I have a couple of Lamontagne's albums, and I like them though I'm not a huge fan. Lamontagne has a soul-folk-blues vibe that hits me in the musical sweet spot when I'm in that kind of listening mood.
The song featured today comes from Lamontagne's most recent release, God Willin' & The Creek Don't Rise, and the tune acts as rhetorical hand grenade against the perception that New York City is such a vibrant and great place to be.
Take that, you damn Yankees.
For me, it also touches on how American culture has a bias or this silly idea that large cities are the places "to be," that smaller towns, rural areas, and the Midwest in general is "flyover America" and/or "boring." Call it "East Coast bias" or what Wendell Berry has called a war against rural America, there's a pervasive sentimentality about New York or other large cities in our culture.
Over the years, I've met lots of young adults who are in that in-between stage of their lives where the future is uncertain. Often, when asked about their plans, they've told me they're planning on moving to some major metropolitan area without any real game plan, and the two cities that often come up are New York and Seattle, which are two of the most expensive places to live in the US.
Since, as Mrs. Nasty could tell you, I'm notoriously tight-fisted with money, I often thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be smarter to pick a cheaper place to live?" when hearing about a person's plans to live in a metro area on the one of the coasts. In addition, there are really interesting US cities that don't have all kinds of media-induced sentimentality and nostalgia about them that offer just as good if not better opportunities for people.
New Orleans, St. Louis, the Twin Cities, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Chattanooga, Portland, Fort Collins, Little Rock, and Memphis come to mind.
I just got to get me somewhere,
Somewhere that I can be free,
Get me out of New York City, son,
New York City's killing me.
2 comments:
Lots of thoughts about this, so many that I might end up doing my own blog post on the subject (so thanks for the prompt, QBN).
I lived in NYC for seven years and it changed me in ways I doubt any other city could. It is a city to the nth degree, always. Everything there seems bigger and more intense than anywhere else in America.
That said, there's a reason I no longer live there. I chose to leave because in the end NYC seemed more about money than anything else. It's a great place to live if you are privileged, but it is not the scene for struggling writers, artists, and musicians the way people still imagine (so I hear you on the sentimentalization thing). What's more, I began to feel oddly passive there. I'd eat other people's food, read other people's books, watch other people's plays and hear other people's music, but I wasn't creating anything myself. I moved to NYC to be a writer and didn't do one damn bit of writing until I left. Now I have two book manuscripts. They're both failures, of course, but at least...er...something.
And I agree that there are a whole lot of other cities in America that are fun and interesting (and more affordable). I love cities; I've never been to one that wasn't worth the trip in some way.
Thanks for the response. I thought this might get you and others thinking/responding.
When I hear people say, "I think I'll go to New York," my first reaction is that they're living out a cliche, like how some people think English professors smoke pipes and wear jackets with elbow patches while they rail against capitalism.
Your note about passivity is very interesting. I'm intrigued.
In my second job search go-round, I eliminated all kinds of possible applications and some jobs post-interview because of the cost of living of some locales. I think we would have enjoyed living in Rhode Island or a certain town in Colorado, but, man, there's no way we could have afforded it. My last name ain't Rockefeller. It's NASTY, Babe.
I like cities too, but I'm not fond of subdivisions and the suburbs all that much.
When I was a freshman at Truman, I met a girl from St. Louis, and we were having a conversation about where we're from, etc. She explained she lived in this or that subdivision in "South County." I had no idea what she was talking about, so I asked her what a subdivision was since I had never heard of the term before.
Suffice to say, she wasn't impressed. She thought I was a moron. Always impressing the ladies...
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