Latest / Storycomic Presents: Interviews with Amazing Storytellers and Artists / (Episode 334): C.O. Moed on Capturing New York’s Heart in ‘It Was Her New York

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(Episode 334): C.O. Moed on Capturing New York’s Heart in ‘It Was Her New York · Storycomic Presents: Interviews with Amazing Storytellers and Artists

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Music.
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Colors, and artists. This is episode 334. I'm your host, Bernie Smith of StoryComic.com,
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and we're honored to have with us the nationally acclaimed and celebrated author
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of It Was Her New York, C.O. Moed.
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Thank you so much. It's going really well. It's fun to be here.
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Welcome, Vermont. Hello, Vermont. I actually know Vermont.
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As a New Yorker who can't figure out Queens is on a map. I actually do know Vermont.
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I have family up in, or I had family up in North Hero and friends with Doc,
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and I visited Brattleboro at some point.
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And I'm surprised that I know Vermont as much as I do, since I don't really know anything else.
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Because that's right, because you're on here, because you just recently,
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you know, your book published, it was her New York from a Vermont-based publisher.
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That's right. Rootstop. Rootstop Publishing is a traditional and hybrid publisher,
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and they do fantastic work.
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Samantha Colbert is the publisher, new publisher, and it's just one of the best
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experiences I've had working with a publisher.
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And a hybrid relationship actually allows more collaboration and also really
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like not being in the dark about the publishing process. It's been amazing.
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And she's very fierce about her writers and she's very fierce about getting
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the book to be exactly what it needs to be in the public eye.
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So if there are writers out there thinking about seeking a publisher and are
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interested in doing hybrid, hybrid, which is a new form of publishing,
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I would highly recommend Rootstock.
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And she's located in Montpelier. Your book, as we mentioned at the top of the
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show, is that it's called It Was Her New York.
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And talk to us a little bit about the book.
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Thanks so much. Thanks for asking. It is
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a collection of photo-illustrated intimate vignettes of stepping into the process
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of a city and a parent suddenly disappearing into gentrification and illness,
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and yet surprisingly still there as who they are.
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I started it as a way of keeping my writing close to my heart and in progress when a parent,
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in this case, my mother, got suddenly very ill and I was caretaking her along with my sister.
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And at the same time, my neighborhood was becoming more and more gentrified
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and I was beginning to not see the home that I grew up in.
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That can be a very discombobulating experience
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and since i was getting it from both ends you know intimate relationship intimate
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city and they were home to me i felt like i needed to identify where home still
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existed where where city still existed where a parent still existed and it was was there all along.
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So the book became this amazing arc of walking a parent,
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which many of us have to do when our parents get older and we're the child that
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takes care of them, walking a parent through the rest of their life,
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long or short, through illness or through just aging, and at the same time,
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identifying and connecting to what home means to them.
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So all these little vignettes became almost a pointillism picture.
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You know, if you look at Dutch paintings and each dot is a different color.
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And yet when you step back, it's a whole portrait.
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That's what her New York is. A whole portrait of a city, a whole portrait of
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a woman, a gay woman, a whole portrait of immigrants,
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of the maintenance guys, the pizza ladies, the taxi cab drivers,
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our portrait of our city, of our home, of our life, of our dreams.
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Of our loss. So, yeah.
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I made a book. Is there an insinuation or is it something where you really,
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really kind of capture the fact that as New York changes, so did your mother as well?
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It happened to me at the same time and there's no insinuation.
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It just, there it is. And yet what also is there is there they are.
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They're still home. home, that taxi cab driver is still talking about the American
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dream the way that my grandparents talked about the American dream.
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Those moments are everything to me.
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It sounds like I take a lot of taxis. I don't, but they're so few and far between.
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And also I was taught never to take a taxi. So in the book, there's these arguments
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I'm having in my head about the necessity to take a taxi,
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you know, with the parent that told me never to take a taxi,
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like, shut up, I'm taking a taxi and getting a taxi and there's someone from
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another country or someone who's the child of immigrants or someone who grew up in the Bronx,
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you know, talking about their life.
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And New Yorkers do that with one another.
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We, I get into a cab, I'm talking to the guy like he's a neighbor because he
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is a neighbor, because he is my fellow New Yorker.
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Same thing with meeting my co-workers, you know, and having them as part of
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my life and sharing story or sharing moments in the day or or the nurses that
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we talked to, or the doctors we talked to, the EMS guys that drove us places,
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the car, I mean, every, the pizza lady, you know, who knew my coworker,
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because we all grew up on the same block.
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And we didn't, you know, it's these small little, beautiful ribbons of connection.
