City of Secrets

It's easy to think that secrets are bad -- but we all have them. We all have things about ourselves and our pasts that we don't want to share with others, even those closest to us. 

Some secrets are scary, weird, or gross, and we know better than to reveal them. Where do you think the expression "TMI" came from? 

Others are simply very personal, very meaningful in ways that are unique only to us, and letting  people know about them would lessen the inherent value, even magic, they contain for us. 

And, naturally, some secrets are things we're just ashamed of and wish to forget. Hopefully, perhaps, we've also learned something from them. 

Secrets, mysteries, enigmas -- we all have them. They make us, at least in part, for better or worse, who we are.

And yet, sometimes, we'll reveal our secrets although maybe not for years, decades, or even centuries later. Certain secrets need to germinate, grow inside us, become a fuller and more complete truth before they can be shared with the world. They're like old letters we find at the back of a drawer when we're cleaning out the desk of someone who just died. They're like the story someone tells us about our childhoods or families that didn't know, and that change our impressions (again, for better or worse) about ourselves, our upbringings, and those close to us.

A few NYC-related examples made me think of these kinds of secrets, secrets that we keep but eventually reveal. And they made me think.

First, a fun one, about new tours at the Met Museum where we get the lowdown -- the dirty secrets -- about some of the great museum's finest masterpieces. 

Second, a heartfelt conversation with Mike D from the Beastie Boys about the Brooklyn rap group's history. One of the first albums I ever bought was 1987's License to Ill, their classic anthem "You Gotta Fight For Your Right (To Party)" one of the defining songs of my youth. He talks all about growing up in NYC and what influenced the group -- a group whose music influenced me as a kid. 

Third, a memoir, a secret memoir, that the great NYC photographer Bill Cunningham was working on but never published. It was discovered after his death and is about his life, his career, and the power of photography. He was a quiet man who led an amazing life and we'll be learning secrets about him and the city he loved -- and that loved him back in spades.  

  

When you have a vast old city like NYC there's going to be a secrets around every corner. In the great musical Company, one of the characters sings that "It's a city of strangers." 

Yes, and it's also a City of Secrets -- and always will be.