my mind hadn’t imagined it for what it truly was. I want to remember this feeling. It’s like an old friend.
I can’t explain why NYC is so important to me. It just is. Maybe it’s the writer in me, but I’ve heard that New York is a writer’s paradise. I love life and all its moving parts. And the fact that this historical city encompasses the moving parts of so many people over so many centuries fascinates me to no end.
For the first 40 years of my life, I have lived without understanding and fully knowing New York City. Now I’ll get to go the rest of my life knowing it.
I am furiously typing and posting this before our plane takes off in Cincinnati. T minus two hours until two-dimensional becomes three.
Our adventure begins...
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