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So here we are in New York, we're still here, we're still New York City,
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even though gentrification, is changing the reality of real estate,
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changing the reality of affordable housing.
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We're still here. We're still connected to each other. And I think that's in
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any community, just New York's a bigger village.
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Did this story kind of come to you, or is this a story that you wanted to tell for a while now?
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The story began as these little posts that I would do three times a week,
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and they did come come out of self-defense.
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I was walking back one day from taking care of my mom and I was walking up Avenue
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A, which used to be one of the more dangerous avenues and it no longer is.
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And that's great. It's great to walk down the street and not,
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think you're going to get mugged. And I passed a kid in a pork pie hat,
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talking to his friend who had a camera.
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And he's in front of a beloved local bodega, a beloved little candy shop, beloved, Ray's.
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And he's going, what's an egg cream? Is there an egg in it? And I thought,
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I'm going to punch this kid.
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You know, it's like, egg cream is a New York drink. You know,
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it's like, Like, stop it.
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You know, like, do your research about the home you're visiting.
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I wouldn't go into your home and say, what are those bright golf pants you're wearing? You know?
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So he was like, what's an egg cream? Is it an egg in it? You know,
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tell me what an egg cream is. And I thought, I need to fight for my city. So I began.
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So rather than get into soft charge, I went home and I wrote.
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You know, I was like, use your words. And I began writing about what I was seeing on the street.
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And three times a week, I would post a story and a photograph because photographs
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and story are sort of one in the same for me.
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When I was young, my mom would take me to the Seward Park Library on East Broadway,
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and she would stick me in front of the Charles Adams cartoon books.
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And that was my story. You know, it's like, oh, look at this family that looks
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totally normal to me, the Adams family.
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Or the family of man photography collection that
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came out in the 50s of all these photographs
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of the world and a family and of love and
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of death i mean that was that was a story
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to me so when i began to actually write i kept pairing it with image i kept
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pairing it with photographs and and what i was seeing on the street and i did
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it with a little point and shoot now i'm not a photographer i still can't figure
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out if stops but i just did with a little pointer i was like taking pictures.
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The other thing was I had been videotaping my mom and putting together a documentary
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about New York and her and our history or our sort of our portrait.
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And I couldn't hold a camera while I was taking care of her.
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I couldn't hold a video camera, but I could hold a point and shoot.
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So I was doing a lot of sort of almost stealth photographs.
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I could hold her hand, I could take care of something, I could feed her,
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but I could hold that little point and shoot and keep taking photographs of her.
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And I could take photographs on the street. If I walked home,
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I always saw something I needed to photograph.
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So the stories became this amalgamation of how I was seeing my home,
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of how I was experiencing my home.
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And three times a week, up went a story. It saved my writing.
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It documented the process that was very funny at times and very sad at And also
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very unique at times, because personally, as a New Yorker, I think everything we do is unique.
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And it became this wonderful collection that I was able to then sculpt a moment for New York.
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And so as you put this together at what
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point did you take kind of like this as you mentioned it was kind of
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like a blog or something that you're doing since early 2006 early
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blog yeah yeah yeah and not a lot of readers a couple hundred around the world
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i'm thinking the biggest audience i got i believe was from i want to say morocco
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there was a woman coming to see her daughter for the first time in decades.
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And they were interviewing her in the coffee shop that my friend and I wrote in.
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So what did I do? I whipped out my little point and shoot and I took a picture
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and then I asked some questions and I typed like crazy.
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And then I read it to her and they're filming me. And like, I'm not really thinking
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about the fact that they're filming me.
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And I throw up this little story and a little picture of the woman.
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And I, two days later, notice that there are 3,000 visitors to the blog, that everyone,
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you know, saw the broadcast of this woman on their televisions in Morocco,
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and visited the blog to read the story.
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And that was, and it was a beautiful, I mean, I'm not, it was a beautiful story.
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It wasn't like, oh, I wrote a beautiful story. It was a beautiful story.
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And all I did was document it.
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And I think that that's the nature of the blog and that's the nature of the
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book. I just documented moments. That's all I was doing.
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And I also documented my emotional relationship with the city and I documented
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the intimate relationships I had with the people around me, including the parent
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I was taking care of. Right.
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Talk to us about that decision you made when you sat back and looked at it and
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says, I should put this into a book.
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How did that process go? I'm so glad you asked that because this is for all
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the writers out there who have
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thrusted all their little notes into a binder or a drawer. Pull it out.
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Pull it out and look at them. I had 1,400 stories just about.
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And a novel that I had written that was snappy and weird and wonderful was not
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going to get play because publishing is under, you know, a lot of attack.
