NOISY DEFENSES

Cacophony and tumult In the city

I’ve been up the whole night. Usually I’m not one to lose sleep over events, but there was something gnawing on my conscience. Maybe it was that interaction in the bus a few days before, where I had sat next to an old friend from Freshman year unknowingly. I only noticed his identity a minute after sitting, and at that point I felt it was too late to say hi. Maybe he saw me, maybe he didn’t, but the intense silence between us two drowned out the cackling of the bus’s weary suspensions dragging over Berkeley potholes. Realistically, it was probably because the airbnb futon had the same texture as a park bench, but I’d like to think I was up because I was going to Manhattan again in less than 8 hours. I had always been especially enamored with New York; there was an appeal to being wrapped by the city’s cover. Not necessarily by just the buildings, but also over your own senses. The floor you walk on was walked on seconds before, the door handle of a hearty cafe worn by the hands of fellow enthusiasts before, your voice drowned by locals who have become wealthy in New York's hidden currency: volume. Maybe most evident was how the city took control over my internal dialogue. The voices, whoever and wherever they are, fell back to make space for my own conversation with the city. It was one that was complex, nestled behind language barriers. I didn’t speak her language, whatever it was. I so dearly wanted to understand New York.

I grew up in Los Angeles, a large city by nearly every virtue, but there was a quality that was lacking. Maybe it was the lack of cohesion, density, or public transportation, or perhaps a lack of public on transportation? It’s jarring really, to be on a bus in one of the largest cities in the world where the only sounds of humanity are your breath and the screeches of the bus, perhaps a consequence of the imperfections of the engineers that made it. New York always seemed like the place that possessed this mystery quality Los Angeles lacked. I attempted to clear my conscience of any expectations to approach New York as it was, not as a misprojection of my ideations. Nonetheless, ideas are loud, and they won. My mind was racing through the entirety of the red-eye flight and I was unable to sleep. I like to think that it was a feverish mind that kept me up instead of Frontier Airlines’ seats, but either way I landed in JFK, as promised, with red-eyes. I was accompanied by the constant hum of public transportation on the way into the city. There’s no universal sound, but rather the absence of silence. The loud blaring screeches of the horribly outdated rails give way to small talk and light laughter at stops. At peak hours when the existential dread of the corporate 9-5 excels over human sociability, the mere noise of collective human existence occupies the sound waves. The constant public transit hum lulled over me until the very second I took a step out of Penn Station.

Here was everything I imagined: aspirational towers looming over my cranium, a bagel shop under construction scaffolding, men in suits, everything I had expected. My mind had been a mosh-posh of my New York goals, but with my thoughts in front of me, they seized their necessity. For a fleeting moment, my mind was empty, and I anticipated the voice of the city. Perhaps it could give me direction, push me toward my journey to understand her… but the silence faded quickly as my peripheral flooded into focus. Broken Modelo bottles littered the exterior of the bagel shop, and “Leasing Now” signs told me that many of those high-rises were skeletons lacking muscle.

My mind was rampant for those first two days. Every street passed had a history and personality, and I finished each day feeling less knowledgeable about the city. Yonkers, a city that I previously saw as a safe neighborhood for a commutable airbnb to New York, was a thriving and vibrant Irish community with a comically large pub scene. The meatpacking district, a catalyst for Chelsea market I presumed, was a safe haven for artists envisioned by a man with a colorful tuxedo that invited conversation. “Mayor of the meatpacking district” Roberto Monticello was willing to speak to me about the manifestations of his creation, but he found that the collective voice created by its creatives spoke their mission better than he could. Times Square, the face image of New York's entropy, was even louder than I would have imagined. A long day of falling for tourist traps was exhausting, but Christina’s boyfriend had offered us an escape from the hustle and bustle of the Times Square area. His place was only a 10 minute walk from the center of the city, and as a group we traveled to his rooftop. If there was a climax to my New York story, this moment would be it. The scene around me was an aggregation of all New York renders I had seen growing up, a combination of the Spiderman movies, Casey Neistat videos, and the Batman Arkham Asylum game. The red neon “The New Yorker” sign glowed continuously within frame as a constant reminder of where you were. It’s embarrassing to say, but before the trip, I had already envisioned my photo spread in New York with this very scene being at the forefront; yet I was unable to fully appreciate the panorama. Once more, I was not disappointed, far from it. I thought heavily, much more than usual. It felt as if there was a large chasm in my skull and brain threw every thought it had to keep it lived-in. The sounds of the city had left my mental, and in their place was an unorganized assortment of unprocessed perceptions and emotions. It was not the kind of silence that facilitated creativity, like the silence one seeks on a morning walk through the suburbs. It was an eerie silence, the kind of silence you hear when you are in a place you weren’t supposed to be as a kid. I quickly retreated back to the group and let the thoughts of others occupy the rest of my brain space.

New York is loud, not only in her accomplishments, but in her shortcomings. It was harrowing to walk past the New York projects, large monotonous public housing projects with histories of inequality and violence, minutes after walking past empty modern skyscrapers, a signal to New York’s own violence toward the working class. In some ways, tragedy comes to comedy and I could only appreciate the honesty. I don’t speak New York's language, but I’ve come to understand her, at the very least her intentions. She speaks through people and things, unbeknownst to them. She knows her chaos, but she knows it is her greatest strength. She screams every little detail of every little thing to you at every single second, making sure a moment isn’t left unnoticed, but she also knows restraint. In moments of reflection, Lady New York takes a step back and allows you to process your own feelings about her. These rare moments of silence teaches someone a lot about their relationship with her, and it is up to them whether or not it is what they can handle. The noise of New York is almost a natural defense from something that is immensely unnatural. The few seconds of silence that’re allotted to you is a test of your loyalty.

The star of the final day in New York was Chinatown, specifically the Les Coleman skatepark in Two Bridges. Cleverly enough, Two Bridges was named after the two large bridges commanding its airspace. Traffic and public transportation web through these two large corridors through every hour of the day. To this day, Chinatown continues to be predominantly made of immigrants across multiple generations. The immigrant life in the United States is difficult, filled with financial hardship and racial isolation. The trains over Chinatown are loud and large. The Les Coleman park was energetic, but occasionally, the energy was drowned out by the sheer power of the trains above. I observed playgrounds and daycares below or adjacent to the railway. At first inspection, I couldn’t believe that children or people in general were allowed to be in such close proximity to such loud structures, but it brought me back. When I was seven, pushing eight, I took a robotics class that was in close proximity to a train station. Every weekday at 11:40am, plus or minus 30 minutes to account for MetroLink error, the train would announce its short visit. It was an annoyance to me, to have my thoughts interrupted by this nuisance. Toward the last day of the week, my mom was especially late to pick me up and eventually it was just me and the teacher. I asked him why he was here so late, and he told me he preferred to wait in the cool AC of the class than to wait for the 2:40 pm train at the station. The train was an annoyance to me, but it was an opportunity for him. It soon occurred to me that these two bridges were a way for Lady New York to speak to Chinatown and its residents. Where there is conversation there is communication. It allowed her to whisper into the ear of anyone open-minded enough to listen, opening herself to anyone willing to listen. At face value, life in New York is extremely unnatural and intense, but the noisy defenses of the city make the discomfort bearable because such intensity is the consequence of opportunity and hardiness.

Words: Aldrich Gwynne

Photos: Luke Jensen, Montserrat Urbina, Waverly Choy

Design: Hani Mohd Haris