Music

Mean Spirits

2012-05-12T09:51+00:00

Graham's jammed. She slams on the pedals and bursts through Bushwick, crosses the walk and threads a needle, an annoying white fly bobbing and weaving, destined for a windshield. But for now she's gathering up miles and gaining strength. Ahead the bridge looms like some last level boss, and to her it's all a game, putting Spandex-clad pedalphiles to their proper shame as she rises up the rump of this iron giant. Muscles squeeze out their fleating, bleating cries, silenced by the heavy exhale, tamped back down for another cannon shot; flesh-made pistons pumping, pumping, heart thumping against its cage. She's above the highway now, then the buildings - and its as if they're the insects now, worker bees buzzing around a construction site that tries to trap the skyline from competing eyes. Sad but wise, for across the broad black river the gleaming skyline is a prize. As the strain is lifted she gives ritual thanks - for the city, for the day, for burning lungs and churning legs and the blind luck with which she's managed to keep them motion. And of course, for speed - for by now she's slayed the beast and the downhill is her feast. Hands reach down and find the gears, dropping them into place. Ka-chunk. Ka-chunk. Ka-chunk. A roiling boil turns to steam, and she's a runaway car on a freight train now - ripping a seam through the canvas scene - color and texture and dimension rent apart by the furious circular two-stroke of her brush, and for a hot second its all just watercolor mush, mixed with the whir of cranks and cogs and spokes. She smokes down on to Delancey, through the barricade and into traffic, a snare she's quickly through - Allen turned First Avenue - a broad street accompanied by its retinue - delivery men, pedestrians, cops double-parked in front of donut shops, cab-hailers and blind side bus drivers. Cyclists, gawkers, old men with walkers - all weaving a tangled web through which she must maneuver through. No time to ride the green line - she injects herself right into the main vein, a mean-spirited venom giving spasm to the sluggish heart of the morning. At twenty first she hooks a left, breaks right on second - head first into an incoming assault. If there's battery it will come from NYPD - at the precinct she bails from the saddle and into a breaking stride, and her ride, as such, is over. Just a casual stroll with the ghost white foal whose silence speaks nothing of the stampede they've just endured. Through the tunnel without a word, stabled out back on twenty third.

New Home

2012-05-07T11:52+00:00

"All America lies at the end of the wilderness road, and our past is not a dead past, but still lives in us. Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves, the wild outside. We live in the civilization they created, but within us the wilderness still lingers. What they dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we dream." - TK Whipple

Universe Traveler

2012-05-01T14:00+00:00

On the table was the mask he'd pinched from the McKittrick. Fitting loot for a master of disguise. As we sat in School I took notes on the morsels of his life he chose to dole out to the crowd of fireside gatherers. I'd erroneously assumed that the year that had passed since we'd last spoken had been spent in shadow, but not so. The kindling he lit shone light upon a year of adventure. And tomorrow he'd put that behind him, headed back west with a minor debenture. He drew in the crowd then fled the scene. I found myself lost in the company he'd created, glancing sideways only once to see him across the room with enrapt attention of an attractive girl. He worked at a pace commensurate with the time in which he stayed in any one place - swallowing all in his good grace. Hero and sidekick. He the escape artist, and I the tour guide.

Lost Souls

2012-04-23T00:00+00:00

The doorman lets me in, and immediately I notice his skin - polished smooth and blemish free, as if to belie the age that has taken hold of his eyes, his graying hair, his shaky voice and trembling jaw. I'm here to see Mr. Mallory, a man whose night black skin marks him, though by time and distance separated, amongst his kin.

Later, at the gym - trying to shape the skin I'm in. Aware of how tight and thin it's been pulled over what's within - frail bones, ropey veins. The skin bears stains from the sun, bares the scrapes and cuts and scars, tells stories, tells lies. Sometimes our bodies are our disguise, other times they're just disguised.

Across the room a girl in a sports bra lets her body apprise a slimmer form than the one I first saw her in. She comes here often, battling her resting state with practiced, guided, movements - grunting and hacking from time to time to wrench free whatever ills she's found buried inside.

Then there's this one here. Her skin glows golden naturally - a tone most would suffer and strive to achieve even momentarily, even artificially. Yet somehow she's been taught to see the varied scars which she thinks mars an otherwise contented cloth with which to drape herself.

