Because Every City is a City

How many people are in your network?


No, I don't mean on Facebook, or Twitter, or LinkedIn ... or whatever. I mean, how many people do you actually know? And by know, I mean can tell something about them other than their name or what they do (which is easy if you work together, or if they work for you). This is not to discourage your sense of popularity.


The point is purely rhetorical, and relates to the question I've been asking myself. Which is, why do I want to live in New York? Sure it's bigger, brighter, louder and more (socially? culturally?) important (what does important really imply?) than Prague, where I live. But what kind of access will I really have to all that it offers? Sure, the museums are open to everyone, but if I'm looking for social engagement, yearning to be part of something (ah, the tangible desire for the intangible!) and being in depends on who you know, then I've got to ask, who do I really know? And who would I actually meet?


A few minutes ago I finished reading an online post by Ben Widdicombe of the NYTimes, in which he describes all the cool parties he's not invited to, and details his distaste for hipsters. (Full disclosure: I've been known to make, and have made, on several occasions, snide remarks about hipsters.)  While I'm not terribly interested in the mechanics of true coolness, or whether being cool requires you to attend the coolest events, I am interested in what it means to be a part of something, and why so many of us not just want, but need to live in cities like New York, which are often described as having their own sense of gravity.


On this point, Widdicombe makes an interesting observation. He writes:


"One quality many people who move to New York have in common is that we hate to miss anything. That’s why we live here, in the capital of the empire. But it seems like every week there is some ultra-cool enclave going on to which we’re not invited."


Which brings me back to my original question. Why do I want to live in New York? Because lots of amazing/famous writers live there? Great. I'll just look them up in the phone book, or you know, friend them. I suspect my experience of New York, or any other city, would governed by much the same factors as drive me (occasionally) crazy in Prague. The thing is, I can say fairly that I know quite a lot of people in Prague. Not all as well as some, of course, but it's hard to keep up. And there are about a million other people I don't know.  So why do I feel confined by Prague's "limitations" as a small city? Is it me, or the city itself? Is my problem that it's too provincial, not enough part of the larger cultural pulse to make me feel that, by default of osmosis, I, too, am somehow connected to whatever it is I need to be connected to.  


As the capital of a small European republic, Prague dominates its surrounding villages and makes smaller cities (i.e. other small European capitals and those big enough but too down-on-their-luck to rank industrial towns with shadows of urban centers) shiver with envy. But for all its majestic Medieval architecture and gleaming baroque church spires (or maybe because of it) Prague often feels little bigger than a village itself. This has its charms as well as its drawbacks.  The city is arguably calmer than New York, but is dense enough to feel urban in a residential sort of way, and so jam packed with tourists you might mistake it for a multicultural environment.


Yet New York gleams across the water. The few visits I've had over the past few years have been brief - a few days here, a week there - but glamorous. Exploring the glittering heights from the comfort of my friend Ben's sofa, the pull of the city, it's promise and allure, were beyond palpable.   But even then, after a few days, I was ready for my own bed, the comfort my own things, my own life. And my life being what it is, hustling business, trying to find time to write, what kind of people would I likely meet, and how would my relationships with them (or with the city itself) be any better than what I've got here?  Sure, there are more people, and the cast of potential friends is bigger, but that's just mathematics. 


In reality, I'm not temperamentally suited to knowing more people that I already do, or going to more events than I already do. I can name a dozen events in the past month that I planned/wanted/thought about/said I would go to but didn't in Prague. And then there's Berlin. Three hours drive from Prague, Berlin offers all the accoutrements of, say, Brooklyn (hipness, artiness, museumness) minus the ridiculous prices, and yet I find myself going there less and less often. 


Perhaps my current desire to live in New York is not fueled by a desire to be in a "real" city, with all the scene-stery things that it implies, but by my growing desire to live in an English-speaking place where I would have greater possibilities for work and my ability to achieve some sense of cultural integration would be more easily fulfilled. And New York, because, well, I have a complete lack of imagination about what other city I could possibly live in. I mean, New York's where it's at, right?


Maybe, but as Widdicombe points out, how much of it would I really see?