An Angel

The film Bill Cunningham New York was shown in DC last spring, but did not make a splash. The only place where the film was a hit is NYC. No surprise. The film is about the permanent fixture of Sunday New York Times and the city itself- incredible, saint Bill Cunningham.

His 2-3 minutes “On the Street” photo essay is one of my favorite treats in the Sunday online edition of the New York Times. This is a sample: http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/07/29/fashion/100000000973237/on-the-street--sizzling.html I was always curious about the old man on a bicycle who takes pictures and narrates the essay. He has an innocent charm and is just a bit of enigma to keep you wondering. His comments are incredibly intelligent, have slight irony and zero arrogance. I even paid a little homage to him in this entry: http://sbelenkaya.blogspot.com/2011/06/on-third-day-of-three-days-weekend.html

For those who didn’t have chance to see the film, here is a short synopsis: Bill is in his 80s. He goes to church every Sunday. He lives alone in a tiny apartment in Manhattan. The apartment doesn’t have a kitchen. The space which used to be a kitchen is taken by file cabinets with his photo archive. He has never been married or even in a relationship. Most days Bill spends his time riding a cheap bike around the city and taking pictures of people who dress smartly and know how to walk the city like a runway. He loves New York, the crowds, the variety. Union Square market on Saturday morning is one of his favorite spots. He himself dresses in the most boring and conventional way. The film shows him on the streets and salons of New York and Paris, at home with his lifelong friends and neighbors and in interviews about his life and work. It is so incredibly odd that such unassuming and seemingly plain fellow made it BIG in the world of fashion, probably the most self involve and pretentious of all.

I keep thinking about Bill for months and came back to my notes while writing and re-writing this entry many times. There is something in Bill’s character which the film manages to reveal. I have a difficult time putting it in words. It is probably not just one quality but a combination of kindness, creativity, spirituality and a very special kind of freedom. I’m trying to understand and see if I can find it in myself. I want to call this internal freedom.

Among eleven definitions of the word FREEDOM in the dictionary this one seems the most common when people talk about personnel freedom: the right or privilege of unrestricted use or access. This meaning of freedom is easily understood and closely related to being wealthy. Even more trivial this immediately translates to an ability to buy whatever you want. But there is also a different kind of freedom: a person can free self from wanting the stuff and experience life not through possessions, but through observations, learning, reflection, friendship and most importantly through creative process. I know it is difficult to imagine especially in a society where everything relies on the buying and selling. It seems that life itself is impossible without that. This film is an important reminder that life and happiness are absolutely possible without it. If one made a choice to experience life in this alternative way, it almost automatically leads to losing an incentive to earn money beyond the ability to buy only very basic things. If you follow this line of thoughts, you realize that money becomes so much less important and therefore your choices of how you want to live are so much wider because you are less dependent on money. That makes the person free! Free to create, to pursue a passion, free to spend time with people one enjoys spending time with.

But it is not that easy. There are certain desires which limit our freedom severally. Some of them are considered to be a social good, like having family and children and are necessary for continuing human kind. But let’s face it: the decision to have family and kids in many cases stops people from pursuing their dreams. So if your freedom is something you are cognizant about, the impact of family responsibilities should be carefully analyzed. The lifelong commitment to have kids could be a blessing, where freedom is exchanged for experience of raising a child.

Going back to Bill. He is one of very few people who freed himself not only from desires for material possessions, but also from family ties and built his life around what he really loves to do. His sacrifice was probably not a conscious one initially. He is gay and Catholic, so for him to pursue his sexual desires created a major internal impasse. What followed is a complete freedom from relationships, family commitments, possessions, and ambitions. Creative process provided an outlet for passion. With that he is full of joy, free of pretence and almost like an angel, blissful and completely really free.

