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Photo courtesy of Annie Hamilton.

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Annie Hamilton is a writer and performer from NYC who writes a seasonal diary for Metrograph, recounting her adventures and encounters across the city.

AUGUST 22 – LONDON

I finally got out of New York. I did it; I got out of the city for the summer time. It’s been awhile. It takes a lot to get me outta Manhattan and I’m a fiercely neurotic traveler. The trunks that I’ve packed! Oh, the Titanic hat-boxes I’ve packed over the years… 

As I was saying: I start preparing for my travels for as long as I can before I depart. I like to get to the airport three and a half hours early-two and a half for domestic flights-strictly for the vibe. My parents met on an airplane. It didn’t work out for them, but I’ve always found airports to be filled with limitless possibilities. I can become anyone there. At 32, I could even get discovered. I currently have an airport persona that I’m happy with, too. (Last couple of years I’ve been giving off “journalist going home for family emergency.”) Sometimes I’ll even get a day pass for the “club” if I feel I really deserve it.

I went to London. I spent most of August there. I had a small part in a cool movie, and I was having the time of my life. (The bathroom in that hotel room was bigger than my apartment, of course I was having the time of my life.) This job made me love acting again. Humiliating. A shameful discovery. 

I enjoyed being less of a nervous wreck in Europe. European-me (barf, but how else do I say that?) is tops. The desperation I feel in America was replaced with self-assuredness over there. At least I’d like to think so. I like being a representative for the USA, too. I feel I do a good job.

Photo courtesy of Annie Hamilton.

I saw a lot of great theater, but I won’t go into detail. I’ve been frustrated with how limited my evaluative brain is, and, practically speaking, I’ll sound like a tool. I saw a show called Death to England: Delroy, a one-man show, where Paapa Essiedu commanded the audience for almost two hours straight. It was incredible how authoritative he was with our emotions; without our knowing, he helped us ask the right questions about ourselves. The stage was a very large cross-an X-shape-and Paapa’s performance spanned all of it, with different choreography for each beat of the story. He became his pregnant girlfriend, his mother, policemen, and others, in his recounting. There was audience participation in a safely-scary, truly exciting way. 

See? I sound like a tool.

I went on a first-friendship date at an Austrian restaurant with a fascinating lady named Issy. The restaurant was called Fischer’s, in Marylebone, and it has the best chopped chicken salad I’ve had anywhere in the world, even better than the ones in Los Angeles. It’s an Inglorious Bastards vibe inside of Fischer’s, AKA it’s upsettingly sexy, and it feels awesome walking in there in a filthy sweatshirt. 

Besides taking the tube for sport, because the seats are cushioned and basically mini sofas, I went to museums. I went to the V&A on the one hot-hot day I was there, and there were piles of children in the museum’s fountain engaging in a true..rumspringa? They were partying, is what I mean. I don’t think British people know how to handle the heat. (I also visited the Charles Dickens museum in mid-August, but that trip was for me.) My favorite museum is the Tate Britain. Every single room of that museum-every part of the wall, every corner, every informative plaque-I was interested in. That’s not the case for me in most museums. It was psychedelic. As I can’t go to the Tate Britain once a month, I felt the need to photograph every single painting that was beautiful to me. For each painting, I obviously also had to take a picture of the plaque next to it. I wound up taking hundreds of photos, and felt like a real asshole doing it, but it was worth it. I’m excited to go back there in a couple of years-hopefully a decade, or more-and look at some of the same paintings and remember where I was in my life when I last saw them. 

It was a good trip.

Photo courtesy of Annie Hamilton.

SEPTEMBER 6 – NEW JERSEY

I rewatched All That Jazz (1979) and Carnal Knowledge (1971) in a family basement in New Jersey. I watch Carnal Knowledge a couple of times a year-not because I want to, it just… happens to me-but I hadn’t seen All That Jazz in years. WHAT A MAGNUM OPUS, man. I didn’t watch the ending this time around, though. I refuse to watch the ending of All That Jazz again. Once is enough for one lifetime. That script is so great, too. Perhaps even underrated-ly so? It’s SHOWTIME! The scene of Ann Reinking and Bob’s daughter dancing for him, coming down the stairs in their little outfits. Vying for him. What heart pangs that scene gives. That movie is pure candy. Sour candy? Yeah. It’s epic enough to make metaphors.

