"Being born and raised in New York, but nowhere near Manhattan, gives a kid a skewed perspective of the term 'Hometown'. Things are still that "Larger Than Life" sort of big but never glamorous, still over-bright and siren-loud but somehow tuned to a different frequency, where the only constant is change. From that stems the weirdest sense of homesickness for a place you still live. But there is a bitter-sweetness to it. And there is an endlessness to it. Fast and fierce and furious as this town can be, you stick around long enough you learn 'keeping up' isn't the answer. Sometimes letting it overwhelm, just letting it flow is the only way to really be.
I left NY when I was 15. Sick to shit of it. Did the wanderlust tour of 30 homes in 3 years; London, London's much preferred bastard brother LIVERPOOL, Ballintoy, Paris, Montreal, San Francisco, Seattle, Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, well,... I'll stop there cuz the list gets pretty effin' long.
But I missed New York, functioning anywhere else was work, New York just flows. I didn't mean to come back; I just stopped over from Los Angeles the morning of 9/11. It seemed the universe, the world, the city herself had grounded me.
For a year after 9/11, on my new queen-size bed in my new four-story walk up, I'd lay for hours, dangling my head back to look thru the window up at the broad hi-rise stapled sky and watch planes fly by, willing them to not fall.
Maybe we all did that, I don't know. I still travel, lots, but because the city needs me, I come home."
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