In the City on July 4th

We have a fine family tradition of going to NYC on 4th of July weekend. It started many years ago and over time has evolved from being a Broadway show marathon to an “exploring the city weekend”. As it often happens with these NYC trips I feel overwhelmed and energized by the intensity of the city. In a weekend packed with events and 300 pictures taken over the course of 3 days, I was not sure how to write this blog entry without boring my few readers. As a result I decided to write just about few things that I could not keep to myself.
We arrived on Friday afternoon and walked to our hotel in Midtown Manhatten. Arriving at Penn station is always overwhelming. The density of city life in that part of town is overpowering, devastating or awesome depending how you feel about huge crowds. I somehow manage to feel all of that simultaneously. As we reached Herald Square we heard live music coming from the middle of Broadway. As we got closer we saw a young man playing Chopin on a pink piano in the middle of the street:
It was clear right there, that this was going to be a fun trip! After we checked into the hotel we went to Eataly for lunch. The Italian food empire opened recently in NYC just off Madison Square Park by famous gourmet food industry VIPs. http://eatalyny.com/
The place consists of huge market with best Italian food money ($$$$$) can buy and a few restaurants serving pizza, pasta and other Italian favorites. There is not much to say except that it is simply Italian food heaven in the middle of NYC. There is a lot to see and salivate. All the usual suspects are there: the armies of pasta,
the cheese:
sea food:
wines:
and guess what more pasta:
We had lunch in the beer garden on the roof
They are making beer there:
Being on the roof of the tall building in Manhattan is a great experience:
Add to this drinking cold beer in the middle of a crowd of young, beautiful and rich people gives you an illusion of being on to the top of the world in more than one sense of the word:
On Saturday we went to flea market in Brooklyn. There were a number of very amusing items:
but the food carts were amazing and worth coming for more
The star attraction of the visit was Alexander McQueen’s Savage Beauty exhibit in the Met. I’m not very much into fashion and the only thing I knew about McQueen was that he was considered a brilliant designer and committed suicide in 2010 on the top of his career at the age of 40. The exhibit is a blockbuster and I was a bit skeptical mostly because I’m always skeptical of blockbusters. This is the third fashion show exhibit I've seen at the Met and first which without doubt deserves be a part of a major world museum. Not that Channel exhibit we saw at the Met a few years ago was not fascinating and absolutely was worth going to. It was amazing display of the brilliant master tailor who reinvented the women’s fashion and created the modern clothing.
The Alexander McQueen show has only few “clothing” items in the first room of the exhibit, but as you move to the next rooms you suddenly are in another world. This world is not about clothes even though it has mannequins dressed in the garments created by the designer.
It is obvious that the garments are not created for wear, but as artistic expressions in the manner of paintings or sculptures. The artist takes you to the dark corners of his mind and exposes raw emotions and deep subconscious dreams in form of dresses made of falcon feathers, clam shells and adorned with skulls of vultures.
You are suddenly in the Venetian carnival gone creepy with women transformed into chess pieces by dressing them in sculptured leather garments decorated by horse hair or to fantastic creatures covered by coats made of hair. The installation in the Met was accompanied by the music and recorded videos of the runaway shows were collections were demonstrated. It contributed a great deal to the understanding what moved the artist to create his pieces. As I walked out from the exhibit into the regular museum space the art pieces surrounding me became invisible, my ability to accept images was exhausted by the overwhelming effect of Alexander McQueen creations.
With all the multitude of cultural attractions for me the city walking is still the best. The fact that New Yorkers refer to New York as the City by itself is very telling. It underlines the idea that there is only one place which you call the City and there will be no ambiguity in communication. There is certain brashness in this attitude. But at the same time I feel it makes sense. The magical combination of diversity of everything, freedom, energy creates the wow feeling every time when you walking around Manhattan with your eyes open.
The following two pictures were taken from the same spot:
The random strange things you see all the time and everywhere:
Both New Yorkers and visitors (I’m just one of them) are desperate to seize the feeling and are taking pictures all the time hoping that these images could preserve and transfer the wow feeling:
They rarely can but it never stops them from trying…

Relationships

A strange metaphor about city life came to my mind the other day as a result of many discussions with my friends who live in the suburbs. It needs some background in order to understand. I usually don’t blog about my personnel life, but I will do a little bit here to explain the metaphor. I was born in a big city in the former Soviet Union and spent my childhood and youth there. I lived in the center of the city and most of my friends lived nearby; I walked to school, the grocery store and the local movie theater. When I immigrated to the United States, I ended up living in suburbs like many of my compatriots. I spent about 15 years living in Bethesda. Many of my readers know that Bethesda is a suburb of Washington DC and considered to be one of the most prestigious places to live. We lived in the heart of Bethesda and it was very convenient. The metro was in walking distance, the ride to the downtown DC was only 20 min. In many big cities this would not be a suburb at all; but since DC is not that big, it is a suburb. I went to Bethesda for lunch on Saturday. The parking lots in all their glory are still there I had lunch in my favorite restaurant: Bethesda became even nicer since I left.

When my daughter graduated from high school and went off to college, we had no reasons to stay in Bethesda, but we did mostly due to inertia. The Bethesda period of my life was continued until a fortunate visit of my old friend from San Francisco. During her stay with us in Bethesda we visited her cousin who lived near Logan Circle The neighborhood was not as nice then as it is now, but I observed how people live there and it felt lively and familiar. It reminded me of being young and living in the city I suddenly felt like a stupid bird in the cage with an open door who had forgotten how to fly. I came to United States all the way from the Soviet Union and I was paralyzed and could not move from Bethesda to DC. We rapidly moved to the city and our only regret was that we wasted a few extra years in the desirable suburb.

