The 1989 film Slaves of New York, based on a collection of short stories by Tama Janowitz, became something of a cult classic purely on the strength of a knockout drag ensemble taking to the streets in ball gowns.
New York Times critic Janet Maslin was among those who slated the film. She said it "simply drifts from situation to situation".
Maslin could have been describing New York itself, except in an entirely complimentary way. New York is a series of situations within situations that give rise to more situations. Its population, whether gridlocked in its belly or skating wide-eyed for a few days across its surface, are all slaves to the New York moment.
In New York there are people enslaved by every kind of power you can possibly think of and then some.
Visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the eastern flank of Central Park and you will mark them: milling, texting, lounging, tweeting, hiding, exhibiting, eating, singing, fondling, staring, hustling, begging, selling, buying, walking, avoiding, engaging. These are the slaves of New York.
And that's just on the steps outside. Go into the Met itself and you will see slaves to art, or at least to the multifarious situations that art encapsulates. The lofty folks who live in the swanky park-facing penthouses of the apartment buildings across the road must be able to look down from their eyries into the Sackler wing and see today's New York slaves rotating in wonder among giant stones once hauled by other slaves.
Under glass panels that give a bright sensation of sky, the Sackler wing houses the Temple of Dendur, built in 15BC about 80km from the town of Aswan in Egypt. Like London Bridge, this marvel was removed from its original location, packed into boxes, shipped to the US and cleverly reassembled by someone to whom Ikea furniture poses no problem.
In 1963, to save it from being submerged after the Aswan Dam was built, Unesco had the temple dismantled and Egypt gave it to the Americans. Built by slaves and dedicated to gods, it now stands in a massive room designed to give the impression of a well-lit bank on the Nile, paid for by the Sackler family who made most of their fortune from the prescription opioid OxyContin.
The temple is certainly a most magnificent sight to behold.There are other kinds of slaves in the Met. Locked in solid marble stasis, one of these contemplates the courtyard of the American Wing adjoining the Sacklers' bequest. Her situation is complicated. Carved in 1861 by a sculptor from Boston gifted with the name William Wetmore Story, this captive beauty is known as "the Libyan Sibyl".
Before Sibyl became a girl's name synonymous with Mrs Basil Fawlty, "sibyl" was an ancient Greek word meaning "prophetess". In pre-television times a sibyl was simply one of those women who could look into the future and tell what terrible situations lay in wait.
This particular sibyl, carved at the start of the American Civil War, was described by Story as his "anti-slavery sermon in stone". On her plinth is a plaque that says she "foresees the terrible fate of the African people".
Looking back from the brink of a bloody war fought over slavery, Story sculpted a tragic figure from the past who looked ahead at future horror. Her burdened thoughts weigh even heavier in light of the current situation in Libya, where slavery is once again a scourge afflicting those adrift on a sea of refugees.The Met is itself a giant situation housing many millions of other situations. It is a shrine, a sepulchre, a spectacle. You could spend a year wandering from work to work and still not see everything. Standing next to a sibyl is one way to be at the still centre of New York's infinite situations.
Afterwards, I suggest you take a stroll through Central Park to shed a little of the gravitas, breathe the leaf-thickened air and become a slave to glorious, witless nature for a while. Then go to the Algonquin and have a martini at the same table where writer Dorothy Parker used to enslave her lunch companions with her wit.
You can be any kind of slave in New York, but no matter how long you spend there it is a city that will never be mastered...