The public pool in Montclair really gives that Raging Bull (1980) scene, and I would like to go back often. It is sad that NJ Transit is so wonky, but they did make it up by giving us a “Transit Holiday” towards the end of my stay. (One week of free rides! Go New Jersey!) I dunno why I’m suddenly, like, romantically obsessed with trains, but-FUCK! The Path is the best train of THEM ALL!!!!! So Hoboken is an option for my future move, too.

God love ya, you New Jerseyans. I really don’t know if I could handle the move there, but boy-oh, am I tempted. I think Bloomfield would be a nice place for me, because, well, the price is right. I’d move to Montclair if those prices were right, but they are not.

I don’t know when or if I’ll ever get the cajones to do it-I don’t have a drivers license anymore-but I’ve been in New York City for four years now, and I gotta get out for a bit. Live in a not-nice-country-home in the country (AKA New Jersey) sometime soon.

I watched 30 Rock for the first time in Jersey, and I can’t stop. 15 years later, I’m finally watching 30 Rock. I did it! For all of the jokes I’ve made about Alec Baldwin,that man is a comic GENIUS! That man. Has me. LAUGHING! Tina FEY! TINA FEY!!!!!! 30 Rock has the power to instantly change my mood. It’s like listening to Top 40 Radio but even better! I can’t believe I sit there alone, producing *audible* laughing noises every 43 seconds for this shit. It is just so clever and ridiculous and happy and fun and occasionally genuinely totally meaningful. I’d been told for years and years to watch it, and I’m glad I waited. Well worth the WAIT, people! I’m planning on doing the same thing for Succession. It’s gonna be great watching Succession in the year 2038.

Photo courtesy of Annie Hamilton.

SEPTEMBER 10 – MANHATTAN/BROOKLYN/BACK HOME

I’m back home. I don’t know if I want to be here yet, but it’s not the worst. I’ve been going to Brooklyn a lot. I read Sylvia by Leonard Michaels in Prospect Park. It’s a memoir about a guy living in the Lower East Side in the early 1960s; it follows his first experience in romantic turmoil. He had one of the most spectacularly bad relationships I’ve ever read about. It took Michaels a couple of decades to finish it-and you can see why. Every single sentence-every single word-hurts. I loved it. Highly recommend as a segue-drug back into reading, if you’ve been having trouble reading lately.

One thing that Brooklyn has that we do not have here in Manhattan-at least not in my neighborhood-that I’m particularly envious of, are Sharing Libraries. That’s where I found Sylvia. I also got a beautiful copy of Three Sisters and a couple of books on how to write fiction (ha). If anyone has any want to establish a Sharing Library in the East Village, hit my line. I want in.

I managed to catch the last performance of Pre-Existing Condition, a play written by Marin Ireland, that had a couple of iterations of performances, all led by different actresses. The performance I saw was helmed by Edie Falco. She held the script in her hand, and sort of cold-read the show. It was brilliant; she is so brilliant. The pages of the script in front of her weren’t distracting, as I had thought they might be-and it was really cool to see an actor like Edie perform work that wasn’t “perfect” or “done.” She’s no bullshit, that Falco. The play is a beautifully-written account of an abusive relationship, and Edie didn’t push any inch of her emotions. Sarah Steele and the rest of the cast gave punchy, exciting performances, too. 

Mostly, I’m listening to Jonathan Richman and walking around the city. It’s hard not to evaluate where you’re at in your life at the end of the summer-where was I last year at this time? Have I improved at all? Am I a disappointment? “You Can’t Talk to the Dude” is my favorite song on I, Jonathan. It hits in every neighborhood this city has to offer.

I’m tired of writing these performance diaries, as it reminds me of how little I change season to season. But Metrograph is a cool place, I like writing little articles to help feel relevant, and I hope they ask me back for another (even though I pushed my deadline on this diddy over and over again). In the spirit of this being a diary: I’m finally writing again. For nine months I couldn’t do it. I suppose the best part of being back in New York is that this is the city I work best in. This is the city where I can spend 10 hours on my laptop and feel as though the rest of the world has dropped dead. The best feeling in the world is feeling smart, to me, at least. When I spend my entire days writing, I feel like a genius. In New York, I worry about being smart. In the rest of the world, I worry about being cool. And I guess I much prefer worrying about being smart, over anything else.

Photo courtesy of Annie Hamilton.