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It's an embattled business and they're looking for things that are a little bit more commercial.
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And I thought I have 1400 stories. I should put something together.
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The pushback I got from friends in the business, you know, agents and,
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you know, publishers was, you know, who wants to read that?
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You have it on, you have it on a blog for free. Who's going to want to read that?
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And that didn't help, but I still kept looking at these stories and I put together
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a rough draft, a very short, rough draft, like just pulling things that I,
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that created this arc of what it means to walk a parent.
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To their death and clean out their home and also celebrate their life and what
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it means to move through a city that is disappearing and still find it and celebrate its vibrancy.
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And there were times in the process of draft after draft, I think we did five
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to seven different drafts of this.
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There were times in the process where I would sit on my little love seat in
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my little tiny tiny writing corner and feel completely like depressed,
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like the sense of futility of why am I doing this?
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It's worthless. Like who's going to, why am I even bothering?
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And then to still do it. And so I'm calling out to all the writers here that
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say it's too late or that, or who listen to that feeling that says it's, it's pointless.
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I shouldn't even bother, bother anyway.
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How I felt going through draft after draft was besides the point. I kept taking actions.
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I also worked with an editor in Vermont.
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Her name is Deb Hyman, and she's located in Woodstock.
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She is one of the most nurturing editors that I've worked with her before in other forms.
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She's incredibly nurturing and very supportive, and she also is incredibly keen-eyed.
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She could could really see where pieces were singing the arc of a story and
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where pieces were not quite working.
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And so I felt supported, but I also felt called out on, hey, get to work.
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And that's also critical. You can't have fans only, and you can't have undermining critics.
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You have to have someone who's advocating for the work. And she did.
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And then I just began to send query letters around, again, fighting.
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I cannot impress upon you more the sense of futility that I felt constantly while I took action.
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So I'm really saying this out loud for all the writers out there who have tucked
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their heart and soul into dark corners. Pull them out.
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Start honoring them.
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And fight for their existence. and fight against your own futility. I did.
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And now when I talk about it, it's like, oh, it was so much fun.
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I mean, the book makes me laugh. I'm delighted that people are delighted by it.
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I'm so touched by the response I've gotten.
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I'm just, I walked into several books.
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I did a, I went cold calling to bookstores in New York City and in one bookstore,
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this young woman, awesome young woman at Books Are Magic, opened up the book
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and was like, oh man, and starts reading it.
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And it's like, no, no, no, I have to, I have to, no, no, I, and I walked into
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another bookstore and the young man was flipping through it.
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And I said, I should put it away. And he goes, I'm not done.
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I mean, I turned around and I was like, I'm going to cry.
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You know, that that's the affirmation that fighting through my sense of despair
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and how pointless this is fighting through that really made a difference.
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Feelings aren't facts. And writers sitting in tiny rooms or painters sitting
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in their studios or, you know, poets or sculptors, whatever our medium is,
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we're alone in the moment of creation.
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And it really does feel like,
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what is the point? And that's where I have to make the road by walking.
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And I've been saying that a lot lately. I'm going to make the road by walking.
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And it's a sticky, right in front of my desk, right above my computer monitor.
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Make the road by walking. And that's what I had to do to keep that moment.
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I've got 1,400 stories. Why don't I do something with it?
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Motivation may have come out of i gotta do something before i die but it was
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the discipline of working no
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matter how i felt that really created the book these how did you able to,
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choose which stories that you're going to actually utilize in your book i think
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it's a little bit like composing music right i mean which i which is an ironic
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thing to say since i was raised under my mother's piano.
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And, you know, and I was being ear trained and given theory lessons and practicing the piano.
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I think by the time I was three, four, four o'clock, I was at the piano for
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four, I'm sorry, four o'clock, four years old, I was at the piano,
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three years old, I was doing theory and ear training.
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So the way I move through anything is very based, it's based in music.
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Music so to me it was reading the stories and
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almost hearing the music of each story and how it created a moment in a piece
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it's musical what's the rhythm there were some pieces that i felt really attached
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to i just these got to be in here and i was just finding the right place for
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them where are they in harmony with the piece before and with the piece after,
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So it became a musical process for me.
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It really was composing a symphony or a symphony of a lot of stories.
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Who is the main character in this book? Is it the city of New York or is it your mother?
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I don't know. I thought it was my mom, but someone said to me,
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no, it's you. And I thought, no, it's not. It's the city.
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I think it's whoever you connect to. too. But I also think the reason why it's
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not our New York or his New York, it's her New York, because it started with her story.
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And there are so many women in this book. And we're hearing stories.
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And there's also men in this book.
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But we're hearing women's stories very specifically.
