Aristocrates Sans Frontières

Nabeel emails the following, a response to "The Motor City and the New New York":

I blame the death of New York on two obnoxious fads:

1. The Saint-Michelization of New York—This is the result of a rapid increase in the ranks of the global middle class, evidently dominated by those with an affinity for being photographed in front of Rockefeller Center wearing MTA-themed T-shirts. This phenomenon probably decimated the East Village, but it brings in serious cash, and it seems to be the inevitable fate of any city worth visiting in the 21st century.

2. The replacement of the landed aristocracy with a nomadic one—For today’s Eloise, home is between TriBeCa, Doha, and Geneva. She’s as comfortable in Mittal’s Mumbai or Sawiris’ Cairo as she is on the Upper East Side, and the similarities between the three have not been lost on her—she still won’t venture north of 96th except to visit Columbia, and if she’s in Brooklyn it’s the Heights. Never have the people who own and run New York been less invested in the city.

The first fad is common knowledge, but I doubt the second has been explored enough. When we talk about population mobility as a consequence of globalization, we tend to conflate a centuries-old trend with a more recent one. The migration economists like to talk about—the more productive our species gets, the cheaper travel gets relative to income, and the more people move around to get to work, live near work, etc.—is old news. It’s been in evidence since New World indentured servitude; it brought the bagel to New York and the Bistro to Paris, and there’s nothing about it that inherently undermines an already cosmopolitan metropolis. But these days, the aristocracy too is exhibiting unprecedented mobility, a phenomenon with grave consequences for 80s babies with fond memories of Aznavour’s Montmartre.

It used to be that rich people had a place to make money (an Antillean plantation, a Wall Street office, whatever), a full-time place to show off their money to other rich people (8ème, Long Island, whatever), and a favourite part-time place to show off their money to other rich people (Monte Carlo, Nantucket, whatever).

But the rich don’t spend their lives confined to six blocks on the Upper East Side anymore, or even to New York and the Hamptons. The city they live in, Newyorklondonparisdubaisingaporehongkongmumbai, is so exclusive that Sex and the City fans didn’t even find out about it until Season 5. And monogamous relationships with vacation homes are fast becoming an anachronism. Rich people these days get claustrophobic spending a summer in a single time zone. Even six hours on a golf course can seem confining—tellingly, at the height of the latest economic boom, golf clubs suffered while yacht prices skyrocketed. Instead, the rich spend weekends in Sharmalsheikhcabolausannemacaoeasthamptonvail but never vacation because—well, either they don’t work so vacation would be redundant, or they work year-round so they can later afford not to work. Even their Ritalin-popping kids don’t have the Zen for long summer getaways—at best they’ll take a week between archery camp and an archeology dig to go scuba diving in Aruba.

So where does that leave New York? It’s been remodelled as a shopping mall and club for part-time residents with the attention span of a two-year-old. In another era, these residents might have gone into politics or found a pet museum or orchestra to patronize. That would have made them look good to the like-minded enclave by Columbus Circle where they chose to raise their kids because they trusted the local doormen to keep an eye on them. Kenneth Cole might have married a Cuomo, Chuck Schumer a commissioner—the movers and shakers didn’t actually move at all; they were ours to keep. They didn’t just stop by for cocktails and Sax. And say what you will about the aristocracy, but I’d rather be lovingly abused than negligently abandoned.

On the bright side, glitz and glamor aside, Miami and LA are still tackier than we’ll ever be.

Aphorism from the Count

I don’t accept that nonexciting.com is the parody of nonsociety.com. It is, rather, the converse.

The Motor City and the New New York

Brought to our attention by Wired’s profile, blog star Julia Allison’s March publicity stunt, dancing to Motown in Times Square with three fashionable lady friends in ’80s Jazzercise outfits, is a sign of the times.

A question from the audience: Cute girls dancing in flattering costumes—why need more of a reason to look?

Well, how about to understand what New York in the Sex and the City age is?

While I tend to consider the attacks Allison, as well as other famous and apparently rich do-nothings, attract to be the stupid, puerile product of jealousy, I don’t think it snarky to note that these girls’ moves to Martha and the Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Streets” represent how far we’ve come from the Motor City.

