Ithaka

‘ Ithaka gave you a marvelous journey.

Without her you wouldn’t have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.’

C. P. Cavafy

I’ve never been good at my own birthday parties, always made miserable with worry conscious that I MUST be having the party of my life. I think that’s what New York had become in my mind. Everyone was telling me what an incredible time I was going to have etc, etc. That from the moment I set foot off the plane fireworks would be launched in the sky and there would be dancing girls and lights and camera and ACTION.

But this is just a city.

Cities exist without you being there, right? They are tough places, where the cog keeps turning and the people bend into the next day just the same as the last.

So I realized that this was not a destination, but a journey on the road to the next place. And that is it. I am here to create. That is my mission statement.

I read the poem by Cavafy the morning I couldn’t get out of bed. My limbs were aching and I felt as if my head would fall off due to the amount of mucus that was circulating around my tube. It made me realize that it was OK to take it easy.

Although feeling utterly shit, I took the Subway into Central Brooklyn to find the place where my brother Jesse used to live.

Me and the two other brothers, Pasco and Rollo and Rollo’s now wife, Elly all went to visit Jesse in New York some 6 years back while he was living here being an undercover waiter at Balthazar in Soho. All I could remember was the route from the subway to his apartment and how cool everything was in his neighborhood.

I got the L train up to Lorimar Street because it sounded slightly familiar…yes that is how I work these days. The street was mainly residential, with a few diners and paper shops dotted around and a huge menacing expressway at the bottom. It felt a little bit like coming to Hackney Wick for the first time. I wondered up the street and in one of the windows was a huge papier-mâché animal with pink and yellow and orange crape paper feathers all over it. Inside there was two geeky looking guys surrounded by books and magazines talking about a Comic Book convention.

The convention was a few blocks from the store a few days later, and after some wonderings I found the hall by the amount of cool bikes that were chained up outside.

I had planned to meet a couple that I had been put in touch with by a lovely friend back home. So wandered round the extravaganza waiting for their call.

I didn’t realize how cool comic really are. People take this stuff really seriously. I set in on a lecture about the Semiotics of the Comic, where they deconstructed Nancy! These people had flown from all around the country to come to this thing. One girl, native to New York, had come back from her Swedish residency to exhibit. To be honest I think there were some big shots there, but I had no idea and battled through the glasses and Spiderman t-shirts to find my friends.

Other stuff has happened that are probably better stories, like trying to find this trendy bar to do some writing in and ending up in the hood with my laptop in my bag and the only white girl in a mile and feeling seriously like I was from the Cotswold’s. Or watching a film about a guy trying and failing to be a rock star when proposing my intentions as a serious musician to a guy in the industry, and suddenly feeling like a failure. Or getting into a fill blown argument with a guy with no teeth only to work out later that he couldn’t speak a word of English.

But they are all just stories and I will bring you more. I guess my conclusion from this one is that it’s OK not to be doing shit loads of stuff all the time and the fun I’ve had on my own little journeys has given me so much joy that I’ve started writing again.