NEW YORK CITY — The elevator at the Hotel Chelsea moves like it’s deciding whether it wants to bother. I rode it alone to my room, thinking about what it means to love memories that are not mine.
The greatest influences of my life lived and created here. It’s said that Bob Dylan wrote “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” a song that pulled me back from the edge after more than one broken love. I became a journalist because I spent my teens writing poems in the style of Allen Ginsberg. The Sex Pistols and the Ramones were my gods, and each left their own trail of addiction and wreckage inside these walls.
