Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Conversations not to be lost

[A weekend of words.]

. He wore a sombrero and stood in the corner of the elevator. “I don’t know how to work this thing,” he told us. “I’m lost and I don’t know where to go.” The key in his hand said 932, so we took him to the 9th floor. When the doors opened he said, “I don’t want to go back. This is my home now.” He lied down in the elevator and fell asleep, sombrero titled over his face.  

. A man came up to us on the street, he had bagpipes strapped across his chest. We’d been walking a while, heels in hand, tired and lost. "I'll play you a song if you can give me directions," he said. We told him that we were lost, too, and he played for us anyway. I wondered who was waiting for him, whose song we were listening to.
. Our cab driver was Haitian and had a smile so handsome I couldn’t help but blush a little. His family kept all of their money in a safe box under the house, but it is buried now under the earth. The house is gone,” he told us, but you can rebuild a house. You can’t rebuild the people you love.” 
We came into a bit of money,” she said. Now we’ve got our own business, we provide tents for festivals and events.” They bought the tent for their ceremony and they will be the ones to set it up on their wedding day. Just the two of them.
. The ocean past midnight is louder, you can hear it wailing and groaning and singing and sighing and roaring. We wail and groan and sigh and sing and roar with it, together, maybe for the last time. “It’s so hard to say goodbye,” I said. “That’s why you NEVER say goodbye, my love…” she wrote.
. She got tears in her eyes when she talked about the baby. “We’ll never know,” she said quietly. “We’ll never know.” She’s got so much love inside her, and it is heartbreaking when a piece of it is taken away. I want to help, I want to fix her, but nothing is broken. No one could stop her from loving so much.
. “We’re in it together. It’s up to us. We’ll save the world with books and words.” We looked out over the cigarette smoke and into the dark night.

Friday, May 21, 2010

Lykke Li & Bon Iver doing 'Dance Dance Dance' in L.A

Don't...

Some well-intended (but unwelcomed) advice I received: Don't get a 9-to-5. Don't become one of them. Don't let them take advantage of you. Don't forget you are an artist. Don't sell out.


Some happened-upon, unexpected wisdom: Don't let anyone ever make you feel like you don't deserve what you want.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Peace

We walk by you some afternoons, to get away from chaos and monotony. To find a place to breathe. This time, it's raining and I keep my hands in my pockets. My nose gets cold even though it's May.

I wonder what it's like to be frozen and unfrozen, year after year. I wonder what it's like to die and bloom. To be struck by lightning and drowned. You hear the train whistle and you breathe in the exhaust. You let the quiet woman push the sad man's wheelchair beside you and you feel the ash drifting from their roaches.

I like to think that, really, you are at peace.