Lost in the architecture, the whirl of taxi cabs, the sprawling parks. You can find solace in both the plaid red table cloth in a Times Square steakhouse and the slow drip of water as it falls onto the rat infested subway tracks on a drizzly fall day.
The new video by Gil Scott-Heron displays the darkness of this city, through the lens of a man begging to escape its madness.
In a places like Staten Island, technically part of NYC, there are more trees per capita, by any informal analysis, than other areas of the metropolis. But its polar opposite could be a ferry and subway fare away, in Harlem, where Gil Scott-Heron is holed up in his dark apartment, watching old boxing videos and sucking on a glass pipe.
The man who made a '60s counter-culture slogan with one poetic line -- 'The revolution will not be televised' -- is seen in this Chris Cunningham video, fading in and out of black along with his poetry, as the roar of a subway car alludes a man trapped by the bridges, elevated trains, and skyscrapers that surround him.
The New Yorker piece written about the artist recently reads more like a premature obituary. But whether the Big Apple, or crack, is killing him, Scott-Heron is still here - trapped in New York City with the rest of us.
Gil Scott-Heron "New York Is Killing Me"
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