Here’s my review of the recent show I raved about in a recent post, now published on the website of the nonprofit Sydney Improvised Music Association. SIMA’s mission is to facilitate the performance of contemporary improvised music, and brought Roy Haynes to Australia several years ago. I’ve been a member of SIMA for more than a decade, and was part of its Executive Committee for several years.

Photo credit: Jimmy Katz

On a humid and slightly overcast Thursday night a group of four Australians enjoyed playing tourists during a twilight cocktail cruise around the tip of Manhattan. The last time I was on the water here was on my honeymoon, in 2003. John and I took the Staten Island Ferry together and John went crazy with his camera.

I had spotted the cruise, which offered two hours aboard and a free drink (woo-hoo!) for $20, in the previous week’s Time Out and didn’t want to go alone. I floated the suggestion (pardon the pun) to Kate and Phillip, who thankfully agreed to join me. They brought along Inez, a pal of Kate’s currently visiting New York en route to Europe. Fancy that: a photograph of me being taken with the Brooklyn Bridge in the background. (God do I need a haircut and colour.)

We were, on average, a good 15-20 years older than the rest of the cruisers, who seemed to be a mob of young colleagues from out of town. Or maybe they were just from across the water, in New Jersey. They were still getting frisky to the overbearing doof-doof music as we disembarked and headed to the Lower East Side for some delicious Japanese food.

Tonight post-NYU I met up with Lara and another friend of hers who lives in Italy. The occasion was dinner at Artisanal, a feted French brasserie on 32nd Street at 2 Park Avenue best known for its cheese selection. During Restaurant Week (an annual feature of the NY food calendar) it’s possible to go to such places and eat three courses for $35 (plus tax, plus drinks, plus tip, but still …). The relative bargain explains the cacophony that greeted us on entering the establishment.

After we had eaten too much, I caught the train home and performed the usual tasks one does after a lengthy commute. On flushing, the water decided not to go down, but to rise up and over the bowl. There I was in my lovely black dress and heels, hands newly manicured (which can be had on most blocks for the princely sum of $10 – plus tip), having to suddenly perform drastic surgery on the toilet. Not quite the digestif I had been contemplating for this evening.

 

Because I’m officially insane, in addition to my NYU summer intensive in Philanthropy and Fundraising I’m attending a weekly Tuesday-night workshop in writing for New York magazines and newspapers with freelance guru and renowned teacher Susan Shapiro.

Shapiro has as many opinions as she has had articles published. I signed up for this four-week course to glean practical advice on writing publishable short prose – and, quite frankly, to lean on her extensive network of industry contacts. The contacts are yet to pay off – although it’s early days since I submitted a piece to one magazine – but her advice is spot on. Be specific. What’s your personal connection to this op-ed topic? You need a timely lede. That reference is a year old – it’s out of date.

I look around at the twenty-somethings who comprise the majority of my peers in this class. I admire them for turning up: in my twenties I was such a harsh self-censor I immediately rejected any topic I imagined to write about – why would anyone care what I thought, about anything? Some of my fellow students don’t feel any shame about their lack of grammatical care or sentence craft. I don’t feel old; I’m just glad not to feel scared any more. I’m here to learn, and hopefully get published.

Last night I headed to Dizzy’s at Columbus Circle to hear the fabulous octogenarian drummer Roy Haynes and his “Fountain of Youth” quartet. My pal John Moore came with me. John was a Roy “virgin”, but I had seen him perform a few times before – including once in Sydney when SIMA brought him out as a mere seventy-something – and I was keen to repeat the experience.

I’ve volunteered to write a review for the SIMA website, which I will do at some point between dusk and dawn this week amid class assignments and sleep. But let me just say here that it was so exciting to see a man still energised and excited by his art, by the interplay with the young musicians around him, and by the crowd, who swelled and soared with him like a wave. He had all the strut and verve of a 25-year-old. Whatever he’s got, we should bottle it.

“God bless you!” “Thank you!” “Bless you!” “Thank you!”

Every time someone sneezes in my NYU class, it triggers this automatic call-and-response. The blessings are multiple and instantaneous, coming from all over the classroom. Their combined sound often drowns out the teacher who continues to lecture while this strange linguistic exchange takes place. Often the teacher stops mid-sentence to offer his or her own blessing. A multiple-sneezer can set the class back for the better part of a minute.

No one but me seems to find this practice - a reflection of the religious undercurrent of American culture, in which saying “God bless you” is intended to protect your sneezing soul from the devil - peculiar.

My classes on 42nd and 5th Avenue today ended early, so at the time the steam pipe exploded on 41st and Lexington at 5.57pm, killing at least one poor bystander and injuring 20 others, I was back in Brooklyn, striding energetically around the “green zone” of Prospect Park.

It was shocking to see the footage of the explosion, people running terrified away from the smoke in all directions, not knowing the cause of the noise and eruptions. A taste, however faint, of the confusion and mayhem that gripped the entire city almost six years ago. The ripples of fear persist: Mayor Bloomberg’s first public announcement was to reassure the public that the explosion was “nothing more than a failure of infrastructure”, that it was not an act of terrorism.

