Manhattan Energy
New York City has a palpable electricity, as if the entire city is wired to a high-voltage. New Yorkers talk fast. Should you pause a second at a traffic light, be prepared for a horn blast. I don’t feel it as a nervous or neurotic energy. I feel creativity in the air — murals on buildings, jazz clubs, musicians busking on the subway platforms. Art, theaters, restaurants. This city is alive with creative ideas.
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So when I snapped a photo from the the Staten Island Ferry in October 2019, gazing at the towering skyline of lower Manhattan, I thought about how I’d depict such a creative cloud if were it visible. No numbers or letters or musical notes. Something sub-atomic, particles of creativity. Like fragments of letters, bound by nested parentheses, clustered in clouds that constantly bounce off each other.
