But it turns out New York City is more than entertainment and delicious vegan food. There’s this level of tolerance and acceptance that I haven’t seen in other places. It’s so diverse that you can (according to one story) ride the bus home in the wee hours wearing sparkly red alien makeup from a photoshoot and no one will notice. Basically, it allows you to be whatever you want to be, but it goes one step further by surrounding you with people who are 1) pursuing the same thing and 2) succeeding wildly at it. New York City is life-affirming in a way I didn’t know existed.
When I first to got town, Alyssa recommended a documentary on the history of New York. The film opens by saying that New York is special because by simply walking the streets, you are encountering and interacting with the threads of hundreds of lives. You get to participate in something greater than yourself while letting all those people exist in your life, too.
If you were to assign one word to describe each city, the film says (Paris could be “culture,” for example), then New York City would be “home.”
Nene says that live theater, the kind that stretches human ability with tricky vocals, incredible emotional range, or eight intensely physical shows a week, restores our faith in humanity and what humans are capable of. It shows us what’s possible.
I got to see some phenomenal shows: Lea Michele in Funny Girl, Samuel L. Jackson in The Piano Lesson, Hugh Jackman making it look easy in The Music Man, Ben Platt making it sound easy in Parade, and a devastatingly good Audra McDonald in Ohio State Murders (which is what I was doing in Manhattan for my last night). The best was Tony-winner A Strange Loop that somehow applies a Black gay man’s experience to everyone and makes them feel like someone understands what they’re going through.
