New York City

Timezone: UTC-4.

The waiters in the hotel's restaurant are listening to Donald Trump's media statements on their mobile phones. It would seem there is profound interest in the ideas of the new president.

I sneaked in to St Bartholomew's to a rehearsal of C.P.E. Bach by the American Symphony Orchestra. A moment of relief from the madness of New York City. A wintery scene straight from “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” in Central Park.

Evening. Drinks at a bar with a friend. Among the drinks in the menu, two featured names that included human first names. Very particular two names, one of which was mine, and the other – of significance to me now. Quite bizarre! This was followed by a theatre play, the unsophistication of the language therein did not impress me.

America is the only country in which it has been possible to witness the natural and tranquil growth of society, and where the influences exercised on the future condition of states by their origin is clearly distinguishable. At the period when the peoples of Europe landed in the New World their national characteristics were already completely formed; each of them had a physiognomy of its own; and as they had already attained that stage of civilization at which men are led to study themselves, they have transmitted to us a faithful picture of their opinions, their manners, and their laws. The men of the sixteenth century are almost as well known to us as our contemporaries. America, consequently, exhibits in the broad light of day the phenomena which the ignorance or rudeness of earlier ages conceals from our researches. Near enough to the time when the states of America were founded, to be accurately acquainted with their elements, and sufficiently removed from that period to judge of some of their results, the men of our own day seem destined to see further than their predecessors into the series of human events. Providence has given us a torch which our forefathers did not possess, and has allowed us to discern fundamental causes in the history of the world which the obscurity of the past concealed from them. If we carefully examine the social and political state of America, after having studied its history, we shall remain perfectly convinced that not an opinion, not a custom, not a law, I may even say not an event, is upon record which the origin of that people will not explain.
Alexis de Tocqueville, “Democracy in America”