This film is about New York City as I experienced it in the time before the pandemic changed our way of being in the world.
Seen from here, that life was very beautiful, We daily shared the subway, the dinners, the births, the deaths, the theater and gyms, art and music with old friends and with total strangers. It is shocking to see how much we have lost. I wonder how much of this casual intimacy we will ever recover? And, as Zoe’s song says, I wonder if the city will ever open its arms and take us back again.
The cover image is of my mother Claire and her brother, my uncle Fritz, playing in Vienna in 1930. Like us a year ago, they were innocent to the disaster that lay just around the corner.
The Music is by Zoe FitzGerald Carter. The Photographs and Film are by me, Peter Robert Cunningham.
Zoe FitzGerald Carter sings our unofficial national anthem, Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” on her 2018 album.
The face you see belongs to Moshe “Mister Yoowho” Cohen, a Clown without Borders. Here he performs literally from sea to shining sea. Please check out Moshe’s amazing link into lightness.
These collaborations are with Zoe FitzGerald Carter, a musician and memoirist based in the Bay Area. Zoe lives with my pal Mark Schapiro who is an environmental journalist currently teaching at the Berkeley J-School. Mark is in a local band, the Deadliners which is comprised entirely of journalists, Zoe is their lead singer. Zoe is now releasing her 2021 album which can be found at zoecartermusic.com