Will Work for Inspiration<\/a> by David Byrne in Creative Time Reports.<\/p>\nThe Text:<\/strong> I\u2019m writing this in Venice, Italy. This city is a pleasantly confusing maze, once an island of fortresses, and now a city of tourists, culture (biennales galore) and crumbling relics. Venice used to be the most powerful city in Europe\u2014a military, mercantile and cultural leader. Sort of like New York.<\/p>\nVenice is now a case study in the complete transformation of a city (there\u2019s public transportation, but NO cars). Is it a living city? Is it a fossil? The mayor of Venice recently wrote a letter to the New York Review of Books, arguing that his city is indeed a place to live, not simply a theme park for tourists (he would like very much if the big cruise ships steered clear). I guess it\u2019s a living place if you count tourism as an industry, which I suppose it is. New York has its share of tourists, too. I wave to the double-decker buses from my bike, but the passengers never wave back. Why? Am I not an attraction?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
New York was recently voted the world\u2019s favorite city\u2014but when you break down the survey\u2019s results, the city comes in at #1 for business and only #5 for living. Fifth place isn\u2019t completely embarrassing, but what are the criteria? What is it that attracts people to this or any city? Forget the business part. I\u2019ve been in Hong Kong, and unless one already has the means to live luxuriously, business hubs aren\u2019t necessarily good places for living. Cities may have mercantile exchange as one of their reasons for being, but once people are lured to a place for work, they need more than offices, gyms and strip clubs to really live.<\/p>\n
Work aside, we come to New York for the possibility of interaction and inspiration. Sometimes that possibility of serendipitous encounters\u2014and I don\u2019t mean in the meat market\u2014is the principal lure. If one were to vote based on criteria like comfort or economic security, then one wonders why anyone would ever vote for New York at all over Copenhagen, Stockholm or some other less antagonistic city that offers practical amenities like affordable health care, free universities, free museums, common spaces and, yes, bike lanes. But why can\u2019t one have both\u2014the invigorating energy and the civic, intelligent humanism?<\/p>\n
Maybe those Scandinavian cities do in fact have both, but New York has something else to offer, thanks to successive waves of immigrants that have shaped the city. Arriving from overseas, one is immediately struck by the multi-ethnic makeup of New York. Other cities might be cleaner, more efficient or comfortable, but New York is funky, in the original sense of the word\u2014New York smells like sex.<\/p>\n
Immigrants to New York have contributed to the city\u2019s vibrancy decade after decade. In some cities around the world, immigrants are relegated to being a worker class, or a guest-worker class; they\u2019re not invited to the civic table. New York has generally been more welcoming, though people of color have never been invited to the table to the same extent as European immigrants.<\/p>\n
I moved to New York in the mid-1970s because it was a center of cultural ferment\u2014especially in the visual arts (my dream trajectory, until I made a detour), though there was a musical draw too, even before the downtown scene exploded. New York was legendary. It was where things happened, on the East Coast anyway. One knew in advance that life in New York would not be easy, but there were cheap rents in cold-water lofts without heat, and the excitement of being here made up for those hardships. I didn\u2019t move to New York to make a fortune. Survival, at that time, and at my age then, was enough. Hardship was the price one paid for being in the thick of it.<\/p>\n
As one gets a little older, those hardships aren\u2019t so romantic\u2014they\u2019re just hard. The tradeoff begins to look like a real pain in the ass if one has been here for years and years and is barely eking out a living. The idea of making an ongoing creative life\u2014whether as a writer, an artist, a filmmaker or a musician\u2014is difficult unless one gets a foothold on the ladder, as I was lucky enough to do. I say \u201clucky\u201d because I have no illusions that talent is enough; there are plenty of talented folks out there who never get the break they deserve.<\/p>\n
Some folks believe that hardship breeds artistic creativity. I don\u2019t buy it. One can put up with poverty for a while when one is young, but it will inevitably wear a person down. I don\u2019t romanticize the bad old days. I find the drop in crime over the last couple of decades refreshing. Manhattan and Brooklyn, those vibrant playgrounds, are way less scary than they were when I moved here. I have no illusions that there was a connection between that city on its knees and a flourishing of creativity; I don\u2019t believe that crime, danger and poverty make for good art. That\u2019s bullshit. But I also don\u2019t believe that the drop in crime means the city has to be more exclusively for those who have money. Increases in the quality of life should be for all, not just a few.<\/p>\n
The city is a body and a mind\u2014a physical structure as well as a repository of ideas and information. Knowledge and creativity are resources. If the physical (and financial) parts are functional, then the flow of ideas, creativity and information are facilitated. The city is a fountain that never stops: it generates its energy from the human interactions that take place in it. Unfortunately, we\u2019re getting to a point where many of New York\u2019s citizens have been excluded from this equation for too long. The physical part of our city\u2014the body\u2014has been improved immeasurably. I\u2019m a huge supporter of the bike lanes and the bike-share program, the new public plazas, the waterfront parks and the functional public transportation system. But the cultural part of the city\u2014the mind\u2014has been usurped by the top 1 percent.<\/p>\n