When will we be content with the skin we've spent our entire lives smothered in? When will others get wise to our disguise? When will it all wilt away, putting our real selves on display? When will its pigment cease to be a dividing line? A billboard sign playing host to a host of preconceived notions and generalities. Sometimes I wish the skin would get flipped outside in so we could see our hidden souls.

While We’re Young

2012-04-15T14:46+00:00

It's the kind of day that inspires the uncreative to start out a story describing what a beautiful day it is. A breathe in, hold your face a few a few inches closer to the sun and exhale kind of day. A day which a majority of the folks in madison square park have actually taken a brief moment to appreciate. A small child leans over a fountain and stares at his reflection, reaching out to ripple the surface of the image he finds there. "Make a wish Luis," his mother says. "Mega millions! Mega Millions!" calls the intervening aunt, approaching the dynamic duo. The child pulls himself up from the surface of the water, googley-eyed and gap-toothed, and says with gusto, "twee houthe", and I can't help but smile. For he hasn't yet been taught that the quickest way to happiness lies in the form of a multi-jurisdictional lump sum lotto winning from which he may raise himself up from ashy to classy, amass an empire, and evade tedious responsibilities. For him, the knee-jerk moment of perfect happiness is a far simpler vision - a tree house. Sounds pretty good to me too, and I have to say I'm jealous I've wasted wishes on things much more grounded. I yearn for the ability to be content again with the childhood pleasures of playing in fountains or climbing trees. Why does enjoyment become so elusive? What happens to our adult minds to inflate those simple pleasures into grandiose and gross and greedy schemes? It'd be great if I could satisfy myself with material things.

I'm walking back to work, feeling as if all the adult world's a departure from easy-to-please when a man and woman step out of the thrift store together, engrossed entirely in the description of a belt buckle which the man clearly thinks is the bees knees. "It was like, chrome," he explains, tongue coated thick with New York native, "and it had a fuckin' tiger head on it, like 'bwwaaaa'," He's on his tiptoes, pelvis full-thrust, pointing vigorously toward his crotch where the tiger head belt buckle might some day find its home. And I'm thinking, well, maybe there are some of us who never lose that child like sense of fascination. Maybe this machine we've set in motion is actually working. At the very least, it's enough to keep me clocking in.

To Build A Home

2012-03-27T01:18+00:00

She was told the ocean washed away the world's sins. I said that'd be a lot of cleanup. I like that thought - rains washing down to separate us from our grime. And in time those drops become streams become rivers become seas, rushing down to be freed by the lapping tongues of whatever wave might crave our most base digressions. But what struck me most was the impressions they leave. Railay was truly to a sight to be seen, and it hardly stood alone. Karst limestone chipped away by the slow steady hand of a sculptor who somehow kept collapse at bay. No, more than that. He left a gift. A gift that takes our breathe away.

Passing Me By

2012-03-27T00:42+00:00

She's not playing hard to get. She's not avoiding you. She's got things to do. Moves to make and legs to shake. Measure for measure a treasure you've gotta make the time to find. No point in trying to stop her stride. Hang on tight, enjoy the ride, and there'll be no more of this passing you by.

Brooklyn Flower

2012-03-27T00:27+00:00

Eyes aged by gamma rays, creased sun-gaze softened by brooklyn haze, half-drawn lids accustomed to being abased, yet somehow the brows are ever-upraised. As if any moment now things might change, some secret awaken from its yawning, dawning days at the back of the ever racing mind. Something the sun couldn't bleach nor the tide wash away. And then, en fin, the lids would lift to unearth the emeralds buried there, protected from time and soot and grime by an embattled visage well past its age. Open eyes piercing through cloud riddled skies, to finally, truly, see.

Down by the Water

2012-03-01T13:41+00:00

He stands alone at the confluence of effluence picking through the outpouring of all that has been discarded. Life, love, youth, memory - lying in this gray and dripping tangled skein. Lying about where it's been and what it's been and where and when. He stands there and he picks and stares. He stands there and he revels in it.

7 Caged Tigers

2012-02-27T15:09+00:00

How could I have known that tigers fly? Yet here they were inside this strange and spacious cage, twirling on red umbilicals dangling from imagined sky. Bottles churning, twisted embers burning their furious path into our unflinching transfixed eyes. The master sits nearby, pleased at his playthings for their performance inside his ring. Why do they not break free? So capable and with so much ferocity, and yet they hide inside this maw - roars muffled but far from silenced. In a world that so often says no, it's nice to find a House of Yes.