By the time I finally got around to spending a night at the Hotel Chelsea, it was in sad and sorry shape, a shell of its former glory, and on the last legs of its former life. That was also part of its almost-eternal appeal. It carried its beauty in its rough edges, in its raw and slightly-rundown, worn weariness. It carried it in blood and death, in a haunted history of debauchery and decadence, both glamorous and depraved. I didn’t want to delve too deeply into it – it was enough to spend a single night and experience the hotel before it closed down. It seemed like it was on the verge of closing for years, and in 2009, on a warm summer afternoon, I checked in to the Hotel Chelsea, and a new project was shot in a single day.
I REMEMBER YOU WELL IN THE CHELSEA HOTEL
YOU WERE TALKING SO BRAVE AND SO SWEET
GIVING ME HEAD ON THE UNMADE BED
WHILE THE LIMOUSINES WAIT IN THE STREET
THOSE WERE THE REASONS AND THAT WAS NEW YORK
WE WERE RUNNING FOR THE MONEY AND THE FLESH
AND THAT WAS CALLED LOVE FOR THE WORKERS IN SONG
PROBABLY STILL IS FOR THOSE OF THEM LEFT
This evocative version of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Chelsea Hotel’ performed wondrously by Meshell Ndegeocello is the perfect soundtrack to this project, this post, and the magic that is New York. Upon checking in, the front desk clerk brought me up a few steps to the first room on offer. The biggest cockroach I have ever seen in my life scurried under the door next to mine, and I knew right then that would not be my room. That was confirmed when the window to the place was wide open and unlocked, looking right out onto an alleyway and easily reached by anyone taller than me. I wanted a hotel experience, but not quite this gritty. I asked for a different room, which I rarely do, and after some hemming and hawing they ultimately obliged. A few flights above, I went into a corner room, oddly laid out with a full step into a slightly elevated tile bathroom, ragged-off painted walls and doors, and a tiny square of a window with a typical New York fire escape, iron grates and alley-view.
AH, BUT YOU GOT AWAY, DIDN’T YOU BABE?
YOU JUST TURNED YOUR BACK ON THE CROWD
YOU GOT AWAY, I NEVER ONCE HEARD YOU SAY
I NEED YOU, I DON’T NEED YOU
I NEED YOU, I DON’T NEED YOU
AND ALL OF THAT JIVING AROUND
I spent the afternoon and early part of the evening shooting the project. Chris wasn’t due in until later, so I had a stretch of solitude. It was summer in New York, with all the heat and humidity and sweaty loneliness that the city could conjure. Alone in the hotel, I roamed the empty hallways shooting doors and windows and the iron stairwell. I peeked and probed and poked into all sorts of corners, hoping for a glimpse of some secret, some ghost that the hotel would give up to my camera’s eye. Nothing happened. Nothing revealed itself in blatant, striking form. No grand illusions were smashed, no enchanting recluse opened her door to let me in. Any haunted secrets were going to keep to themselves for this evening.
It was stuffy. The air was stale. Even in the open hallways, I felt constricted and confined, the way New York sometimes closed in on me. Retreating to my room, I locked the door and threw off my clothes, as much for artistic attempts as for comfort. A few more photos, a little reading, and then a shower to get the train ride and the taxi off of me. There are times when the only escape is a shower, when the only way out is through breathing in, when the feel and scent of soap is the only thing to keep you sane.
I REMEMBER YOU WELL IN THE CHELSEA HOTEL
YOU WERE FAMOUS, YOUR HEART WAS A LEGEND
YOU TOLD ME AGAIN YOU PREFERRED HANDSOME MEN
BUT FOR ME YOU WOULD MAKE AN EXCEPTION
AND CLENCHING YOUR FIST FOR THE ONES LIKE US
WHO ARE OPPRESSED BY THE FIGURES OF BEAUTY
YOU FIXED YOURSELF, YOU SAID, “WELL, NEVER MIND
WE ARE UGLY BUT WE HAVE THE MUSIC”
There were summer storms in the air that night. I headed a few doors down to a little bar and waited for Suzie, who was joining me for a quick dinner before Chris got in. A martini was a lovely way to wait out a rainstorm, which itself was a lovely way of relieving the humidity. We rushed out in the middle of the downpour, finding an umbrella at a deli, but when it’s that hot and nasty out, a downpour isn’t the end of the world. It’s also difficult to be mad at the world when Suzie’s around. She headed home and I went back to the hotel.
AND THEN YOU GOT AWAY, DIDN’T YOU BABY?
YOU JUST TURNED YOUR BACK ON THE CROWD
YOU GOT AWAY, I NEVER ONCE HEARD YOU SAY
I NEED YOU, I DON’T NEED YOU
I NEED YOU, I DON’T NEED YOU
AND ALL OF THAT JIVING AROUND
The raw work of a project was done. That was the fun part – the part of possibility – the part when everything is perfect because it exists only in the mind. The editing and refinement of the project would come later. For now, I could relax into the night, into an empty hotel room in the loneliest city in the world. There was no comfort in the room, and I leaned into the tension. It was what I needed for the project. That ghostly solitude. The Hotel Chelsea opened up at last.
The next morning, I couldn’t check out soon enough.
I DON’T MEAN TO SUGGEST THAT I LOVED YOU THE BEST
I CAN’T KEEP TRACK OF EACH FALLEN ROBIN
I REMEMBER YOU WELL IN THE CHELSEA HOTEL
THAT’S ALL, I DON’T EVEN THINK OF YOU THAT OFTEN
{See ‘A Night at the Hotel Chelsea’ in its entirety here. Also see ‘StoneLight‘ and ‘The Circus Project.’}
