What is a memory. Is it my bedroom photographs from the East Village, where I stayed with good friends, and of Thompson Street’s? Is it the colour palate of NYC, the yellows, the greys, the springtime snow on light purple magnolia bulbs. 5th avenue in dark snowstorm in the middle of the night? Spanish Harlem’s greenish lights with enormous music boomboxes standing outside on the street, for house partying and lots of people dancing? My friend Orville’s tiny colourful bedsit. Our huge class graduation photo, where only my blond hair all the way in the back is visible. Or is it this unclear photograph of our graduation play ‘Last summer at Blue Fish Cove’ by Jane Chambers? It feels blue and sunny, and it is blue and sunny. The sun is out today, and the sky is completely bright blue. Often in New York on my days off I would go for long walks, to really get a sense of the city. One day in New York on the warm summer’s day, I walked in a light like today, a strange day so warm the city seemed still, all that could had gone to the seaside, or resting in the shade, except for me and my sunburn.
In Williamsburg lived my best friend from school, we had a weekly Thursday evening appointment to eat pink and green dragon roll sushi with a glass of white wine and ginger crème brûlée at ‘Planet Thai’ in Williamsburg. It was brilliant. An early spring evenings springs to mind, walking through to Union Square to get the subway to Williamsburg, wearing light grey trouser and a shawl, I had used as a play-costume, feeling so excited. The dusky hour when most are on their way to the theatre, out for dinner or going back home. The city felt buzzing.
How strange memories are, I find it hard to remember, not that I don’t remember, but to remember things of importance, not just blinks of situations.
I was super happy and exhilarated about attending acting school in New York, ‘The American Academy of Dramatic Arts’ (AADA), the Fame School! As a teenager rummaging all the foreign film books, I could get my hands on in Denmark, this was one of the drama schools I most often noticed. It was hard at acting school, making a living, and still trying to enjoy it all. I was fighting for my place at school, constantly needing to prove it was okey tant I was a student there, not being a trained singer or dancer. In the beautiful moments I loved the school and especially the private voice and speech classes we went to with my best friend at school and I. Loved rehearsals and the day-to-day training, research and playreadings. Worked for most of my school time in the School’s drama-library. The perfect job for it. Yet it left me strangely drained, much more than I realized at the time. So excited and drained at the same time.
Chinatown was vibrant and overflowing to me, my favourite place, colourful, lively, exotic, fun with lovely groceries, food, flowery slippers and at that time new bubble-tea in all kinds of vivid shades. One day in Chinatown I had my work permit and passport stolen after a job interview and ended up being interrogated in the precinct police station, closed in, and surrounded by ‘wanted’ posters, feeling tiny.
I think I would have done most things different in NYC if I could do it all again. But who knows how that would have turned out! I wouldn’t have missed dragon roll sushi Thursday-evenings for anything in the world.
