While we do spend a lot of time at our desks in the cozy 17th street studio here at AAP NYC, we Cornell students do get out from time to time – to do work for other classes of course! Some classes, like our visual representation class, encourage us to trudge forth from the artificially lit white studio in Chelsea to explore the farthest corner of the metropolis before us, provided that there’s enough light to take a good photograph. When you start to look at the city through a photographic lens, you start to realize the little things; how the sun ladles itself into the crevices of a single brick on a façade, how the city has been laid fanned out before you like an infinite, ornate tablecloth, each stitch woven with intention and awareness of the one sharing an end or beginning.
Sometimes I walk down the street here, and look at the infrastructure that rises before me like triumphant concrete blades of grass, and I think to myself that these things, this whole meadow of industry and life and progress is due to a few humble aspirations. That with a selection of proper connections, some proper investments, and the unbreakable spirit of human perseverance, one can erect a whole island of intricate moving parts that churn in unison as a monument to progress.
In fact, I’m starting to realize that the possibilities in Manhattan are endless. You’d be hard pressed to find any object or concept that isn’t being sold within a stone’s throw or has not come into existence yet. Manhattan encompasses the universe in a mostly neatly plotted grid. You want new wave roller disco in the park? You got it. You need a late night ramen fix? Easy. Want to write a revolutionary manifesto with some of your best friends? We’ve got spaces starting at $15 dollars an hour. Secret invite-only dinner parties with some of the world’s biggest most incognito movers and shakers? Hop over to the west side. (see reference here) Want to toast to Richard Meier’s at his 80th Birthday Bash? Come on down to AAP NYC!
Each person on the street constitutes one totem to a collection of millions upon millions of individual sensations and cognizance. It’s almost insane when it registers that all these beings coexist in one huge feedback loop together in this city, and that the whole place doesn’t just erupt into disarray but actually really thrives and even encourages new modes of synthesis!
And with that, I’m off to grab the beast by the horns and shamelessly exploit all the opportunities I can!