The city had looked a little dank to me, a little tacky and tasteless having arrived home from Paris. So I'd been listening to another New Yorker who left for Paris in 1917 and nearly never came back, Aaron Copland. But he did return. And wrote this, The Promise of Living. Listen to it. It is uniquely American, specifically of New York. The egalitarianism of the simple melody at first plays out like our youthful vigor. We are a young city in a young country in a much older world. While Paris was alight with wonder, we were finding our way, at times simply, tearfully, brutally, but always boldly and often joyfully. Hear that in this, as I did, and imagine my streets, crowded with people amid soaring towers as this music soars with nothing but hope. Yes. That is the difference here in my hometown. The promise of hope is everywhere and as you hear Mr. Copland at 4:55, remember, only a New Yorker could swell with that kind of joyful promise and that all the dankness and dirt and sadness of these streets is as true as all the glory and wonder and hope of our inimitable skyline, twinkling now in the night, as beautiful as any palace I saw in Paris. We are all, most of us that is, the children of other exotic and far away lands. But thank you for coming home, Mr. Copland. And showing me the way.
Wonderful as always. If you are new to this remote cyber address, let my friend Jeff be your Dante down into the depths of the history, the poetry and the humanity of New York City. If you are going there in person, or only in soul, via the internet, you will find no better guide then this wunderkid metropolis meanderer, this master of words and gesture and humor, who exudes the magnificent madness of New York city from his very pores. Where he goes, there plays the jazzy silent movie soundtrack of "Rhapsody in Blue". He's that good. Take his tours, read his stuff, stop watching videos of talking cats for Gods sake!
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