I’m
willing to bet that anyone who has gone—or is currently—on New York Term, at
one point, looked at the schedule of events or the list of art forms that they’d
be studying and had a bit of eek
reaction—or had some reservations—because of something they saw: “Ballet? I don’t
think so.” “We’re going to an opera? Aren’t they a little outdated?” Or: “Wait.
The whole thing’s not gonna be in Portuguese, is it? Is it?” However, in these
first two weeks, our professors and our experiences at these performances have
entirely obliterated these worries from any of our minds. Ballet can be creepy
as all Hell, as we saw at the Koch Theater in the production of “The Cage”—a performance
of over a dozen women presenting themselves as a colony of all-female insects
along with two male “intruders,” one caught in dance with the colony’s newborn
member and resultantly killed. Opera is more than exaggerated expressions and
extensively drawn-out sentences in the form of song; La Boheme—among the most famous operas of all time—featured
extraordinarily life-like sets, contemporary humor, and exceptional acting. And
something in Portuguese—assuming some sort of subtitles or other interpretable
context!—can be as powerful or even more powerful
than something in English; language isn’t everything as we saw in the imported,
Brazilian play O Jardim.
And all
the while, I’ve settled into two internships, one at Folio Literary Management
and another at Soho Press. Both places of given me experiences that I hadn’t
anticipated having until after graduation and the start of my real career here
in New York in publishing. Already, I’ve read manuscripts, evaluated them on
behalf of both a literary agent and a group of publishers, edited a
soon-to-be-published novel, assisted in the marketing of Soho’s published
novels, and I’m in the middle of establishing a book proposal for Discovery Channel based on their new
show Alaskan Bush People. In short, I’ve
reestablished my passion for the arts and for a career and life here in NYC!
What
comes next? More of the arts, delving deeper into the diversity the city has to
offer, including more theater productions, more museums, and more jazz clubs as
well as trips to Carnegie Hall and other premiere art establishments. And more
19-cent bananas and microwavable meals! Livin’ the city life. And ready to
stick around a while.