Place Matters

A few days ago I checked out this photostream of photos of New York in the 1930's - 1940's. And they're amazing. As I went through one after the other I realized that I knew this city, and that those pictures - even though they're 60 or 70 years old - show a way of life that is at once familiar and comforting. And it's not because they're ... grainy black & white photos of New York depicting a ubiquitous "New York" that lives in this country's collective imagination through films and stories. It's because I know that building, and this street view - I know what it feels like to laze on a stoop with friends, I see little kids silhouetted against a grand skyline all the time... this view is right outside my office window today. I've hung out in a park, at night on a date, trying to create a fireside intimacy in the most public of places. And Times Square in the rain - even though you're drenched, far from where you want to be and cursing everything in sight - is romantic. (Even lovelier in a massive snow storm... I can still remember a sudden whiteout snowstorm about a decade ago, walking through a near deserted Times Square, its neon colors muted by a few inches of white overlay, wanting only to share that wondrous and lovely experience with someone who was at once so far away and so completely inside my every thought. A beautiful and melancholy Times Square is the perfect backdrop for unrequited love.)

What looking through these photos did for me, was to connect my life, in its everyday mundaneness to a history of shared experiences. I think only older cities can do that for us - show us where our patch fits in the overall quilt. Many places in this country are still forming - what they are today is nothing like what they were 60-70 years ago. I was surprisingly, unexpectedly happy to see the dominant threads of my life evident in the New York of more than a half century ago. All of a sudden, just by living my life, I was carrying on a time-honored tradition.