In pre-Twitter days, Allison, an editor-at-large with Us magazine and—more important--a first-rate self-promoter, would never have become famous, unless the New Yorker wrote about her in Talk of the Town. But today her ability to pose for the cameras and the blogs has earned her the ire of gossip columnists, the admiration of millions—all right, thousands—of fans, and the cover of Wired. The dancing escapade was in promotion of the new blog site, nonsociety.com, which is chiefly interesting because, despite the luxurious lay-out, the girls, as they hash their lives out in front of us, don’t seem to do or say anything very interesting at all.

But, hey, there’s nothing wrong with dancing in the streets. It’s what we do now. Life has turned into a party in New York City, nobody appears to work, certainly no one gets murdered, and you’re invited! It’s just like Martha sings, “All we need is music/…/Doesn’t matter what you wear/Just as long as you are there.” No classes or races—like Woodstock, only with Gucci.

Not really. I mean, I suppose you’re invited, if you care to warm your pathetic little life by the light of the fashionable elite with venture capital and free time, and you’re free to do this even if you are poor or black and come out of a hell-hole like Detroit. But really, from Soho to the Upper West Side, it’s for the Gucci set.

Perhaps I’m romantic, or maybe I’m the puerile product of jealousy—but here’s the kind of city I prefer.


(C’mon, guys, click that last link. It’s got pretty music. And English subtitles.)

Some Kind of Soul

Hello all,

I've mentioned to some -- perhaps most -- of you that I wanted to begin a blog in order to foster a political and cultural community. Some, I suspect, thought that I was full of shit. I don't blame you. My plan for a blog has been delayed for so long, I've forgotten it for so long, that I don't doubt you remember it with the same urgency and conviction as you remember that pile of shit you stepped into on the street.

But perhaps it can rise above such a status. As an opening, I've invited Nabeel Ebeid, a good friend and an excellent poet, to contribute a couple of his poems. Speaking to Nabeel, I've compared his poetry to Langston Hughes's. It is, like Hughes's, full of a vitality that goes beyond the question of race, of oppression, and that enters upon the question of living, of how we may fight injustice, and of how we may create society in a form beyond that in which we've seen it, experienced, it.

This question -- of living -- is the purpose of this blog. If the poems promote a vision of the world that some will criticize as being too close to the realm usurped (poorly, I agree) by critical race theorists, I will respond that they -- the poems -- have an exuberance that points beyond race, and to social struggle. For cynicism stretches beyond issues of race or of sexuality or of social justice. It prevents the expression of life. No truth attaches itself to Nietzsche's claim that "there could not be any greater and more doomful misunderstanding than when the happy, the well-formed, the powerful of body and soul begin to doubt their right to happiness." Nietzsche did not live in the twentieth century, with the horrors of the Shoah and of the Cold War (which was not so cold for the leftists of Chile or for the people of Vietnam!) How can we live in a society whose foundation roots itself in cynical responses to inequality, to exploitation, to violence? Our response must pull together the strength to meet it -- more than that -- our response must be to effect its direction.

I shan't say more than this. I hope that, with this, we might begin a discussion. I look forward to your thoughts and your comments. I look forward to a continuing exchange about what we need to begin a movement that goes beyond the present to imagine a future. Any comments are welcome. Let's begin a discussion that will end in an alternative to the world. With that, I leave Nabeel the stage....

Best,

Clayton Simmons

Heroes

Thank you for the introduction. The following are two poems (and the link to an informal video recording of a third) from a series I'm working on called Heroes. The goal is to capture in a collection of poetry why it is that so many voices of protest and forces of change, from hip hop to nationalist movements, have gone silent.
Enjoy,
Nabeel

