A Year in New York

Firstly let me say that the video above is not mine in any way shape or form. I wish it was.

Just stumbled across this gem on a website somewhere and felt like I needed to share it. Made my filmaker Adam Clancy it's just footage of his day to day life in New York edited into a roughly five minute film with some music and uploaded to Vimeo. Ticks all the boxes of what makes a good film and for most people is great to watch and get an idea of what it's like to live in New York day to day as opposed to a five day holiday.

For me this video will be somewhat relevant in a year, I watch it now and recognise so many of the places that I've been to over the past three and a bit months and realise how quickly the time has gone. In a year I will be back in London and this video I'm sure will bring back memories of my time here, more so than photographs (although they are also amazing), postcards or receipts. The music is also weirdly relevant as I first heard this song in New York and fell in love with it instantly. Everyone should listen to James Vincent McMorrow - We Don't Eat, it will forever remind me of New York, the people I've met, friends I've made and the places I've been.

On another New York note I recently stumbled upon the work of E. B. White, a very talented writer who wrote a short essay called 'Here is New York' in the summer of 1948 which is as accurate today in capturing the spirit of the city as it was back then. A short quote from it below which I hope to include in some work I will be doing in the near future...

"There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born there, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size, its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter—the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these trembling cities the greatest is the last—the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbours, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh yes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company..."