Jeremy Bent

9/11 will always have an undeniable significance in New York, but it also happens to be my NYC anniversary. In 2005 on September 11th, I took a Dominican shuttle bus from Providence to New York with a bunch of suitcases, my bass guitar, and next to no prospects. It was, as plans go, a terrible one. But somehow it worked, and four years later, I’m still here. I’m still slightly shocked I haven’t bombed out of the city yet.

I don’t have any milestones to report this year - not because I didn’t do anything, but because I stopped keeping track. This is, of course, the city that never sleeps. I have some things I’d like to accomplish before I hit Year Five, and I’d like to stay in the mindset of “what I want to do” over “what I did.” So I’m going to try and look forward this year. I saw a lot of my extended family and old family friends this summer, and a lot of them asked, “So you think you’re going to stay in New York for a while, then?”

The answer to that question was always, definitively, “Yes.” I can’t imagine moving anywhere else right now, except maybe LA, and only if someone offered me an awesome job. And even then it would be begrudgingly. I’ve built too much in New York. Too many friendships, too many ongoing shows, too many good creative environments and too much access to talented people to leave now. Not before I do the things I want to do. That’s the goal this year. Get those things done, continue to enjoy life. Got your back, NYC.

That’s how long I’ve been in New York. I rolled in here on a Dominican shuttle bus three years ago today and had to take a cab 70 blocks to my friend Bob’s apartment because they didn’t go below 125th St. Blame my dad. The more I think about my move to New York, the more I realize how terribly, terribly unprepared I was. I am shocked my mother didn’t run after that ramshackle passenger van, yelling, “Come back! Come back! You don’t even have a job! Or any prospects! Or a direction in life! Let me bake for you!”

The last couple years I’ve been posting little life reviews at the anniversary mark that look at how far I’ve come since moving here. Considering I started with next to nothing (handful of cash and about three friends in the area), I think I’ve made significant progress. I don’t think I need to review whether the move was a success or not any more. Still, what strikes me now, as my life is going about as well I would expect at year 25, I’m not sure why I wanted to come to New York so badly. I’m glad I did, and I think it’s done a lot for me in almost every aspect of my life, but I’m still curious as to why I was dead set on NYC, considering I had only been here twice before, for only hours at a time.

Being from a small town in a pretty marginal state gave me a desire to be where things are happening. Although that’s true of me, and not so much true for almost everyone I went to school with in Rhode Island. I was perenially bored in Coventry (which was obviously not all RI’s fault), but now I’m perenially busy with things I really enjoy in NYC. I suppose most of the things I do now I could’ve done in Rhode Island, but there’s something about being in New York that engenders a can-be-done, let’s-try-this sort of mentality. You see people making cool things and doing great stuff all the time; it’s natural you want to join in.

So no more reviews. My goal in this next year is to try and quantify why it is that I like New York City so much. I figure that will probably take me a while.