Andrew Savage, of indie-rockers Parquet Courts, thinks the Occupy movement could have done more. (Roger Kisby/Getty Images)
Angel Nafis (from left), Paul Downs Colaizzo and Alida Nugent — a poet, a playwright and a memoirist, respectively — have high hopes for their peers, a k a Generation Me, and represent a bright future for the arts. (
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When we first met 24-year-old Hannah Horvath on HBO’s “Girls,” she drank opium tea before declaring, “I think that I may be the voice of my generation.”
Lena Dunham has regretted those words ever since. “I don’t think I ever imagined that it would haunt me the way it has,” the 26-year-old said recently. “The character was on opium!”
Happily, real 20-somethings from New York — writers, poets and musicians — have a more clear-eyed take on themselves and their peers. Here’s what they told us about that “Generation Me” label, baby-boomer parents and more.
Paul Downs Colaizzo, 27
Playwright
Before he wrote “Really Really” — his acclaimed drama about a date-rape allegation on a college campus — Colaizzo thought long and hard about Jean Twenge’s book “Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before.”
And while his play paints an unflattering picture of his generation, the Upper West Sider insists he’s proud of his peers.
“We were raised with a certain sense of self-esteem by our parents’ generation, which is now the generation that is telling us that we are entitled, so it seems like a lose-lose for us,” he says. “I’m hoping that we’re the post-bulls – – t generation. We don’t buy into what we’re fed anymore.”
And yes, Colaizzo agrees, his peers do tend to put themselves first, but “I’m not sure that’s a totally bad thing.”
Andrew Savage, 28
Musician
In “Master of My Craft,” Brooklyn band Parquet Courts sings, “People die, I don’t care/You should see the wall of ambivalence I’m building/I got no love for the living.”
As those and other lyrics show, Savage, one of the band’s songwriters, despairs of his generation’s apathy.
“I thought the Occupy movement here in New York a couple of years ago was an exciting time that just got shut down way too quickly,” says the Texas-born Savage, now living in Bedford-Stuyvesant. “For the most part, this generation hasn’t really rallied behind things like generations in the past have. I feel like we’ve been given all of these causes and we’ve really not done too much with it.”
Angel Nafis, 24
Poet
Nafis, a regular at poetry slams, recently released her first book, “BlackGirl Mansion,” poems that explore race, sexuality and youth. She believes she is her own best invention.
“As a black woman, as a queer person, as an American, I don’t think that there’s any role model that is exactly me, so I take from a lot of amazing people, and through that I can envision what I want my future or my present to be like,” says the Ann Arbor, Mich., native, who moved to Bedford-Stuyvesant a few years ago. “All of my mentors growing up were either men or white or straight, so I had to take pieces from different people and be like, ‘OK, that’s fly.’ ”
She suggests other 20-somethings follow suit, “seeing what is out there and taking the pieces of what you want and constructing your own castle . . . so much of this generation is about extreme remixing.”
Alida Nugent, 24
Blogger and memoirist
Nugent’s popular blog, the-frenemy.com, landed her a book deal: “Don’t Worry, It Gets Worse,” out May 7, describes her post-college graduation ordeal when, owing thousands of dollars in student loans, she was forced to move in with her parents for a few months.
“My parents raised me in a stable situation, and they’ve had to watch me crash a little bit,” says Nugent, who left her folks’ Westchester home two years ago to live with roommates in Williamsburg. These days, she makes ends meet as a freelance writer for sites like Refinery29.
She says it’s hard for her parents when she tells them things like, “Hey Mom, I ate a can of beans for dinner.” She hopes the next generation has an easier go at it.
“I want them to be able to pursue an education without becoming steeped in debt,” she says. “I’d like them to have access to health care, [for] women to walk down the street and not get cat-called . . . In 20 years, I want this article to be written again and for them to be saying they have those opportunities because of us.”