Bridges

It has been a rather good week so far! Have been clearing work at a good pace, and passed up my last essay of the week on Wednesday, meaning that I could take something of a break today, which explains why I am here writing now rather than reading something for class. Also, have managed to squeeze in some more writing for the NOMADS script. It's nearing completion: one more scene to write, and then that's it, and I can deliver a product to the drama troupe (although it's unlikely that this will be the end of the editing phase). The biggest problem by far is trying to make the storyline cohere. At the moment the play is still very much three character studies clumped together into 30 minutes, and the plotline is really just there for decoration. And on Monday, one of the producers asked what the play was about, and why the audience needed to see it. Good questions: unfortunately as things have worked out, I don't know if we can find an answer before the performance date.

At any rate, with this approach to playwriting, this is the big challenge for the playwriter: to somehow find a way to combine the character profiles into a compelling story, to tease meaning out of an arbitrary combination of factors. It's a rather postmodernist approach, and I don't think the audience will be particularly impressed if we do actually end up giving them the disjointed sequence of scenes that is the current play. In its current form, I don't believe the script is worth staging; or, if it is staged, I don't think it is worth watching.

*

Speaking of watching, in Astronomy lab this week, we finally got to do some actual observations, pointing our telescopes at the Moon. It's my first time with a telescope of any appreciable power, and it's amazing to see the amount of detail and resolution in the eyepiece. Even though we're observing in New York, where the atmosphere is less than clean of both light and particulate pollution, the telescope just cut through all that distance and air to bring the ridges, craters and seas of the Moon into sharp focus. It really is an epiphanic moment; suddenly, an alien world is within grasp of your intellect. And there is also a moment of clarity, when one's previous idealised notions of the Moon (since it functions more as a symbol that stands for something else rather than an object in itself) are transmuted by one's observations of the real thing.

Of course, beyond the Moon, there was also a stunning view of the city by night. The observatory is situated on the roof of the tallest building on campus, and from there, the surrounding neighbourhoods of Morningside and Harlem glitter in the night. In the picture above, you can just see Midtown in the distance, and the big bright building is Butler Library on Columbia's campus. The picture was taken in the telescope dome, so the dark shapes are the dome and the telescope itself, and the Moon is also easily spotted.

*

Beyond watching the skies, Wednesday also brought a chance to watch a Broadway musical. Last month, as I had written before, Columbia's Arts Initiative Programme suddenly made available free tickets to watch Wicked, and they were quickly snapped up. Went with C to watch this show, which was my first Broadway experience - and it left me hungering for more.

Broadway shows seem to occupy a unique place in the popular psyche, able to pull at heartstrings and delight even the most cynical audience members. The closest thing that I can find from previous experience to compare this with is Bollywood, with its large-scale musical pieces and intervening dramatic scenes. And just like in Bollywood, Wicked was extremely effective at invoking emotions, balancing humour with sadness, righteousness with indignation, and finishing off with an ending that is deeply feel-good (this is not to say that it's a shallow ending - though my pro-tragedy tastes prompted me to prefer a darker, more poignant finish - and yet, we must remember that Broadway attracts crowds by being entertaining, and a sad ending spells a failed musical). And needless to say, all the props, costumes and makeup were opulent, and the choreography and stageplay were professional beyond anything I think I can achieve.

And most satisfyingly, the story itself too is rather complex, so it's not child's play to watch Wicked. As you already know, the musical is based on the story of The Wizard of Oz, except that it complicates things, not only blurring the lines between good and evil, truth and falsehood, love and hatred, intelligence and stupidity, but going so far as to erase them altogether. What results is an entrancing mix of characters and plot trajectories that seem disparate but actually ultimately link together into a great web of reciprocal influences and causality. Thus small details from early on in the play come back to become the key to understanding the happenings at the end of the play. Thus, seemingly innocuous happenings shape the outcome of the plot decisively. One of the best examples is how a normal girl gets to become green, with a pointy hat, a cloak and a broom; the Wicked Witch of the West is not presented to us as a finished product, but we are allowed to see how she is shaped and formed, and that awareness negates the possibility of glib generalisations and stereotyping.

And of course, simply being out on the town is a nice feeling. After the show, wandering down to Times Square from the Broadway theatres with C, I felt like I had been part of something larger, something special. As I said before, things happen here in New York: you can feel it, you know it, and most important of all, you can be part of it.

*

And since today's a bit of a lull for me, I took the chance to get away from school and decided to explore the Brooklyn riverside. I'd previously gone there with CUE when we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, but this time round I had much more time to spend there, and there was daylight. It's just nice, of course, to wander the streets of New York in and of itself: taking the subway somewhere else, listening to the rails singing metallic, and then finding yourself in a new place where your status of stranger is simultaneously your greatest vulnerability and your greatest asset.

But today's exploration of the Brooklyn riverside was even more rewarding than just being a nice walk. The area is really beautiful! The architecture is more interesting and varied than in Morningside, and the whole district has been done up rather nicely. Urban renewal, gentrification, or whatever else you want to call it, has done a good job sprucing up the place. But at the same time, the area between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges remains a place for cultural ferment, chock full of art galleries, indie cinemas and little performance spaces stuffed into old industrial buildings.

And when you're tired of walking around these delightful and handsome streets, simply head to the river. The Brooklyn Bridge Park has absolutely stunning views of Manhattan and the Bridge itself; further up, on an escarpment, the Fruit Street Sitting Area give a less touristified vantage point right next to a high-class residential neighbourhood. The former has now displaced the NYPL as my favourite place in New York, and I spent a couple of hours there on the grass watching the sun go down. And it also helped that today was an unseasonably warm day, warm enough to wear summer clothes in; and the bluesky day ultimately produced a sunset that was beautiful enough to stop anyone in their tracks. Watching the goldburst turn to red, and watching the water and the glass on the buildings reflecting the splendour, suddenly you realise that it is a good thing to be alive. The ludicrous beauty of the view is just what one needs to make living worth it.