Mike Power

New York City is often referred to as “the greatest city in the world.” The Schuyler Sisters even sing that line in Hamilton. The Oxford Economics Global Cities Index ranks the 1,000 largest urban economies on five measures and puts NYC at #1.

But it’s not for everyone. There are many people for whom our city is hell on Earth. It is crowded and loud. It is proudly liberal and multi-cultural. It never sleeps. For many of us who live here, for these and many other reasons, it is heaven on Earth. When I read about laws in Kansas and Texas that target trans people or women who want to control their bodies my first thought is: come to New York City. Because here people are generally accepted for who they are and who they wish to become.

Last Tuesday, I was meeting up with my old bandmates for a few drinks and got into town a little early so I could go to Bryant Park and do some sketching. The park is one of my favorite places and a spot that always sparks inspiration for me. The first sketch is a view of the American Radiator Building and the Empire State Building towering over the park’s London Plane trees.

The second is a quick sketch of the merry-go-round in the park. It was moving and I had to get moving as well to meet my mates, so it is unfinished.

The third is obviously not realistic but it has some of the flavor of a New York City skyline as seen through my melting mind. I also wanted to try out some new colorful oil pastels.

The song in the video includes a couple of those old bandmates and, appropriately enough, it is titled New York City.

New York City is often referred to as “the greatest city in the world.” The Schuyler Sisters even sing that line in Hamilton. The Oxford Economics Global Cities Index ranks the 1,000 largest urban economies on five measures and puts NYC at #1. 

But it’s not for everyone. There are many people for whom our city is hell on Earth. It is crowded and loud. It is proudly liberal and multi-cultural. It never sleeps. For many of us who live here, for these and many other reasons, it is heaven on Earth. When I read about laws in Kansas and Texas that target trans people or women who want to control their bodies my first thought is: come to New York City. Because here people are generally accepted for who they are and who they wish to become.

Last Tuesday, I was meeting up with my old bandmates for a few drinks and got into town a little early so I could go to Bryant Park and do some sketching. The park is one of my favorite places and a spot that always sparks inspiration for me. The first sketch is a view of the American Radiator Building and the Empire State Building towering over the park’s London Plane trees.

The second is a quick sketch of the merry-go-round in the park. It was moving and I had to get moving as well to meet my mates, so it is unfinished.

The third is obviously not realistic but it has some of the flavor of a New York City skyline as seen through my melting mind. I also wanted to try out some new colorful oil pastels.

The song in the video includes a couple of those old bandmates and, appropriately enough, it is titled New York City.  

2BNRtist is to know that everything is happening the way it is supposed to happen. What is going to come is coming. Inevitable as Spring. What looks planned in retrospect was random at the moment of inspiration. There is no way to stop the sun from setting. In the morning it will rise. Tomorrow is already touching every moment of today.

2BNRtist you have to believe that what you create has value, even if nobody is willing to pay you to work on it. They will be happy to pay you to wait their tables and clean up their messes, they will even pay you to raise their children or watch their mother die. They will pay you to shoot people, cage people, and to drop bombs on people, but not to love people. Nobody can pay for love. They would rather pay you to destroy than to create. Fuck them all. Make art.

2BNRtist is to know divine dissatisfaction. It is a deep inescapable feeling that all the beauty and wonder in the world is not enough. That there needs to be something more. Something new. And something that you are the only one able to create.

2BNRtist is to believe that something you create is art. For some, this is a steep hurdle. I have seen artists whose work doesn’t move me who have great confidence in their work, and others whose art touches something profound in me who have no faith in their talent. I find the best way to deal with this is to decide you can’t be objective about your own work, except to compare it to your previous work. If you think it is getting better, you are heading in the right direction.

2BNRtist is to wake up every morning (or sometimes in the middle of the night) to a job that demands everything: constant concentration, innovation, bottomless wells of energy, and eternal dissatisfaction. In return it gives only one thing: the work itself. The job demands sacrifice. You must protect the work and expose yourself. It will interfere in romantic relationships, friendships, and families. For the lucky (or unlucky) few, there will be money and fame that will be unrelated to the quality of the work. On one extreme is Vincent van Gogh, on the other is Kid Rock. When you are old and tired you might find that there is no retirement from the job. You might want to quit only to find out the job does not want to quit you.

2BNRtist is to live outside of time and place. Something that you scribble on the back of a napkin in a bar on 19^th Street could end up on stage at Madison Square Garden or a Broadway theater, or it could hang on a wall at The Whitney Museum 20 years after you’re dead.

2BNRtist is to be misunderstood. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “to be great is to be misunderstood,” but when you are an artist you don’t have to be great to be misunderstood. Every piece of art has as many interpretations as it has observers. Some will stick closer to the artist’s visions than others but none – not even the artist’s – represent complete understanding. It is not just a potential audience member who misunderstands. Sometimes it is the artist herself. Luckily for the artist, what we create transcends understanding. Some of the greatest art is born from misunderstanding. Art cannot be understood because it is the nature of art to reach for things beyond our grasp.

All the long empty creatures have come down from the hills

And made their beds in our homes

The apostles of dishonesty have built a crooked kingdom

On sand they insist we call bedrock

Doctorates of divinity

Stretching through infinity

Aren’t worth the straw they are scrawled across

Lovers of corruption

Stand confused by each eruption

Of molten lava blasting through the frost

All the tired losers

Having run out of excuses

Now are content to hide behind the flag of their injustice