City of Lights

It was cold. And bristling. Wind burning my fingertips as I snapped shots in the dark illuminated by neon lights on a calm November night.

On the way to the Big Give, I felt an urge to capture the things I saw in Chelsea. Corridors: cavernous and liminal, but bustling with light. Some cool. Some warm. Others red. And blue. 

The night was alive while the city slept. Concrete sardine cans, stacked on top of each other in monstrosities clawing at the pitch black sky.

Neon blue crosses of a church sharing the ebony sky with a blood red lit Empire State Building, whose horn pierced the blackness in an everlasting tribute to capitalist fantasies. I thought of new friends from old places that I’d met at the gala. Jamaicans. Folk from St. Louis. Practitioners of dance and theater. 

I recall momentarily thinking a dancer named Monsterra, was defacing a QR Code laid among the blank name tags and a rainbow of permanent markers. I was secretly disappointed when I discovered they were only writing their name.

In my day, restaurants laminated slabs of pressed wood pulp desecrated with fine black ink to tell customers what they offered. Now: a QR Code sits atop a plain table, daring you to have a low battery; lest you fail to survive the class culling and gatekeeping of the times.

But this time, the cold made me different. I pulled my hand from its glove; shot after shot. Until my souk was full.

New York comes alive at night. A city alive. A city of lights.

- Paul A. Notice II