Julian Goldhagen - Silence in the City

 

 

How y' all feeling? How was intermission? Feeling good? Well, onward we go through our journey within the five senses. And I love to think about sound. Sound is something that's really present in my life. I came here to go to school, and I also came here to sort of like, get out of the place that I'm from. Jacksonville is very segregated. There's not a lot going on. And as a little queer person, I wanted nothing more than just to, like, break out of that place and experience the world and kiss boys. So, when I got into school in New York, I was out of there. And it wasn't until I was on the plane at night, you know, 12 o', clock, looking over in the darkness. The whole city lit up the skyline, all those lights. 

 

It wasn't until that moment that it really clicked for me that I didn't know a single person here. Not a soul. And I am hit with the sounds of the city. It's like there are people tucking and screaming at each other, and there's music and horns, and it's so alive. And it was like, “Whoa, I'm here. I made it. This is what I was looking for.” So, the next day, the next morning, I move into my dorm room. And when I get there, I learn that through a strange series of events, I have randomly been assigned the only single dorm room at NYU. [audience laughter] You know, fancy. So, I'm going to be living all by myself, which is like, okay.

 

So, the RA takes me to my room, and it's a whole situation. It's like a door off the main hallway, there's a door. Then you go in that door, and there's another hallway that you go down. And then at the end of that hallway, there's another door, and inside that door is my home. And it's a little room, it's cute. It's got a window. There's a huge walk-in closet. So, I'm feeling like, “Okay, NYU.” Like, I see you, but immediately I recognize that it's very quiet, like we're in some interior part of the building. So, you can hear a pin drop. The molecules are completely still. Very different from the bustling oasis outside. 

 

So, I take my suitcase and I'm taking some clothes and moving them into my giant walk in closet. I'm walking inside the closet and I just like instinctually muscle memory, close the door behind me. And as I do I hear this little click. And so, then I go to the door to like investigate and it has locked from the outside. So, I am stuck inside of the closet. [audience laughter] And I don't know if this reads about me. We spent some time together already. I'm a very anxious person. And so, my mind goes from 0 to 100 in terms of worst-case scenario, I don't have my cell phone, so I cannot call and ask for help. Nobody knows me in this whole city. So, if I don't show up somewhere, who's going to notice that I'm gone? They don't even know who I am. And then my brain immediately goes to the skeletons on the side of Mount Everest. Those poor souls, they're like frozen and their clothes are still on them. I'm just picturing like, that's me.

 

And so I just start to scream. I'm like, “Help, help. I'm stuck inside of the closet again. Help. Help. Help.” Screaming, screaming and screaming and nobody is coming, nobody is helping me. And eventually I just like give up on myself and I stop screaming and I sink to the bottom of the closet and I just sit there and I wait. I don't know for what. Just to die, I guess, I wait. And that goes on for what feels like forever and then eventually I start to hear something like rustling of feet or something and then it turns into like jingling of keys. And all of a sudden, the closet door opens and this very ambivalent security guard is there to liberate me from this chamber. And so, I get out of the closet and I'm back in my dorm room. And it feels amazing. I see the window. The sun is shining. I am so, so glad to no longer be trapped.

 

But then the silence kind of starts to trickle in again. And I remember, like, wait a minute, I am still completely alone, I don't know anybody. And that is not a fun feeling to sit with. But time goes on, 15ish years later, and I'm still in New York. And there are days that I still feel completely alone. It's wild in this city, how we could be surrounded by people and sometimes it can still be so lonely. But I don't always feel like that because I know there are people in this city who love me. There are people in this city that I love and I really, really believe that if this were to happen again, if I were to ever find myself trapped inside of a closet, inside of a dorm room, inside of a hallway, that somebody would notice that I was gone. [audience aww] Thank you.