As a young journalist my ideal job was to be a staff writer at the New Yorker. The idea of writing long-form pieces about any subject I liked was so intoxicating. Somebody told me about the writer Joseph Mitchell, and after reading Up In The Old Hotel, I fell in love with his vignettes about the city. Here’s one from 1959 about some men who work on the Hudson River that reaches beyond itself into high art. I love writing like that. It’s easy and difficult at the same time. It reads like Mitchell wrote it in a flow state, the kind you get into when you’re on a roll in a poker game or playing pool. I was also bowled over by Anthony Bourdain’s origin story. The one about how his mother showed his essay to the editor, David Remnick. It became “Kitchen Confidential” and launched him into the stratosphere. I loved the idea of living in New York and being a writer, period. Last week, I finally got to realize part of my dream: to visit the publication’s offices in the rebuilt World Trade Center.
I got there thanks to connections. How else? Journalists and writers are a funny bunch. We tend to meet each other and stay in touch across geographies for years. Right now, for example, I’m working for an editor I first met in 2009. We never lost touch. I don’t know why. Real recognizes real, as Flavor Flav from Public Enemy might say.
I met my friend Dietlind Lerner through my friend Nick Mathiason in London. When I was moving to California, he put us in touch, and we met after a few false starts (all were my fault). This past week, she was hosting a fellowship for German journalists. They spent a week in Washington, D.C. and a week in New York City. As part of their trip, Dietlind arranged a visit with a producer of the New Yorker Radio Hour. She, too, has made plenty of connections over the years, it turns out. I’m so glad to know her and I was very grateful she let me tag along to the publication of my dreams.
The New Yorker‘s radio show goes out to about a million listeners each week across America. There’s also a podcast version that gets a good few more listeners. It was a fascinating conversation. Without quoting the producer I can say we heard a lot about the dynamics that led to the creation of the show. Think: Multi-platform. Taking what makes the print publication special and going broader.
The Germans asked good, pointed questions about production decisions and timelines. How do you make a weekly show, going out on a Saturday, relevant to the audience if you need to produce it by Tuesday night? That sort of thing. I loved them all. They’re off around the country, now, researching and writing pieces. Someone’s doing a piece about #TradWife dynamics in Utah. I love that.
I had a revelatory time. On the one hand I had the sort of awestruck feeling one tends to have when you meet your idols. I met Tony Bourdain in 2006 when the arts editor of the weekly paper I was working at in Oregon didn’t want to work late. I was like, “are you kidding me?” And I raced downtown to talk to him. It felt like that. On another level I couldn’t help feeling like the New Yorker‘s offices are like all offices. There were placards up about the efforts to unionize by staff. One could tell that some of the staff writers have nicer offices. One could tell that there are politics about who matters most. There’s one-upmanship. Their salaries are terrible. The idea of working in an office—any office, it turns out—makes me feel existential dread. I crave a sense of risk and creativity that’s better in my imagination than on the 23rd floor of Conde Nast’s HQ. Ironically, I realized that’s what really drew me to New York, more than this specific dream about working at a specific publication, however prestigious.
At the end of the day, I was rather gratified to realize that of all the fragmented dreams I’ve had over the years, the important part of my dream of working at the New Yorker as a staff writer has already come true. I live in New York, I get to write for a living about whatever I want, and better yet, I don’t work in an office. I work for a variety of clients who interest me a great deal. I’m not saying I’d turn down a staff writer’s job at the New Yorker if it came my way, of course. But it’s unlikely, to say the least. The bigger realization is that my life has broadened in ways I couldn’t have expected when I was 26 and if I’m honest, I’m happier than I had ever imagined being, then. Our dreams are guideposts. They’re stars we navigate by. But once we reach them, it turns out, even by tangential means, there are other stars on the far horizon. What are yours? Come to think of it, what are mine? Gosh. There’s a thought.
Again, I’m deeply grateful for the invite and I don’t want to come across as churlish. One could pay good money to have the kind of realizations I had up there. People take Ayahuasca for that sort of thing. I was just surprised, and that seemed more interesting to me than posing for a selfie with a portrait of legendary editor, Harold Ross. Although damn. Now I come to think of it, I should have done that. Maybe in another 20 years.
—Matt Davis is a communications consultant and writer for a wide variety of clients. He also teaches yoga and lives with his wife and son in New York.
