The sounds of the night are always more pronounced than the sounds of the day. Here, where the volume of people and machines makes the volume of the world much larger, we melt from the day into the night effortlessly, and don’t notice the difference in degrees until much later. This is true for light, sound, and thought. There are many days when it is very difficult to see the sun, and there are evenings when seeing a star is the most miraculous thing in the world. It is always this way.
The bark of New York is equal to its bite, and its bitterness is matched by the sweetness, and the echoes of a thousand angels in the night sky. Coming into the city, coming to feel that it’s time to check in and start again, once more, to perhaps fail, and perhaps not fail. This is the way the endless songs that we hear on the radios everywhere sound when they are played all at once. In our solitude, the overwhelming waves drive into our private moments and ask us to pay attention. Seven stations playing at one time, and there are words in between the music that only come out when they mix together, and the words are sometimes your name.
That’s the beginning of a moment, and moments here have to be recognized while they pass, and you don’t always have time to decide to follow them. Instinct plays a part in all of this, and it’s a way of surviving the evenings. The nights are ruled by instinct, and the days by reason, and they have to be sharp, and sharpening is exhausting. This is the edge of the tooth that we once searched for. This is the place where the teeth begin to intersect. This is the place where New York begins to call you by your name.