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Specifically and i know i don't think i know that our stories how we perceive the world is so,
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undervalued so unrepresented so invisible
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we were talking about that famous spy that
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aims guy that was double crossing like he was an agent for the russians and
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he had been selling them secrets and all these women at the cia had been shunted
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to like doing theoretical jobs And they found out from a comment his wife made
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about getting window treatments.
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And they knew that window treatments are so expensive, there's no way that they could afford it.
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And so they knew he was getting income from someplace else.
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And that's how they began their investigation. That's a woman's story.
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That's a woman's eye. That's true. Women knew that Ames was spying because his
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wife could afford window treatments.
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We know the world differently and we see those details that are the bigger story.
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So it is her New York, a lot of women in this book under, you know, and what, come on,
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like everyone wants to know what women are want and how women think read the
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book because just how we move through the day is what we want and how we think.
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And maybe it is. I do. I look at my city as a woman.
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I look at chips as a woman. I look at, I look at everything as a woman.
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You know, because we're really awesome.
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It was her New York. I thought it was about my mom, actually.
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But people tell me, you know, no, it's you. It's the city. It's I mean, who knows?
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You tell me. You read the book and tell me what you think.
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So for those that are looking at this, that aren't from New York,
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what would be the draw for someone that, say, is living in, like,
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Tennessee or Arizona or Finland to read the book?
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Well, one, come travel to New York without leaving your living room couch. Ouch.
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That's the first thing. Come on by. You're going to meet our city.
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And then when you get there, you're going to meet yourself because every single
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person in that book is going to tell you a little bit about your own story.
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You're going to read every single story and say, oh, that's me.
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Or, oh, that happened to me.
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Or it's going to be, I didn't, I've never met that person in my life.
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Wow, they're awesome. This is so interesting.
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I've only seen them on TV like this, you know, so I think it's,
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it's a great way to travel. It's a great way to meet new friends.
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It's also a great way to hear your own story.
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And so what about your upcoming works? I see that you have a couple of upcoming works as well.
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Yeah, there are two projects in play.
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One is called High Speed, Mess Called Life.
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When I was reading at the New York City Poetry Festival, I accidentally said,
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high speed, you know, mess called life, or the consequences of loving penises, which was funny.
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But they're they're they're short works uh
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again of relationships of past
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disappointments of past delights of tough decisions moments that we never talk
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about and it's again you can live in arizona new mexico you could live in alaska
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you could live in canada you could live in france you You could live in the
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Netherlands. You could live anywhere.
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These stories will give you a conduit, a moment of saying, oh,
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yeah, I remember that. Me too.
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Or, oh, I know someone who went through that.
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I do like I put self-explanatory underneath that. But a lot of it's the consequences of loving penises.
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So, you know, a nice mix.
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Now, is this something that you're going to have through Rootstock as well?
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Well, right now it is in such early stages and it requires another like year
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of rewriting that it's absolutely possible right now.
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I'm just like, I just want to celebrate her New York, you know.
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So, yeah, the other pieces, I mean, also, you know, Rootstock,
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I believe this was the first time that Rootstock did a sort of a coffee table
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art book in a way, you know, it's a yeah.
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The Home Sweet Home are the photographs of New York City.
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But not necessarily just New York. I also took pictures in California when I
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was taking care of my dad and,
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I've taken, but these particular stories, and that's funny, it's like they're
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photographs, but to me, they're stories.
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The picture of the, you see the arm brace, that was Robert on his last day of being a postman.
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And he had been our postman for 30 years. He knew everyone in the building.
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He visited with one of our neighbors on a regular basis.
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And I loved that this portrait was his job, that arm brace for the carpal tunnel,
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all the pens, all the the different little forms that he carried,
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his uniform, the pride in how he crosses his arm.
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The picture next to it is a man in prayer on a subway station, a subway car.
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We were passing trains, and I suddenly saw his reflection. I point and shoot, snap.
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The pictures below that, if you just move it down, the woman who's sticking her tongue out.
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How many people see a woman of at that age, sticking her tongue out at a camera.
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And that's Dana, who was a major activist in New York City,
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and was part of phenomenal change in the Lower East Side where the landscape
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was transformed into affordable housing. She was part of that movement.
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And here she is, I think she was in her 90s or late 80s, and I would visit her.
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I was a child and grew up with her next door.
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The man behind her is her son he was the boy next door
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i wrote a story about him once the boy next door i had a crush on him
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for decades and it was us having lunch
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and she just saw that camera and she just stuck her tongue out yeah i there
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the the thing with the um the pipes you know you go into these offices and there's
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it's an archaeological dig like who and the guys along those those construction worker guys,
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that was like a walk by said, I'm very, very shy.
