Time & Perspective Quote by Cy Coleman

There is a quiet ego in that sentence, but it’s the kind that reads as autobiography rather than brag. Cy Coleman isn’t reminiscing about applause; he’s mapping the geography of legitimacy. New York, in the American musical imagination, isn’t just a city. It’s the room where your work either becomes “the culture” or stays a nice story you tell elsewhere. So when he says he “used to perform all the time” but hasn’t played New York “in a very long time,” he’s sketching a career arc: the shift from hustling musician to institutional composer, from being onstage to being in the score.

The phrasing does a lot of work. “Used to” carries nostalgia with a built-in alibi: the change is presented as natural, maybe even inevitable. “All the time” suggests a youthful grind and a kind of hunger. Then the second clause lands like a small confession. Not performing in New York isn’t framed as a choice; it’s framed as a lapse, a gap in the story that matters because the city is the measuring stick.

Context sharpens the subtext. Coleman came up as a jazz pianist and became a Broadway engine (Sweet Charity, City of Angels). For someone whose name lives on marquees and cast albums, returning to “perform” can feel like stepping back into a former self. The line hints at what success can cost: you gain permanence, but you lose the immediacy of the room where you first proved you belonged.