Friday, November 2, 2012

What a week here in New York. What a fucking week.
I'm overwhelmed with emotions, some of which I don't even recognize. It's quite a tangle... One thing is for sure: it's hard to be thrown off most if not all of one's routines. In the midst of making my record in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, it is inconvenient to not be able to get there via subway as usual. Secondly, even if I was to get all the way there from my home in Brooklyn, I would be met with the fact that there is no power in the studio. Yup, that's life in New York right now. Thus, I wait.

Don't get me wrong, I know how good I have it. I know that hurricane Sandy destroyed the lives and properties of so many people in the city. To not have lost anything of value or anyone close to me, I am extremely lucky. I just have a feeling that this is not the last we've seen of storms of Sandy's ilk. I have a feeling that this is merely the beginning, and this alternately saddens and angers me. We the people are not innocent in all of this. Sandy is a symptom of climate change. 
This, unfortunately, is fact.

I went for a walk in Prospect Park on Thursday (illegal right now, in storm's aftermath....) and what was supposed to be a refreshing outing turned into a saddening, maddening, horrifying one. I saw hundreds of trees uprooted or sliced in half; beautiful, magnificent trees lying helplessly on the ground, dying. For me, nature has always provided solace--especially when it seemed like I wasn't able to get love and consolation from people around me. To then see these broken trees in what seemed like a skeletal Prospect Park...well, it was heart-breaking.

I know that I am anthropomorphizing trees somewhat, in that I see them as fallen friends. But I doubt that I'm truly out of line in thinking this way. We are dependent on trees and plants for our oxygen and they also soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. We need them desperately, and yet everywhere in the world trees are being destroyed by deforestation, fires and storms, among other calamities. 

Storm coverage is currently concentrating on more pressing issues like flooding and power outages. I hope these will finally create an urgency to do what we can do to preserve our atmosphere and our environment. It will take a while before fallen trees will create such a reaction in the powers that be, but in the meantime I leave you with a couple of photographs of my beautiful, leafy friends. Rest in peace. 







 

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