Taking the Long Way, Part III.
Hungarian Pastry Shop
Here’s part three of my series about walking from the almost-top of Manhattan to the bottom. If you haven’t read them yet, parts 1 and 2 are here and here. This won’t make much sense to you if you don’t read them! Parts 4 and 5 will be clickable links when they’re published in the coming weeks!
3. HUNGARIAN PASTRY SHOP
What was the purpose of all the ecological destruction I had observed so far? What could possibly be worth algal blooms and forest razing and polluted rivers? Let’s explore the answer, as posited by the modern city. It’s compelling.
III. THIRD DETOUR
I moved to New York, on one level, because of the whole I-wanna-be-a-composer-musician-actor-thing. It might seem obvious why moving to NYC would be a good route to that destination. But bear with me while I write out my exact intended directions to Composing Careersville, because there’s a back road I’d like to take.
My public elementary school was a special thing. I had class with the same 30 or so kids for 5 of 6 years. I had exceptional teachers that worked tirelessly to give us diverse experiences (we choreographed dances based on obscure sculptures in the Utah desert, learned origami, and studied fracking, to name a few). It was a scenius.
A scenius is the communal form of genius. Brian Eno is the inventor of the term, but I think the definitive work is Maps of Scenius by
. It’s a way of placing genius in context, taking it from from a hierarchy to a network. Rather than the genius being top-down, now it’s flat. It’s natural to connect this concept to music scenes, like Vienna in the 1780s, Liverpool in the 60s or Seattle in the 80s. But a scenius can be anything. An apartment building1, a TikTok house2, an elementary school classroom, it doesn’t matter, as long as there is “healthy competition and rapid transfer of tools and techniques.”We fed off of each other in my elementary school, and the creativity spread on an epidemiological scale. CT, Maxwell, and me formed a Coldplay cover band. Megan and Piper invented a whole language to solve a petty dispute at their table. Dallin and I experimented with decomposition, which inspired Asha and Rylee made a sustainable fuel from grocery store food rejects. None of this would have been possible without the right conditions, and I was lucky to find myself in those conditions. I’ve been searching for scenius without knowing the words ever since.
What makes New York city special? It’s the musical theatre capitol of the world, for reasons that are interesting but not relevant (it actually really pains me not to go into a whole history lesson here, but I have to wrap this whole thing up sometime—ask me why in the comments and maybe I’ll give a bonus mini-essay). But, just as a scenius is the plural of genius, a city is the plural form of people.
So, on the next level of abstraction of why NYC was right for me: it’s full of scenius. To be involved in one is to supercharge your creativity. “Just as thoughts are an emergent property of neurons firing in our neural networks, innovations arise as an emergent consequence of our species’ psychology applied within our societies and social networks.”3 The PIT is a scenius. I want to cultivate scenius in my friend group. The scenius I visited on my long walk was the Hungarian Pastry Shop.
I was starting to get hot. Moving off the Greenway (with another hectic roadway maneuver) and toward downtown had left me sweaty. Time for a water break, and I knew just where to stop. Near the northwest corner of Central Park, I spied the signature red and white stripes of the Hungarian Pastry Shop awning. Creative community spilled out from under as people got their caffeine and connection fix.
HPS had already become a regular visit for me by the time of my long walk. I do not work well in my own space. Too many other interesting things around me, too much deferred administrative tasks (I’m looking at you, extremely disorganized cable management), too many pianos (yes, one is too many) for me to focus. I’m always alert to the next great productive coffee shop, library, or public space where people gather. Sometimes it takes some experimenting, sometimes you have to turn the place into a scene. Sometimes the scene finds you. HPS found me after I helped a friend move into her apartment and I was craving something pastry. One peach linzer later—I’m a sucker for fruit and bread—its hooks were in deep.
Was it the walls plastered with low-res home printouts of every book that had been written inside? Or was it the fact that someone plopped down at my table and jumped into the middle of a conversation about their papermaking efforts? The walls tattooed with political ramblings? How many of the major world-shifting movements have begun in cafes? I’m determined that the next one will come from The Hungarian Pastry Shop, and it won’t be mine. It’ll belong to the scenius just as much as it does any one of us.
But aside from my desire to cosplay as Enjolras, HPS makes a damn good pastry and the water runs free and cold, and the AC works. On the day of my walk, my weapon of choice was a slice of apple strudel and a protein bar. This is the promise of modernity: that we can live close together, that we can have leisure time, that we can cool the spaces in which we come together, that we can eat whatever we want on demand. Apple strudel in June is modern. We’re practically swimming in convenience.
But as the costs of convenience mount (think algal blooms), can we collectively choose an existence that doesn’t come at the expense of the world? When the drip finally stops…
Next week: Central park!
Just made it through 1, 2, and 3 for the first time. You're somehow writing the exact type of story I want to read ! Can't wait for the rest
Updates coming? I miss this.