The American Dream

The world is changing and London seems hot with blurs of hoodies and bovver boots and slogans. I keep getting flashes of burning benches and photos spread across Facebook of friends in the heart of the violence. Everything in Britain seems fraught and ready to blow, the politicians on the radio are fretting, and the royalty look on shocked. It feels like finally my generation has kicked the bucket and are screaming for our lives, our rights.

I have run away to New York at a very interesting time and people here look on with blank faces. They are leading decedent, frivolous lives. Just like the kids in this Bertolucci film, caught in the middle of the student riots in Paris and all they can do is look inward at themselves and fuck and smoke fags.

Well I’m only doing half of this, less fucking more music. I suddenly feel like I have stepped down into the real life that is New York and all I can hear is music.

Everything is beginning to flow here, without effort. I go to a gig and then meet someone there, a musician or a poet and they lead me to another gig, a party, or wild Balkan gypsy bar. This place was particularly interesting, it reminded me of one of my favorite films Transylvania directed by Tony Gatlif.

The doorman was dark and rough looking, still young but you could see had lived many lives already. He looked like a musician, but when I asked him he shrugged and answered in a broad Brooklyn accent that he did nothing, just worked. He told me this was the place where Gogo Bordello was born. A dark shabby corridor led to a steaming bar full of the strange smells of hooker pipes and foreign voices. There were many women dancing and men drunk smashing glasses and calling to each other across the bar.

Apparently a friend has told me I am getting into the New York spirit. This means that I have dropped my British awkwardness and am chatting to people. At first I found this unsettling the way people in the corner shop ask you how you are feeling or the ticket guy at the subway station wants to know how your day is getting along. But now I seem to be making new friends without that strained British smile. It’s very different from the blank looks you get from Londoners if you try to spark any sort of connection. They think your either hitting on them or you are selling something.

In New York everyone wants to be your friend, even if it’s for one night only.