Under the Banner of the New York City Subway

I remember reading an essay early on in our program which spoke about how New Yorkers move fast and with intention from one place to another, but they also come together when needed before dispersing just as quickly because “that’s what New Yorkers do.”

Subways are systems of transport and circulation: people coming in from all directions with a set destination, dispersing as quickly as they can. Yet they also create moments to slow down and linger. Within a closed car, strangers sit shoulder to shoulder in close proximity, sharing the same moving time. People read books, crochet, listen to podcasts or music, play mobile games, or scroll through the same screens they were reading when they woke up. There is an intimacy in this enforced closeness.

I’ve seen people put down their phones to fist-bump a group of showtime performers, a woman joining in on carols, and tourists asking for directions with New Yorkers kindly providing them. I’ve seen people playing the most beautiful tunes on violins, using buckets as drums to build infectious rhythms, dancing with life-sized dolls of women, and selling flutes and beads they claimed were from the African subcontinent. I’ve also encountered people leaving the car bothered by the invasion of that little enclosed space, the subway car, during one too many performances. I’ve held doors for strangers, and some have done the same for me. We shift to make space for each other, leave room for everyone to hold onto the poles, and some days a person loops their arm around one just to keep scrolling through their phone if their hands are full. I’ve been elated by some performances and exhausted and irritated by others. This same space also holds discomfort through delays caused by emergencies, encounters with individuals cursing very loudly, and sometimes screaming, and the atmosphere of frustration over missed appointments and disrupted routines.

E.B. White, in one of his essays, writes about New York as a city filled with contradictions, where people can feel both deeply alone and completely surrounded at the same time. That tension exists constantly in the subway. Everyone moves through the same cramped space with different destinations and emotions. Even in moments of silence or traveling long distances together, there is still a shared understanding that comes from experiencing the city together.

The subway gives you the gift of loneliness and connection, celebration and exhaustion, kindness and frustration. People care for each other while also making some people invisible. The subway is a paradox. It is designed for movement, for people to enter and exit, not to stay. Yet I’ve seen it produce moments of pause, connection, and art. So many of the encounters, experiences, and lessons I’ve had in this city have been in the liminal subway. And this is my attempt at archiving those moments and memories.