After settling down and getting accustom to the new place I realized that my life had radically changed. I spent some time thinking why there was such a difference in my being. I knew it was related to city living but did not understand why I felt so different. The lifestyle I had in Bethesda was urban: I didn’t drive to work; we had a lot of restaurants within walking distance and an artsy movie theater two blocks away. So what made such a difference? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I now live in a beautiful area and I do have some esthetic sensibilities. Although I have lived in DC for several years, I keep walking around and taking pictures. The people are much more diverse and there are more places to walk. But there was something else which I could not put my finger on. I think I know now. It is a relationship.

This is how it works. When you live in a suburb your relationship to the city is very similar to your relationship with a neighbor. If you like the city, you go there often, if you don’t you go there only if you have to. Same thing with a neighbor, if you like your neighbors you visit them often, otherwise only if you have to. You know a few things about the city: historical places, monuments and museums, well known restaurants. These are places which the city is ready to show to visitors. The same about a neighbor, you see a nice house and well taken care of lawn. You know that they have a couple kids, a dog and go for a bicycle ride on Sunday. What you don’t know if they love each other. What do they dream about? You don’t know their secrets or for that matter where they keep an extra rolls of toilet paper. Not that all of that is interesting, but since there is a lot you don’t know you cannot tell.
When you live in the city it is a different connection. Your relationship to a city is like your relationship with your spouse. You live with him (her). You know or you hope you know everything. You have strong feelings which are not at all similar to the feelings you have for your neighbor (unless you are having an affair, but this is a different story). You see the city evolving around you. You get happy when things are improving and upset when things get worse. The city became a family member – it is part of your life.
Where does such intimacy come from? The best answer I’m able to find is: because the city is a living organism, but the suburbs are somewhat artificial creations. The type of attachment I have can only be developed to something which is alive. I never felt that Bethesda was a part of my life. It was just a place I lived. The place was convenient, well served, with a very wealthy and educated population. But I didn’t miss it for a second when I left. I lived there for more than 15 years and did not develop roots which could keep me there. Bethesda has a lot going for it. It mimics the city life nicely. It has a small downtown with a few walking streets with restaurants stores and even an occasional art gallery. The condo complex where I used to live is just one block from there: But OMG how similar it is to Reston or Rockville. These little downtowns are so impersonal and so much alike. It is very difficult to develop a relationship with a place like that. I can easily come up with four types of suburbs and majority of them will fit nicely in one of these types. So here we go: wealthy/liberal, wealthy/conservative, not so wealthy/liberal and not so wealthy conservative. The details can be filled in so fast for each type, I won’t even bother.
Cities on the other hand cannot be categorized that quickly. I cannot come up with defined city types, because they have personalities which have organically developed over time and since they all have different histories; their personalities are very different. These personalities are changing depending on the economic conditions, city demographic and who knows what else. But each time period leaves marks and adds new details which all together create a complex character which makes the city alive. It is only natural to be a part of it, develop roots, and grow together; just like with a spouse…

Season Opening: Summer

It is the third day of a three day weekend. The grocery shopping, laundry and preparation for dinner are all done. It is hot outside; a heat wave pushed the temperatures up into the low 90s. There are choices to make: to stay inside and enjoy a lazy day under AC reading and internet browsing or venture aimlessly outside and observe early summer in the city.
I decided to get out. Because of my office job I try to use every opportunity to spend time outside. I’m not a big nature lover, but I love city living and urban hiking. I do have several qualms about nature which I built over time to excuse my relative indifference towards it. My main objection to wild nature is that there are no people or any trace of human existence. I understand that real nature lovers find that attractive but in my view it is people and their activities and creations are the most interesting and fascinating things in the world. Unless you believe in God, natural landscapes have no ideas or design behind them and are randomly appointed based on location and weather condition. The beauty of these landscapes is attributed by people who see patterns and color arrangements which please them and give meaning to randomness.
On the other hand, the urban landscapes in their better representations are full of ideas and connect nature with human habitat in creative and fun ways. The human spirit is present in these landscapes even when streets are empty, but of course it is people who really bring city to life. It is all for them.

So let’s take a look what is out there?
Here is the hot afternoon sun illuminate the street as I walk out of the building
and lighting up the top of the tree What a fabulous idea to plant the tree with bright burgundy leaves in front of the grey building!
Because of the heat the streets are empty
but full of human playfulness expressed in lively building colors
details of the doors and porches
sudden lion wall relief and cute flower arrangement next to the basement window
The way people use architecture and set up little urban landscape is thoughtful, delightful and brings a joy if you choose to pause and see

As I reached the 14 St I suddenly realized that I’m not the only crazy one who got out on the heat –there are other people and it looks they are having fun Here what is going on:
The crowd is lively: young, dressed to have fun and embrace the heat:
The local mini fashion show is in full parade with cute sandals
and hats:


and summer dresses:

Completed with a live band
and positive behavioral support staff it is a perfect opening for the Summer in the City show.