Photo by Andreas Laszlo Konrath for The New York Times Style Magazine
Once one starts writing, the repetition of themes creeps in and takes root. One such theme that seems ever so pervasive in my thoughts is city-dwelling in all its pains and glories. We live in the third-largest city in the United States. No, we're not on the coast, but our lovely "little" lake helps us feel a bit closer to this supposed ideal. A few of my earlier posts such as A tree grows in Chelsea and A space of one's own and learning to love the little things, ironically published almost exactly a year ago, celebrates city living in all its diversity, complexities and, at times, inconveniences. While skimming The New York Times Style Magazine last week, I came across a small story about Ramdane Tahoumi and Victoire de Taillac who decided early in their relationship to live the life of nomads, and three children later, they have lived in Paris, Jaipur, Brooklyn, etc. This takes the idea of urban dwelling to a new level; after all, most of us stay put for more than two years at a time, but they seem to make it work for them:
Some 15 years and three children later, however, the “T-n-T” clan, as they are affectionately known, are living a life of nomads, hopping from continent to continent and city to city — Paris, Jaipur, Tangier — setting up camp in temporary lodgings and then, when it’s time to move on, literally pulling the rug out from beneath their feet. “We do two years per country,” Touhami says. “That is my rule.” And that would sound like a compromise in the couple’s relationship if it weren’t for their incredible talent for making themselves at home no matter where they are in the world.
God knows that this is a lifestyle we can't all achieve, regardless our aspirations, but I do fantasize at times about being able to just get up and go live in India for a bit, then perhaps Tokyo, New York, or Sweden... lovely places with lovely friends. Like the "T-n-T" clan, our children share a heritage divided between two diverse continents, and the thought of them growing up in the midst of both places is certainly something worthy of dreams. What makes this particular family so unique is the way they crave and embody creativity. The nomadic life not only allows them to fulfill various professional goals, but provides for them a richness of diversity and beauty that few can brave to imagine.
And there's that magical word "imagine," which brings me to another string of thought. On the way to pick up my children from preschool the other day, I was listening to a local public radio program and an interview with a writer whose name I hadn't yet caught. This guy was speaking so articulately about, in essence, how living in cities can actually make us smarter. I was provoked by this strand but had to leave my car before catching who was actually doing the talking. Turns out that the interviewee was Jonah Lehrer, prolific writer-extraordinaire for The New Yorker and Wired magazines. His new book, Imagine: How Creativity Works, explores the catalyst for invention and innovation. Today, I sat down and read the review of his book in The New York Times and was drawn to these last few paragraphs of Michiko Kakutani's review of the book:
...Mr. Lehrer makes a strong case for cities as incubators of innovation. Echoing Jane Jacobs, he argues that the sheer density of urban life, “the proximity of all those overlapping minds,” forces people to mingle and interact with a diversity of individuals. This, he goes on, creates exactly the sort of collision of cultures and classes that often yields new ideas. He even quotes a theoretical physicist, Geoffrey West, who says he has found data that validates Jacobs’s theories.
“What the numbers clearly show, and what she was clever enough to anticipate,” Mr. West says, “is that when people come together, they become much more productive per capita.”
One study by Mr. West and another physicist, Luís Bettencourt, Mr. Lehrer writes, suggests that “a person living in a metropolis of one million should generate, on average, about 15 percent more patents and make 15 percent more money than a person living in a city of 500,000.”
In the later pages of this engaging book Mr. Lehrer turns from analysis and reportage to prescription. The jostle and serendipity of city life, he believes, can provide a model for how the Internet might be retooled to accelerate creativity.
“Instead of sharing links with just our friends, or commenting anonymously on blogs, or filtering the world with algorithms to fit our interests, we must engage with strangers and strange ideas,” he writes. “The Internet has such creative potential; it’s so ripe with weirdness and originality, so full of people eager to share their work and ideas. What we need now is a virtual world that brings us together for real.”
Obviously, not everyone can or wants to just quit their lives and move to a bigger city. After all, there are so many pros and cons on both sides of the coin. I regularly dream of the space we could have for such a lower cost if we were simply to leave this city and move somewhere significantly smaller. And as I approach the inevitable process of determining the right school situation for my nearly five-year old, I wince at the prospect of finding the optimal opportunity for him (after-all, as a dear friend mentioned to me just this morning, in the public school scenario, at least, the idea of choice is often a fallacy, as we are at the mercy of our lottery-driven system). What these stories and books attempt to convey though, in no uncertain terms, is that wherever we are we can dare to imagine a better, more innovative life for ourselves, quite simply in the very ways in which we interact with those people and objects around us, wherever we are, that challenge our boundaries of thought and place. What takes root then may grow into something that allows our creativity to soar above the humdrum. And that, my friends, is a life worth living.