{"id":923,"date":"2009-01-16T07:22:30","date_gmt":"2009-01-16T15:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=923"},"modified":"2009-01-23T14:50:13","modified_gmt":"2009-01-23T22:50:13","slug":"picturing-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/16\/picturing-new-york\/","title":{"rendered":"Picturing New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York is so great. What an anthill. After a couple of days there, I could feel two spectral thoracic legs waving from my abdomen.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

An artist was commissioned to erect a bunch of treehouses in Madison Square, the little park at Broadway and 23rd by the Flatiron Building. They\u2019re very high up, on trees with smooth trunks\u2014and the homeless people can\u2019t climb up to them.<\/p>\n

I always visit the Flatiron Building because my publisher, Tor Books, has their offices there. I first saw the building fifty years ago, when I was twelve. My father and I went to New York together, and he showed it to me, along with the Empire State Building. Odd to think that now I\u2019m doing business there.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I love the big NYC buildings against the sky, and how they reflect each other. It\u2019s a wonderland, a giant hall of mirrors.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not accurate to view New Yorkers as uniformly gruff. Many of them are very friendly and talkative. And it takes very little to get a conversation going. As a result of seeing millions of people a year, the locals are anything but shy. They\u2019re smooth, and they converse easily.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Our daughter Georgia happened to be in NYC as well, and she got us to go with her to see Camper van Beethoven play at the Bowery Ballroom, which is a little like the Fillmore, but about half as big, and somewhat seedier.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always loved Camper Van. They were big when we moved to California 25 years ago; Marc Laidlaw introduced me to their music. By now, the lead singer, David Lowry, reminds me of an eccentric old professor\u2014fit, dedicated, and prepared to speak out. My twin. They sang their big hit, \u201cTake the Skinheads Bowling.<\/a>\u201d\u009d [Click to see it on YouTube.] What a masterpiece.
\n \u201cLast night I had a dream\u2014it was about nothing<\/em>.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We saw a new play called Becky Shaw <\/em>that was fun. Not a musical, you understand\u2014 more of a Noel Coward piece, but up-to-date. Tight, witty repartee for the dialog\u2014the kinds of things you\u2019d say if you had a week to ponder each line. The actors were attractive and professional. The Big Apple. We hit a couple of ballets and museums too. Vulturing the culture.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We saw our old friend Eddie Marritz. He\u2019s a cinematographer who shoots still pictures when there\u2019s spare time. He\u2019s very old school in this regard\u2014he uses a Leica M6 rangefinder camera with black and white film. He was telling me it\u2019s important to take lots of pictures of a given scene to make sure you got the right one. And he comes up with great shots, so for sure this approach works for him.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I myself prefer the school of \u201cthink, watch, get ready, and just take the one or two perfect shots.\u201d\u009d Like going squirrel-hunting with only two bullets in your pocket (not that I\u2019ve ever gone squirrel-hunting, but I like the Kentucky metaphor). Or\u2014better analogy\u2014it\u2019s like making each pop count when you have only twelve firecrackers to set off, as was often the case when I was a boy.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I suppose I imprinted on a conservative photo-shooting approach when I was an impecunious young man making pictures on film. And now I like to imagine that if get deeply enough into the process, merging with the camera and with the view, I can feel <\/em> the right picture without actually having to shoot the wrong ones. Alternately, I sometimes think that one picture is as good as another anyway\u2014each has its own magic.<\/p>\n


\n[Tribal paintings that are massed to make a ceiling near New Guinea.]<\/p>\n

This said, now that I\u2019m using digital now, I do go for a \u201cdo-over\u201d\u009d sometimes. That is, I look at my shot on the camera\u2019s little screen, and then I reshoot right away if the image seems badly lit, or poorly framed, or out of focus in the wrong spot. And it\u2019s also the case, that I Photoshop nearly every one of my pictures, tweaking the lighting and framing\u2014and this is another reason why I don\u2019t necessarily need a \u201cperfect\u201d\u009d shot.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In NYC, I also saw a young writer I know from publishing two of his excellent stories in Flurb<\/a><\/em>, Brendan Byrne. Brendan\u2019s taking a little time off from work (most recently he was a bartender at McSorley\u2019s) to focus on writing. He\u2019s hoping to write a couple of novels during his personal sabbatical. Go for it, Brendan!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I advised Brendan to be sure and try writing an SF novel as well. In my (possibly mistaken) opinion, it\u2019s easier to get a novel published as SF than as mainstream literature. Not that the lit-biz is booming on any front. My editor, David Hartwell, says nobody\u2019s sure what\u2019s going to happen next.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But I never worry too much when I hear bad news about publishing. I\u2019ve been writing and publishing for about thirty years now, and I think that during each <\/em>one of those 30 years, someone has told me that times have never <\/em> been worse in publishing. Especially in SF publishing!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In any case, writing SF is something I like to do.
\n\u201cI know it\u2019s only rock and roll\u2014but I like <\/em>it.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In this connection, I like to imagine being this sculpture of Herakles, I can relate to how he\u2019s evolved into our present time.
\n\u201cWal, I\u2019ve still got my torso\u2014and some of my toes.\u201d\u009d
\nThe guy sitting beside Herakles is sketching him on a pad. It must be great to be an NYC artist and go sketching and painting things in the Met.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Today it\u2019s 75 degrees in San Jose, California, and 3 degrees in New York. Like two different planets, almost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York is so great. What an anthill. After a couple of days there, I could feel two spectral thoracic legs waving from my abdomen. An artist was commissioned to erect a bunch of treehouses in Madison Square, the little park at Broadway and 23rd by the Flatiron Building. They\u2019re very high up, on trees […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":968,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923\/revisions\/968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}