My life in Brooklyn is one of those love/hate stories from the movies. I go through periods of complete wonder and satisfaction with how I could have landed in one of the most diverse corners of the world, and other times I find myself wishing I were somewhere else, asking, “How did I get here, and why am I STILL here?”
But I’ve discovered the tipping point at which you become “a New Yorker”, and that is the point at which you cannot stand the city any more for one second, and yet, you can’t bring yourself to leave it behind. The New Yorker is cynical but still soft somewhere, singing the tune that’s also in your head since you both heard it just before descending the steps to the train. Weird coincidences in this city happen all the damn time, but then again, I have ceased to believe that anything is ever really a coincidence.
Anyhow, back to my love/hate. As an artist, it’s difficult here. Perhaps I used to think it was difficult everywhere, but that’s before I discovered the Europeans’ appreciation for true art that celebrates beauty and carries with it a real message — sometimes gritty, sometimes lovely, but always worthy of a stage. I glimpsed this cultural richness as a college girl living in Spain, but it was as a touring artist in Berlin that I felt more welcomed with open arms than I’ve ever felt on home turf.
As I prepare myself to leave my home country within the next few months and plant roots in the artistic music community of Berlin, I find the whole exercise of leaving the U.S. as an eery foreshadowing of the direction in which American culture is going these days. To think, at four years of age, I sang of “my land of liberty” as if I meant it.
Now, twenty-six years later, the liberty is in leaving.
