We take the baby to a New York City art soirée

... and this blog surpasses 100 subscribers!

Dear Readers,

I am back and at it. My life continues to feel quite busy, but I am going to try to continue to write here at least once a week every Tuesday. Thank you to all of you who have encouraged me to keep writing. Having a community to write for makes this endeavor doubly rewarding. We also just surpassed 100 subscribers! Now, if we ever have a get-together, we’ll need a very large room.

These days, I’m excited about starting my community garden plot, mushrooming in state forests, a budding local Christian writing community, and running with a jogging stroller. It’s a season of outdoor beginnings in New York, with golden forsythia bushes brushing their twigs on my shoulders as I walk by boulevards of daffodils.

But today, let me recount the story of a recent trip.

This trip was meant to be many things—a fourth anniversary celebration, an experiment taking children to NYC, and a chance to network with Christian artists at a soirée hosted by Ekstasis Magazine, where I would be reading “The Scars of The Crocodile Spirit.” What it was, in fact, was a fever dream. 

In the course of the dream, the Yonkers police department ripped us off $105 for parking too close to a hydrant. We bought our niece then birthday present of a plush seahorse with detachable babies and then left it in a brownstone manse. We ate spicy mangos from a wrinkled Mexican street vendor and a melting cookie from Levain Bakery. Eleanor gave herself a carpet burn on her forehead in the Museum of Natural History. And we safely escaped the clutches of the NYC parking garage mafia. 

As for the art soiree itself—Jadon spent half of it in a backroom of the aforesaid brownstone manse trying to calm our crying baby while I stood in the hall listening to the other speakers. Then, I fumbled through my own essay with half of my brain in the backroom calculating exactly how exasperated and upset my family would be by the time we left. 

But it was fun. I promise!

I enjoy public speaking a lot. In high school and college, I acted in theatre and competed in debate. After college, I taught German classes at a rural Montana school using puppets and Kinderrap songs. Since then, I haven’t had many chances to stand before a crowd, so this opportunity was exciting. I got some laughs before my reading by asking everyone whether they had a “friend” who struggled with doubt, despair, or who happened to be a witch. That made me feel more comfortable, and when I scanned faces as I read, they seemed fixed and alert. I hope my essay encouraged the doubters, the despairing, and those tempted to make a deal with the dark powers of this world. Still, because my family fled like Cinderella into the dark night (leaving a seahorse instead of a shoe), I didn’t get to ask anybody for their reactions to the essay, which left me feeling empty.

Emptiness aside, I met about five people at the event, and I’m very grateful for those brief interactions with Bethany, Constance (and her baby), Kate, Raed, Allison and Kraig’s friends, and, of course, Conor Sweetman, who is well-named. I wish more of them were on Substack, as being off Instagram makes it harder to keep up (as shallow as Instagram connection is, at least it organizes your acquaintances). Mr. Fujimara seemed to be trying to keep a low profile, so although I sat on the same couch with him and his wife, I didn’t end up talking with him at all. I wish I could attend the monthly meetings that Raed is planning to start because one evening, mostly filled with readings, is not nearly enough time to connect meaningfully with more than a couple people. But perhaps this Ekstasis event will serve as tinder to stoke ideas for the Resurrection Writing project that Allison and I are hosting here in Ithaca (more on that in coming weeks). 

Jadon was quite put out by the time we reclaimed our car. There’s nothing quite like trying to quiet a baby at a highbrow event to suck all the happiness from your soul. I think, though, that had we somehow been able to find childcare, Jadon would have enjoyed himself. He is not an artist, but he is a remarkable thinker, and he mentioned he enjoyed talking with one of the painters about aesthetic theory. Jadon is my best and harshest critic, thinks most “art” is pretentious and therefore cuts no capers but drives straight to the point. I love him for it. 

We drove back to our Yonkers Airbnb in grumpy silence.

It was interesting to compare the neighborhood in Yonkers where we were staying with Manhattan. In Yonkers, the buildings were run-down and the sidewalks were full of harried mothers towing their children home from school. Jadon was conspicuous because everybody was brown complexioned and about a foot shorter than him. Most of the adults we encountered spoke broken English, though their kids spoke fluently. The Upper West Side, by contrast, smelled like tourism and money. The art soiree was full of vintage dresses and MFA’s, the most luxury of luxury degrees, and I doubt anyone in the room lacked a college education.

I don’t think that’s a bad thing. But it made me think a bit about the inaccessibility of art. Literary writing and poetry have built themselves into an ivory tower. Even journalism has gone from a working class job to an elite profession. More than eight in ten journalists come from an upper class background. And now, all the media elites are in NYC pretending that it’s still the melting pot it was in the ‘60’s, smoking the cigarette stub of 20th century nostalgia for all it’s worth. I wonder if an art form can become gentrified in the same way as a city can. And then, it just turns into beige air space because once all the artists have trust funds to fall back on, the work, with no blood and tears to salt it, becomes bland.

Anyway, Yonkers isn’t gentrified. Why don’t people write about Yonkers instead? It’s not threadbare from overuse.

Well,

xo,

Amelia

p.s. We also visited the Met Cloisters, which is now among my Top Ten Places on Earth (alongside the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Museuminsel Berlin, and the library roof of Hillsdale College). Enjoy some pics from our visit.