What then is the future of New York, or really of any number of big urban centers, in this New Gilded Age? Does culture have a role to play? If we look at the city as it is now, then we would have to say that it looks a lot like the divided city that presumptive mayor Bill De Blasio has been harping about: most of Manhattan and many parts of Brooklyn are virtual walled communities, pleasure domes for the rich (which, full disclosure, includes me and some of the Creative Time team), and aside from those of us who managed years ago to find our niche and some means of income, there is no room for fresh creative types. Middle-class people can barely afford to live here anymore, so forget about emerging artists, musicians, actors, dancers, writers, journalists and small business people. Bit by bit, the resources that keep the city vibrant are being eliminated.<\/p>\n
This city doesn\u2019t make things anymore. Creativity, of all kinds, is the resource we have to draw on as a city and a country in order to survive. In the recent past, before the 2008 crash, the best and the brightest were lured into the world of finance. Many a bright kid graduating from university knew that they could become fairly wealthy almost instantly if they found employment at a hedge fund or some similar institution. But before the financial sector came to dominate the world, they might have made things: in publishing, manufacturing, television, fashion, you name it. As in many other countries the lure of easy bucks Hoovered this talent and intelligence up\u2014and made it difficult for those other kinds of businesses to attract any of the top talent.<\/p>\n
A culture of arrogance, hubris and winner-take-all was established. It wasn\u2019t cool to be poor or struggling. The bully was celebrated and cheered. The talent pool became a limited resource for any industry, except Wall Street. I\u2019m not talking about artists, writers, filmmakers and musicians\u2014they weren\u2019t exactly on a trajectory toward Wall Street anyway\u2014but any businesses that might have employed creative individuals were having difficulties surviving, and naturally the arty types had a hard time finding employment too.<\/p>\n
Unlike Iceland, where the government let misbehaving banks fail and talented kids became less interested in leaping into the cesspool of finance, in New York there has been no public rejection of the culture that led to the financial crisis. Instead, there has been tacit encouragement of the banking industry\u2019s actions from figures like Mayor Bloomberg. The nation\u2019s largest financial institutions are almost all still around, still \u201ctoo big to fail\u201d and as powerful as ever. One might hope that enlightened bankers might emulate the Medicis and fund culture-makers\u2014both emerging artists and those still in school\u2014as a way of ensuring a continued talent pool that would invent stuff and fill the world with ideas and inspiration, but other than buying blue-chip art for their walls and donating to some institutions what is, for them, small change, they don\u2019t seem to be very much interested in replenishing the talent pool.<\/p>\n
One would expect that the 1 percent would have a vested interest in keeping the civic body healthy at least\u2014that they\u2019d want green parks, museums and symphony halls for themselves and their friends, if not everyone. Those indeed are institutions to which they habitually contribute. But it\u2019s like funding your own clubhouse. It doesn\u2019t exactly do much for the rest of us or for the general health of the city. At least, we might sigh, they do that, as they don\u2019t pay taxes\u2014that we know.<\/p>\n
Many of the wealthy don\u2019t even live here. In the neighborhood where I live (near the art galleries in Chelsea), I can see three large condos from my window that are pretty much empty all the time. What the fuck!? Apparently rich folks buy the apartments, but might only stay in them a few weeks out of a year. So why should they have an incentive to maintain or improve the general health of the city? They\u2019re never here.<\/p>\n
This real estate situation\u2014a topic New Yorkers love to complain about over dinner\u2014doesn\u2019t help the future health of the city. If young, emerging talent of all types can\u2019t find a foothold in this city, then it will be a city closer to Hong Kong or Abu Dhabi than to the rich fertile place it has historically been. Those places might have museums, but they don\u2019t have culture. Ugh. If New York goes there\u2014more than it already has\u2014I\u2019m leaving.<\/p>\n
But where will I go? Join the expat hipsters upstate in Hudson?<\/p>\n
Can New York change its trajectory a little bit, become more inclusive and financially egalitarian? Is that possible? I think it is. It\u2019s still the most stimulating and exciting place in the world to live and work, but it\u2019s in danger of walking away from its greatest strengths. The physical improvements are happening\u2014though much of the crumbling public infrastructure still needs fixing. If the social and economic situation can be addressed, we\u2019re halfway there. It really could be a model of how to make a large, economically sustainable and creatively energetic city. I want to live in THAT city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Article: Will Work for Inspiration by David Byrne in Creative Time Reports. The Text: I\u2019m writing this in Venice, Italy. This city is a pleasantly confusing maze, once an island of fortresses, and now a city of tourists, culture (biennales galore) and crumbling relics. Venice used to be the most powerful city in Europe\u2014a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"David](\"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/david-byrne.jpg\")
<\/p>\n