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And I tend to have a hard time asking people on the street if I can take their picture.
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And I just turn to them and say, can I take your picture? And they're all kind
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of like, look at that guy in the middle just told, yo, take my picture.
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And I just thought, I love it. Like, those are working men.
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Take my picture. We're having lunch. We're working. And they all have a different expression.
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They're all laughing. They're all experiencing that moment different.
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But he's in his T-shirt going, yo, take my picture. Go ahead.
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So these are visual moments. The man talking to the hospital bed is my father in California.
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One is, he's in a hospital room that has windows like that. It's so pretty.
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It's a private room. He's just making sure he has everything.
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It was a moment of him saying goodbye to that hospital bed.
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It fascinated me.
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They're just moments. They're little stories. This is the Essex Street Market
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before they moved to the fancy Essex Street Market.
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This is the barber. and this is his wall. And I came in, I said,
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I know you're moving. Can I take a picture?
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Here's my card. He's looking at my card. And I just, I just love that that was,
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he and his father were in that space for decades.
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When the new S.S. Street Market opened, I went in and he had a new space,
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not as packed with clocks. And he said it was okay.
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You know, it's a process of leaving home And setting up new home.
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It was a little bit of a diaspora, just one block north in a new home.
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And that's another one of my favorite pictures of New York City.
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What would be some of the things that are important that you hope your readers get out of the book?
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I love that question. I want us to say everything. And then now let's say what everything is.
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One is to feel their heart and soul about someone they love.
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Whoever that person is. In this book, I lost love. The person I was supposed to marry left me.
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So there was a loss of love. There was that sense of grieving.
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At the same time, there was a loss of my own life because I was suddenly taking care of somebody.
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You know very hands-on having to
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be available and having to direct all that emotional energy and in that action
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receiving so much the process of taking care of a parent is not a hallmark card
27:48
and it ain't a disney movie it's real life and you do it and i think anyone taking care of anybody,
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you know even a mother taking care of a small child there is that kind of like
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you become a vending machine for what the situation demands.
28:05
And yet you're still a human being going through a thousand million moments of your own life.
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So immediately people will step into this book and experience the process of
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what it means to love and what it means to lose love and what it means to care.
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At the same time, we're surrounded by people who are working tough jobs and
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we forget We forget their people.
28:34
So the book is filled with those people. They're filled with the pizza lady
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and the EMS crowd and the doctor and the nurse and the radiologist.
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Because we spend a lot of time in hospitals and a lot of time in doctor's offices.
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There's the taxi cab driver, the guy that runs the car service.
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There's the people on the street.
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There's the ping pong kid waiting to play ping pong. every single one of them.
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My coworkers, who are so amazing.
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To work with. Every single one of us had dreams, had family,
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had challenges, had disappointments.
29:16
And when you step into the book, it's like remembering that you're part of the
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human race and being affirmed in your own story.
29:27
And then also feeling that it's possible to have love and hope,
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no matter how sad or despairing it is.
29:38
My mother died, I think, around 5.30 a.m. in the morning.
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I wrote that night what it was like to be there and to lay out and verbalize,
29:53
articulate the moment of losing a parent or losing anyone,
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losing your spouse, house, losing, you know, God forbid, losing your child.
30:03
And the moment, the splaying out of grief and gratitude, that was my job at
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that moment, to write it down.
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And someone else has read that and has said, oh, that's how I feel.
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I'm, you know, any writer should represent the emotional life of another human being.
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And if I'm lucky, or if you're lucky, if any of us are lucky,
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we get to share that with a lot of people.
30:34
Well, so congratulations, CEO, for getting your book published. Thank you so much.
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And I'm really excited to have you come back on the show to talk about your
30:45
other books when they come out, too.
30:47
I will definitely let you know. I will be calling you up saying,
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put your kids to bed and get them to brush their teeth. Have I got a book for you?
30:59
This has really been awesome. Awesome. I really hope that the people of Vermont,
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and I understand that you also have an international following,
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I hope that the people everywhere open this book and find their hearts are being
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affirmed and loved, and that their story is being told.
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Music.
31:20
Thank you so much, Sia. Thank you. It's awesome.
31:42
And so so as we said the title of the book that that the title of the book that
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i was going to say is i'm trying to think of the fact that i'm going to edit
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this part out this is the great thing so i can just edit things out oh edit
31:56
away i'm being so careful,
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I'm a New Yorker and to not say a four letter word with an ING at the end is very thoughtful of me.
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Don't say the words. Try to keep the words out of this.
32:16
So my question is, is that.