A Travel Writing Experiment

Thanks to our awesome tour guides, I have plenty of New York City stories to tell.  Wanted to take a little break, though, to try something out.  I recently found out that next semester I will be teaching an introductory writing course at JMU, and I have decided to teach it through a travel writing lens.  My dad and I have often discussed how inspirational music can be on the road.  And I'm toying with somehow incorporating music into my writing classroom, but I still need to figure out if and how this might benefit my future students.  With that being said, I wanted to try out a little travel writing experiment.

Wikipedia has a list of hundreds of songs about NYC.  I'm going to choose a random song from the list.  I pick the letter "N", and according to this website that I found, 36% of the population in NYC was born outside of the United States.  So, I'm going to choose the 36th song that starts with "N."  And if I can get my loser boyfriend to stop attacking my keyboard, I will post the lyrics tonight and somehow relate the song to my trip tomorrow.  Getting lost in the DC ghetto last night wore me out and so did waitressing.

Here goes nothing.................

"New York" by U2

In New York freedom looks like too many choices
In New York I found a friend to drown out the other voices
Voices on the cell phone
Voices from home
Voices of the hard sell
Voices down the stairwell
In New York, just got a place in New York

In New York summers get hot well into the hundreds
You can walk around the block without a change of clothing
Hot as a hair dryer in your face
Hot as handbag and a can of mace
New York, I just got a place in New York
New York, New York

In New York you can forget, forget how to sit still
Tell yourself you will stay in
But it's down to Alphaville

New York, New York, New York
New York, New York, New York

The Irish have been coming here for years
Feel like they own the place
They got the airport, city hall, concrete, asphalt, they even got the police
Irish, Italians, Jews and Hispanics
Religious nuts, political fanatics in the stew
Living happily not like me and you
That's where I lost you...New York

New York, New York
New York, New York

In New York I lost it all to you and your vices
Still I'm staying on to figure out my mid life crisis
I hit an iceberg in my life
But you know I'm still afloat
You lose your balance, lose your wife
In the queue for the lifeboat

You got to put the women and children first
But you've got an unquenchable thirst for New York

New York, New York
New York, New York

In the stillness of the evening
When the sun has had its day
I heard your voice a-whispering
Come away child

New York, New York