Apparently planned donors don’t die: “their wills mature”. I wrote down this gem during one of my classes at NYU’s summer intensive in philanthropy and fundraising. I have to say, it’s proving a challenge to get into midtown every morning for a 9.30am start. While this is partly due to having enjoyed a very flexible working schedule for the past couple of years, I’m also uncomfortable with the unquestioning enthusiasm about the US philanthropy “industry” and how it relies on extremely wealthy individuals to correct the injustices of the system that facilitated their wealth in the first place.

Today I asked a question about donor demographics, seeking to place the white male and the white male’s wife in a broader cultural context. I mentioned that in the UK and Australia the attitude to government’s role in social justice, education and healthcare resulted in a very different attitude to private philanthropy. The response I got was simply that UK and Asian donors prefer giving to international non-government organizations; and that “until the tax regime changes, it won’t encourage philanthropy”. Because what else would we want to do, but to become more like the US?

Apple Girl is now the proud owner of this painting of a couple in a park (photograph shows a detail), by Derek van Gieson. Derek lives in my street and works part-time in the cafe around the corner. With the proceeds of a bizarre copy-writing gig (not yet public) I decided to buy the work, which I first saw online on the artist’s website. Derek recently retrieved it from storage in Michigan, his home state, and delivered it to my door only yesterday. He said he was happy to think of his painting going to live in Australia.

I forgot to mention that as of the end of June I’m no longer commuting to the Upper West Side to work with Simi Linton. With my NYU course and my plans to return to Australia, it made sense for me to hand over to “the next administration”, as she and I liked to dub the successful applicant for the role (who turned out to be a rather charming young … vegan). Simi remains a client for fundraising/grantwriting purposes, and my friend. Through her I’m grateful to have met many interesting people working in theatre, shared plenty of laughs, and gained a working knowledge of the arts funding environment in New York.

So in my last week at the “office” I couldn’t resist taking a few happy snaps from Simi’s high-rise balcony. Peering straight down to street level, I was delighted that a classic yellow taxi arrived in my viewfinder just at the right moment.

Quite the shock to my system, turning up daily for a 9.30am start in the dark heart of midtown, after more than two years of a part-time and flexible work schedule. So far I’ve survived five days (not that I’m counting) and have three weeks to go in my summer intensive in philanthropy at New York University. Aside from learning about planned giving, nonprofit financial statements, development planning, and ethics from some of the most highly credentialed figures in the world of US philanthropy, one unexpected highlight has been to relax during our designated lunch hour, across the street from class, in Bryant Park.

Nestled between the New York Public Library and Avenue of the Americas at 42nd Street, the park is a bustling oasis. Its central green lawn is hallowed ground, surrounded on all sides by tourists and local office workers lolling in the dark green chairs provided, park maintenance staff keeping the whole place tidy at a slavish hourly rate, and people selling one thing or another. (Since Monday I’ve been offered salvation, a palm reading, and a date, but not all by the same person.)

Yesterday the city’s oppressive humidity vanished, leaving us with pure dry sunshine. Walking the two blocks east to Grand Central Station to catch my train back to Brooklyn, I could not take my eyes off the gleaming gargoyles atop the Chrysler Building – they seemed to have been polished by the sun for the occasion – and reminded myself how amazing it was that I was living in New York at all.

I love this photo, which I just found on the Slate website, one of my favourite online destinations. It reminds me of the body language of energy-depleted New Yorkers on the subway in the height (depth?) of summer. (Apologies for sponsor’s tag; if I had the wherewithal to remove it prior to publishing it, I would have.)

My air-conditioner has given up the ghost. Well, it still spurts forth cold air when I stand in front of it, but I can only cope with its blast for a minute before the ear-shattering roar of whatever’s rattling around inside the unit becomes too much to bear.

So here I sit, sweaty rivulets obeying gravity as I type, in the almost 100-degree (Fahrenheit; about 33 Celcius) heat. Today was the first day of my summer intensive Certificate in Fundraising and Philanthropy at New York University’s Heyman Centre for Philanthropy and Fundraising. There are almost 30 of us, several of whom have travelled from within the US to be here, and a few who have travelled from south-east Asia. When I told a classmate that I lived in Brooklyn, she looked at me as if I might as well have been from … well, Australia.

Did you know that even here, in the self-acknowledged home of sophisticated philanthropy, 70% percent of donations and gifts are made impulsively? Even if what I’m learning about philanthropic culture is depressing, at least my knowledge is gained in air-conditioned comfort.

My friend Derek van Gieson, the artist and barista from Kalamazoo Michigan (yes, a bona fide “Boy from Kalamazoo”), celebrated the opening of an exhibition of his illustrations in Park Slope on Friday night. Also on sale were copies of his book of illustrated micro-stories, Journey by Ferry to Celibate City or Thigh Town. Cheryl Smith, from the eponymous cafe I practically live at, supplied some sophisticated nibblies, and there were the obligatory jumbo-sized bottles of red wine. I’m happy to report that Derek sold the majority of works on opening night. Having already purchased a copy of the book, and put down a deposit on one of his paintings (only one of which was exhibited), I decided it was OK to leave empty-handed.

