for anyone who has ever felt alone in a crowd: my new video the only torn-up boy in new york is out now and is about that precise feeling. though this is technically a music video set to a song on Holes In Our Stories, we set out to make a mini short film that almost works as a PSA about loneliness in new york city, or something. I hope that when you watch it, you relate, no matter where you’re living as you’re reading this right now.
let me tell you where this began — maybe I’ve always had it in me, but new york gave me the great gift of loneliness.
Out now.
The Only Torn-Up Boy in New York
my life in new york city the last few years has had some opera highs and some grand piano lows. as I detail in chapter 7 of my book, my time in this city has been filled with a nonstop search for a sense of home, often one that hasn’t been too fruitful, and a search for a revitalized sense of myself after years of dwelling on a memory of my past as a more stable place that criminally no longer exists.
the loneliness here in new york has helped me grow up, and I’m grateful for that. and we all know new york is stereotypically lonely, as it’s portrayed in movies and books — as a new york street photographer I met last week put it, people aren’t in their bodies here, they are rushing enough to the next place and working so hard to survive that everyone in the city becomes like a ghost, passing through their physical locations and workplaces without ever getting captured — and to settle down for one moment in this city feels like conceding.
but I don’t know if I’ve experienced that feeling due to any unique nature of new york so much as I’ve just felt it due to being in my mid twenties. looking to make sense of my place in the world. I don’t know for sure, but whatever the root of it is, it hit me hard the last couple years and has continued to.
I wanted to capture that particular strain of loneliness in my twenties with one of these new videos: the feeling of passing through daily life from job to job, passing through celebratory checkpoints in life quicker than you ever have before, and adapting to impactful life experiences like family tragedies, funerals, unpredictable emergencies, reinventing how you see yourself, etc. quicker than we ever could have planned when we were our younger selves. everyone goes through these things, and everyone certainly goes through them quicker than ever nowadays, and new york has so much sheer data on the speed of life that I thought this city was a perfect vehicle to illustrate my point.
that point is a simple, but real, positive message: you are not the only person going through what you are going through, and neither am I.
whatever ups and downs have added up to your current story, whatever things feel too fleeting to you despite no one else ever stopping to notice them, whatever worn-out tragedies keep on haunting you — there have to be others around you experiencing that as well, without saying so. I wanted to give that concept some hard proof, so I started to look for real data.
I got to work researching statistics about new york city life using government sites, census sites, old articles archiving facts about the city, articles from others who did this same research, and info on population trends…and I did a bunch of math, some of it admittedly pretty rough.
but if I could figure out the exact (as close as I could) numbers of the things I feel impact people who are going through this same stage of life, I thought I’d be able to prove a pretty solid point in a way that applies to any city or town. I wanted to come to a scientific conclusion that this pervasive feeling of the loneliness we share doesn’t deserve our energy, despite how easy it is to feel it.
by definition, there are 8.632 million people who call the city I live in home, and new york has the highest population density out of any major city in the US, so I’d be crazy to believe I’m the only torn-up boy living here. despite what I express in the lyrics of my song.
so in digging, I found some pretty crazy numbers and statistics, and added in a little extrapolation where needed - check this out.
New York has:
8.632 million people
11,485 street corners
1,586268 people living in broken homes
24,451 hospital beds
327 babies born every day
6,418 subway cars
193,050 students in long-distance relationships while in school
31,521 funerals in new york city every year
840,152 entrance exams or qualification tests failed each year
and a bunch of other statistics we found and/or figured out that are pretty mind-blowing when you really think about each of them.
on top of that, it got me wondering about all of the hard statistics we can never calculate in any given place in the world.
how many people living here have given up on their dreams?
how many one night stands happen every night here?
how many strangers pass each other on these streets that would find each other interesting but will never cross paths?
how many people here feel completely undecided about their futures despite going through more and more of the motions of growing up?
the truth is, I see my time in New York City as filled with an overwhelming amount of stimuli, of my own untold stories (hopefully to come in future songs), of struggle and determination against my own darkness, of pushing forward despite not knowing my future, and while this city is endlessly fascinating and has so much to give, being here feels strangely at odds with staying young, with having the downtime to figure these things out, and with the comfort of the past I once missed so much…instead, it has given way to something else in its relentless and destructive wake.
what new york has given me is the great gift of loneliness. this city so easily offers that gift through its anonymity, its incredible pace, its 8.632 million bodies. but I’ve learned that in fighting back against the loneliness, I’ve discovered a newfound love for self-exploration: new things to say in my songs, new places I want to recognize as home, and new experiences I want to add to my bucket list.
and that’s all I have to say about this one. hope you love it, hope it hits you, hope you relate.
directed by brian petchers, as usual. please share the video with a friend — it’s more powerful when it’s in all of our combined hands. this URL will always take you right to the video when you put it in your browser theonlytornupboyinnewyork.com.
much love & until next time,
dylan
some beautiful behind the scenes photos captured by zach cooper on set:
