"I exist as I am, that is enough"
-- tattoo on woman's foot in Boston subway car
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Number 3
Tonight I sit alone on this muggy apartment on Broadway, and I feel a little like I'm channeling the Kinster. Cigar in hand, I sit down to write; my sweaty back plastered firmly to my grandfather's old leather chair.
After posing as a deliveryman earlier this evening to get into a friends apartment building, I found myself wishing someone would have dropped a black baby doll head with a key attached out the window for me. Disappointed? Yes. Surprised? No.
Lightning is flashing outside, but almost certainly the thunderstorm I so desperately want will not come. The City of New York fails to satisfy almost all my hungers for natural wonder. Only twice in my six year tenure have I ever truly experienced a 'gully washer' in NYC. Its probably a good thing however, because my friends at the Bronx River Alliance tell me it only takes 1/8th of an inch of rain in a short period of time to overflow the sewer pipes and dump raw sewage and street run-off into the mighty Hudson. Note: I'm not kayaking in the Hudson any more.
However similar I feel to Kinkster, I am not him. I don't have a cat running across my keyboard and I don't live above a lesbian dance studio. I've also never written a book or ran unsuccessfully for governor of Texas (twice), two things that Kinky does quite well.
Wait... I have to relight.
Who I'm not is a pretty easy solution to reach. Just who I AM is a more illusive question to answer. A tin-man hula dancer for sure, beyond this who? Answers to this question seem to get farther down the road the farther I go down that road, like some damned mirage on the horizon. Therapy has proven helpful in making me feel more like I know myself, and no doubt more like a New Yorker. Although, I'll admit paying $50 for a haircut makes me feel even more like a New Yorker, and sometimes better about myself (at least I leave with a better appearance, and having talk about more interesting things than me and my issues).
HEY- IT STARTED POURING!! GOING OUTSIDE - PRAY FOR THE CIGAR!
---------------------------------
OK - well I'm soak. And I'm happy. That makes gully-washer number three! I'm going to bed now while the rain still muffles the sound of sirens and screams, and while the humidity and temperature are dropping. The cigar survived and he thanks you for your prayers of wisdom which bestowed enough sense upon his owner to leave him inside. Your prayers of wisdom (and a good soaking) also brought me a little more self-knowledge. I should trust in and seek out those things that make me happy, as I sought out the rain tonight. Standing soaking wet amidst lightning flashes taunting the heavens, "C'mon, is that all you've got!!", can REALLY make one feel alive again!
After posing as a deliveryman earlier this evening to get into a friends apartment building, I found myself wishing someone would have dropped a black baby doll head with a key attached out the window for me. Disappointed? Yes. Surprised? No.
Lightning is flashing outside, but almost certainly the thunderstorm I so desperately want will not come. The City of New York fails to satisfy almost all my hungers for natural wonder. Only twice in my six year tenure have I ever truly experienced a 'gully washer' in NYC. Its probably a good thing however, because my friends at the Bronx River Alliance tell me it only takes 1/8th of an inch of rain in a short period of time to overflow the sewer pipes and dump raw sewage and street run-off into the mighty Hudson. Note: I'm not kayaking in the Hudson any more.
However similar I feel to Kinkster, I am not him. I don't have a cat running across my keyboard and I don't live above a lesbian dance studio. I've also never written a book or ran unsuccessfully for governor of Texas (twice), two things that Kinky does quite well.
Wait... I have to relight.
Who I'm not is a pretty easy solution to reach. Just who I AM is a more illusive question to answer. A tin-man hula dancer for sure, beyond this who? Answers to this question seem to get farther down the road the farther I go down that road, like some damned mirage on the horizon. Therapy has proven helpful in making me feel more like I know myself, and no doubt more like a New Yorker. Although, I'll admit paying $50 for a haircut makes me feel even more like a New Yorker, and sometimes better about myself (at least I leave with a better appearance, and having talk about more interesting things than me and my issues).
HEY- IT STARTED POURING!! GOING OUTSIDE - PRAY FOR THE CIGAR!
---------------------------------
OK - well I'm soak. And I'm happy. That makes gully-washer number three! I'm going to bed now while the rain still muffles the sound of sirens and screams, and while the humidity and temperature are dropping. The cigar survived and he thanks you for your prayers of wisdom which bestowed enough sense upon his owner to leave him inside. Your prayers of wisdom (and a good soaking) also brought me a little more self-knowledge. I should trust in and seek out those things that make me happy, as I sought out the rain tonight. Standing soaking wet amidst lightning flashes taunting the heavens, "C'mon, is that all you've got!!", can REALLY make one feel alive again!
Friday, May 30, 2008
Bordertown Boy takes a bite o' the Apple
Its rare that musical up-and-comers from the 'flyover states' ever make it this far East, let alone into the heart of Manhattan's Lower East Side (unless of course they are waiting tables telling patrons what good musicians they are... right).
On Tuesday I rocked out with a genuine and talented group of guys from about as far South in Texas as you can get (where you don't know whether to drink the water or not, speak Spanish or English, or worry that the border patrol will grab your brown-eyed girlfriend, "officer, she's Jewish").
The experience took me straight out of New York and into the bars and outdoor festivals of my youth; indeed a few Bud Lights served in plastic cups helped. Ryan Bingham and the Dead Horses features songsmith Ryan Bingham whose "whiskey and cigarettes" voice, according to Texas Music Magazine, "sounds like a 50-something Tom Waits". The musically score ranged from mariachi (thankfully sans big hats), to roadhouse music, to hand-clapping, footstomp'n, dueling slide guitar-romps!!
Ryan Bingham and the Dead Horses is certainly a show worth seeing. I wasn't expecting the paired-down sound I heard the other night; I do enjoy the over-busy instrumentation from the 'Mescalito' album. This show was raw, and seemed to channel Bingham's powerful lyrics more than musical complexity.
The combination of juxtaposition of Texas grit with NYC grime, with quality unbridled talent and lyrical emotion will be logged as a great NYC memory. This might even go down as the most fun I've had in the Lower East Side that didn't involve talking my brother out of going home with drunken curious lesbians.
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