I Luv New York

Like Porgy loved Bess, like a baby loves his mama's caress,
Like a 12-year-old boy loves some double-D breasts,
I love that ugly mess they call New York on VH1.
I loved her before the fame and the TV,
Before the makeup, the weave, and the titties,
And even then she wasn't all that pretty,
But New York had more soul than anything
James Brown and his crew could ever do
Before she sold it for corporate revenues.
New York didn't need to look cute—better than cute,
She knew she was beautiful to her roots,
And I loved her for her and for what she'd been through,
Sometimes we'd kick it in Morningside at sunrise,
So in her eyes I could see all colors and hues
Reflected, one time I even thought I saw Hughes
Resurrected and heard lady sing the Blues in the distance,
Back when you could afford Harlem on public assistance,
When Kris Kross set trends, we used to buy incense
On 125th before H&M, she didn't have much,
But me and her, we lived it up like Legends,
Growing up together like Love and Basketball,
We played handball on park walls,
Till one day New York started craving attention,
Cosmetic changes in every dimension,
Just to attract investment bankers,
She said she wanted to look fly and flashy,
So baby girl got fake and trashy
And the tragedy is,
While she was turning tricks for big business,
Her ugly ass had been loved.

See my girl was popular,
She knew how to cause a stir,
In Baby Phat and Yankee caps
She had the world trynna look like her,
Once upon a time she led a renaissance
In the Bronx, she called it hip hop,
Spread worldwide to every block,
Grandmaster Flash on every boom box,
Sometimes she still six-steps where the one nine stops,
But it's not the same,
I remember when it was rap music, not the rap game,
Plus the city's soul's been evicted,
Condos inflicted on projects,
And I'm afflicted by memories
Of Refugees on Hot 97 and BLS,
Now NYC's got rent refugees
Cuz Jamaica Queens just got a Multiplex,
And still, I love that ugly mess they call New York on VH1.
First love I ever had,
Stepmother to jazz,
Mentor to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, 
Mecca to millions from Mississippi to Baghdad,
Never tires, never rests,
Heiress to the sun when the sun goes west,
I love that ugly mess they call New York on VH1.

Daddy, the Heroes Are Dead, and You Killed Them

You grew up on Malcolm, Marley, and Lumumba,
Shooting British fighter jets down from the sky,
The deepest shit I ever got to see was Timon and Pumba,
Or some ignorant-ass rapper telling me to "Vote or die!"

Kids these days…
You asked me why our pants sag,
Why our rappers brag,
Why our walls are tagged,
Why the world keeps moving forward,
While we only seem to lag,
From the outskirts of Paris to inner city LA,
Whatever happened to the struggles of yesterday?

The struggle's struggling, Dad,
The struggle's been strangled.
The comfortable grew too comfortable,
The powerful too powerful,
For superheroes in capes,
And since TV's a break from reality,
They even brought reality to TV,
To make sure there's no escape.
So now the hopeless just lookin for dope bliss to cope with this reality,
What struggle, Dad?
You ever wonder why they ain’t have nobody to assassinate since Hampton?

Between BET, crack, and AIDS,
A struggle led astray by a white liberal masquerade,
Like Hollywood philanthropy's ever gonna save
Our continent from the grave, from the myth of free-trade,
From resources drained, from a labor force enslaved,
From puppets paid to play the public like a game of spades
With a different name, but the end result's the same:
Strength in numbers means shit if the kings are in their hands,
See, the only thing that's changed since the days of the revolution,
Is that what we call a problem, Dad, now they're calling a solution.

I told you we were lost, Dad, we got nobody left to follow,
Did we forget, you asked, that faith in God is faith in tomorrow?
With all due respect, Dad, it was Him who forgot us first,
See, while His eye was on the sparrow,
It musta missed East New York and West Chicago,
Where every block got a mosque and a church.

And I listened, Dad, I listened and I was inspired,
When you taught me history and tradition,
You told me I came from a long line of fighters
That one day, I’d inherit their mission,
I tried, Dad, I tried since I was a child
To bring their dreams to fruition,
But you said to fight fire with fire, Dad,
They got all the guns now, we outta ammunition.

When you were my age, you had nothing, I know, but at least they heard your scream,
When I screamed they said our problems weren't their creation, failure was in our genes,
These days I can't even hear your frustration over the sound of shattered dreams,
Cuz we the Playstation Generation, Dad, we know what "Game over" means.

So why we disillusioned, angry, and lost?
They say I'm angry cuz my daddy left me,
But that's only part of the truth,
I'm angry cuz the heroes have disappeared,
Cuz my last hero, Dad, was you.

Death on the Nile

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bneewd4brgA