FoHDiary Day 14: Someday...

I’m sat waiting for my final flight home. Exhausted, frustrated, over saturated, elated, and ultimately sad to be leaving. When I arrived I hated it. The place is loud, brash, uncompromising and difficult to get to grips with. Now I love. Yep. I heart NY.

The more I explore the ideas I’m playing with for this paper, the more I find resonances that span eras, genres, people and places. There is a thread you can follow through all these concepts to create a cohesive, coherent whole. At least that’s my hope. There are still more interviews to deal with, a few people who cancelled or postponed that I need to chase up. There’s still a few more stones to overturn to see what weird, confusing things they reveal. But more than anything soon I have got to get my head down and write the thing. 5000-6000 words. But they need to be seriously good words. I feel content. I feel I’ve got what I came here for.

I also feel like it’s time to move on. American is done with me for the time being. It’s not been below 12 degrees the entire time I’ve been here, when I was in Chicago it was shorts and t-shirt weather. But it snowed here last night, and winter is on the way. The country is moving on and I’ve got to be moving on too. Plus I can’t deal with anymore Starbucks.

This is my last blog for the field research (although there’ll still be interview snippets, transcripts, and more research updating the site for a good while yet, who know’s what I’ll put this to bed?). I want to say something profound but I’ve not got anything left to say, or at least anything else I understand enough yet to talk about. It’s been a strange time to be here, a time of upheaval and change, and to be frank, a fearful time for a lot of people. I found a scene in absolute disarray, cities struggling with their identity, cities and people that just don’t care about their history, and a confusing path to where I wanted to get to. But I also found a lot of passion and love for the music. I’ve spoken to people who really believe in what they’re doing, really do care about the past and connecting it to now, and I’ve found clues as to what needs to happen next. That utopian, spiritual, PLUR, communal communion that’s the bedrock of house is right around the corner I think. There’s small pockets of it happening still, and I’m really hoping to see that grow and evolve into a force for good again. The Loft spirit isn’t dead, but it needs tending and nurturing. And we need that spirit more than ever before.

Here’s to hope.