{"id":647922,"date":"2026-03-11T11:59:21","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T11:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/647922\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T11:59:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T11:59:21","slug":"where-dreams-come-to-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/647922\/","title":{"rendered":"where dreams come to die"},"content":{"rendered":"

I probably sound naive, but February always struck me as a month that should be full of hope \u2013 brimming with the type of optimism that comes from new beginnings.<\/p>\n

At least here in New York, though, it was grim. Everything feels more expensive. Everyone\u2019s temper seems as short as the blink-and-you\u2019ll-miss-them daylight hours. And then there\u2019s the weather.<\/p>\n

The streets are flanked like an Arctic<\/a> military checkpoint by car-sized mounds of calcified brown snow. The kind of snow that has visible layers, like a geological cross-section of urban neglect. The kind that has already gobbled up who knows how many small dogs. The wind is so ferocious, it makes that chemical skin peel you\u2019ve been targeted for on Instagram look pleasant.<\/p>\n

\n

New York does sleep. And thank goodness it does. Because living here is exhausting<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And it was through this landscape of icy despair that I was recently walking, when the snide algorithm on my phone\u2019s music app decided what I really needed to hear was Kim Carnes\u2019s \u201cBette Davis Eyes.\u201d If you\u2019re familiar with the lyrics, you might recall that the woman in the song has hair that is \u201cHarlow gold,\u201d lips that are \u201ca sweet surprise\u201d and hands that are \u201cnever cold.\u201d But most offensively, she is \u201cas pure as New York<\/a> snow.\u201d Pure snow! Imagine!<\/p>\n

After I\u2019d finished scoffing, I started to think: what other musical crimes have been committed against New York City? What other egregious misrepresentations have been made under the guise of poetic license? Once I started paying attention, the deceptions piled up like the snowbanks \u2013 layered and dirty. Is New York the most musically lied-about city in the world?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start where we have to, with Frank Sinatra, patron saint of \u201cYour dreams will come true if you step off a Greyhound in Midtown.\u201d He croons that this is the city that \u201cdoesn\u2019t sleep.\u201d I\u2019ve seen entire subway cars asleep at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday. I\u2019ve seen people slumbering on park benches and in office bathrooms. There\u2019s always someone conked out by the Duane Reade near my apartment. New York does sleep and thank goodness it does. Living here is exhausting. Amid the all-night sirens and the radiators in the prewar buildings that make that horrible clacking sound, we need to seize the opportunity for shut-eye whenever we can.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s the Pogues\u2019 \u201cFairytale of New York,\u201d a ballad that I unabashedly adore but one that would also have you believe the city is a twinkling backdrop for romantic dysfunction, where even the drunk tank sparkles with possibility. Sting, in \u201cEnglishman in New York,\u201d portrays a city that is a quaint, quirky wonderland of civilized eccentrics quaffing coffee. Bless him. Of course, the eccentrics are still here, only they\u2019re now shouting at traffic cones.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Alicia Keys\u2019s \u201cEmpire State of Mind,\u201d I\u2019ve waited six years to feel \u201cbrand new,\u201d but the streets have mostly made me feel wary of stepping in dog poop. Do the \u201cbig lights\u201d inspire me? Sometimes, but I\u2019m also concerned about unnecessary energy consumption. Climate change, anyone?<\/p>\n

Taylor Swift told us that New York\u2019s been waiting for us. Patience is not a character trait I\u2019d associate with this city. And what, exactly, is a \u201cNew York State of Mind?\u201d For me it\u2019s a nonstop push and pull of wanting to get the hell out and never ever wanting to leave: a recipe for constant existential angst and emotional vertigo. Is that what you meant by that, Billy Joel?<\/p>\n

The greatest lie of all might be the musical insistence that New York is a place where dreams magically crystallize. Sometimes they do, but at least in winter, nothing crystallizes here like the disappointment of another day of sub-freezing temperatures.<\/p>\n

Still, the songs keep coming with their promises and whatever chord progression you need to get out of bed in the morning. I can\u2019t help listening to them and loving them, and maybe that\u2019s the trick: lies dressed up as hope. The alternative might be a mass exodus to Miami. And that would be really sad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I probably sound naive, but February always struck me as a month that should be full of hope…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":647923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,10035,5249,405,403,191305,5226,5225,5228,5227,3571,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,3159],"class_list":["post-647922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-frank-sinatra","tag-manhattan","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-life","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-taylor-swift","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-winter"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116210431968324612","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}