Above: (left) Cory and Brigid with the artist; (right) DvG signing autographs (or was he writing another short story?) with the world’s biggest pen.

This is the inevitable but entirely appropriate title to Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami’s deliberation in this weekend’s New York Times on how his love of jazz music helped him to write. As a long-time jazz fan myself, I liked best this anecdote:

“One of my all-time favorite jazz pianists is Thelonious Monk. Once, when someone asked him how he managed to get a certain special sound out of the piano, Monk pointed to the keyboard and said: ‘It can’t be any new note. When you look at the keyboard, all the notes are there already. But if you mean a note enough, it will sound different. You got to pick the notes you really mean!’

I often recall these words when I am writing, and I think to myself, ‘It’s true. There aren’t any new words. Our job is to give new meanings and special overtones to absolutely ordinary words.’”

As an apprentice writer, I know there are plenty of ordinary words in The Young Widow’s Book of Home Improvement. I just hope the words will speak to readers like a fugue with a great melody. But first the book needs a publisher, and it’s out on submission now. Fingers crossed.

With the summer well and truly upon us, I have lately spent a little bit of time in Central Park. The other day I settled on a bench by the Reservoir and read The Glass Castle (a wonderful memoir that is a lesson in storytelling, even if its author, Jeannette Walls, had rich material to plumb). Yesterday after tennis Lara and I headed around the Reservoir again, this time en route to the Central Park Boathouse where we enjoyed some post-game refreshments. In between snippets of our own conversation we eavesdropped on those of others, which were a mixture of local women with car-honking voices recounting boy trouble, and tourists from all over the globe swapping stories.

As you can see from the photos, Friday was a spectacular day. L-R: Lara by the Reservoir; the view from Belvedere Castle; model sail boats afloat on the Conservatory Water, best known for the statue of Alice in Wonderland at its northern end (below). (NB all photos are mine except for Alice, courtesy of my friend John Moore’s www.centralpark.com website.)

Regular readers of this blog might remember my intermittent frustration with trying to play tennis in New York City. While my irritation has mostly been mild and related to either bureaucracy or the low number of available courts, I have also been struck by a few comments that “well, tennis is a rich person’s game”. In Australia, tennis is not regarded as the province of the wealthy – at least, not as far as I’m aware. Perhaps I’m so privileged that my privilege has become invisible to me with respect to the game.

I was delighted to see Venus Williams win Wimbledon today. The Williams sisters have encouraged a lot of young people to pick up a tennis racquet; children who might otherwise have never considered it something that they could pursue.

In my own white middle-class fashion I continue to pursue tennis, most recently being a game yesterday in Central Park with my friend Lara (above left). But I have to say that the effort involved in finding people to play, at a suitable time for all, at a place that is convenient for all, and at a reasonable price, is often too much. Perhaps tennis is only a rich person’s game in New York, after all.

I’ve gone and done it now. I’ve just advised my landlord that I will not be renewing my lease when its 12-month term is up at the end of August. Yikes! Decision-making time came round so quickly; I was trying to put off what to do about hanging on to my Brooklyn pad as long as possible. But I have realised that while I have always wanted to live here in New York, living here for 18 months has done for me what nothing else could: helped me see that I don’t want to live here permanently. 

When I saw an “attorney” a few months ago about options for holding on to my green card, she said: “You lottery-winners are all the same. Most people I see are desperate to get a green card. They will do anything, crawl over hot coals, to get one. The ones who win one in the lottery are all ambivalent.”

Ambivalent is the word: from the Latin ambi- “on both sides” + valere “be worth”.

First seen on the back – or was it the front? – of the fabulous Deanna Zandt at a recent shindig on Grand Street, I am desperate to have one of these t-shirts to call my own. Let me know if you want one too and I’ll try to track some down.

**7 July update** Melbourne readers note: The purchaser of Deanna’s t-shirt has just informed me that she bought it not in New York, but at the Rich outlet shop, in a narrow street off Victoria St very close to the intersection with Hoddle, in downtown Melbourne. If anyone is passing by, please look in and nab one for me – I will kindly repay you at my leisure. Medium is a safe bet size-wise.

The first day of July was a breezy respite from some muggy late-June days. I took Sally Cooper, whose memoir of two years in Afghanistan will be published by Pan Macmillan Australia next year, to Prospect Park to take in a game of cricket. She was in NYC briefly en route to Kenya, where she lives these days, to finish her manuscript.

Every Sunday several West Indian families gather to watch their boyfriends and husbands play an adapted form of cricket on a dusty pitch. There is no running between wickets; batsmen are either caught or bowled. Bowlers take it in turn to bowl one ball each and work in pairs.

As Sally diligently scribbled my words of alleged editorial wisdom in her notebook (above right), I ran after a few big hits that flew in our direction. I’m happy to report I did not throw them back to the nearest fielder ”like a girl”.