Blackberries to Apples

new beginnings

2011-12-12T11:03:00.002-05:00

This blog is now just over three years old - I started it on Nov. 30, 2008, when I bought my one-way ticket to New York. It has been there every step of the way, documenting many of the funny, ridiculous, unbelievable, awful, painful, heartbreaking, heartwarming and otherwise necessary events that have brought me from being a 22-year-old girl to a woman of (nearly) 26. This year especially has been an incredible journey, from my discovering yoga to completing 200 hours of yoga teacher training, opening my heart and finally facing the wounds of my past while envisioning the future I want to create. I'm still very much on the path, not at all sure of where I'm heading, but very much sure that if I believe hard enough and visualize hard enough, I can co-create what I want for my life; namely, to inspire others with my journey, using whatever tools I have available to me.

A good first step, I think, is creating a space where I can express myself in a beautiful, streamlined format. So I've used Cargo Collective to set up my very own site. This blog will remain active, but I may not update it as much. Please check out the new space and let me know what you think! Thanks for reading and hangin' tough with me. Love.

"Respond to every call that excites your spirit." -Rumi

with love, will oldham

2011-11-16T10:19:00.000-05:00

The most important experiences we can have are those that take us to the very limit. That is the only way we learn, because it requires all our courage. - Paulo Coelho

if only we could see

2011-11-15T15:35:00.000-05:00

We are all family.

"There’s a writer named Robert Johnson – he has no relation to the musician. His autobiography, I think it’s called Balancing Heaven and Earth. In it he describes, he had not much of a family structure growing up. And then as an adult he decided, 'Because I wasn’t given a family by birth doesn’t mean I can’t have one.' And so he began to nominally create his family and say, 'This person is my grandfather, this person is my uncle, this person is my brother,' with the idea being that these people, your family, are the unconditional ones. The ones that even when they do wrong, that’s when the rules go out the window. That’s when you embrace that person, even if that person has done what you might not accept in a friend or in a colleague. That you continue to support and, ideally, be supported by those people ... Because it does feel like when everything else falls apart that those relationships will be there and that they will stand tests of endurance that other relationships will not."

- Bonnie Prince Billy

on patience

2011-11-13T21:28:00.004-05:00

Stalactites hang from the ceiling. Stalagmites grow from the floor. All are fragile crystals, born from the sweat of rocks in the depth of caves etched into the mountains by water and time. Stalactites and stalagmites spend thousands of years reaching down or reaching up, drop by drop, searching for each other in the darkness. It takes some of them a million years to touch.

They are in no hurry.

-Edwardo Galeano

everything i know

2011-11-11T10:38:00.000-05:00

I learned it from Bey.

two nights, one city

2011-11-10T12:37:00.001-05:00

Sunday night I saw Jay-Z and Kanye at the Izod Center just over the state line in New Jersey. My dear friend Susan and I were in literally the last row of the arena. We got to our seats early and were like, this is fine! There was a little platform right behind our seats and we discussed our obvious plan to spend the entire concert dancing on it instead of remaining seated. We sat down and munched on some shitty concession stand food and were talking about art and life and stuff. I saw one of the arena's employees climbing the stairs toward us and I wondered why he was up so high. He approached us and asked how many people were in our group. We both said, just the two of us. He said, here you go. He handed us two floor seat tickets and told us to take the stairs down down down. I asked him why. He said, because I'm a nice guy. Sus and I just looked at each other in disbelief, then climbed down to our new seats, about 50 feet from the main stage and 30 feet from the stage in the audience. We discussed how the universe rewards being chill - how this never would have happened if we had been somehow unsatisfied with our nosebleed seats. To me, it was more a thrilling and poignant example of how the universe rewards gratitude with abundance. It was also appropriate because I feel that Jay-Z himself is a living, breathing example of what God can do. He is so inspiring to me. From selling crack in Harlem to selling out huge arenas - because of poetry. It was a religious experience for me. Forgive the wobbliness. I was dancing my ass off.

Then, the next night, I saw Brandi Carlile at The Town Hall on 43rd street. It could not have been more opposite from the Watch The Throne show from the night before. The Town Hall is a fairly small venue, it was a solo acoustic show, just a woman with a guitar and an incredible voice. Two sisters from Muscle Shoals, Alabama opened up for her. They did a song they wrote while they were on tour in Australia when the tornadoes destroyed so many lives in our home state, in April of this year. I started crying and I'm pretty sure I didn't stop for the rest of the show. This is the second time I've seen Brandi - she likes to do this thing on one of her songs where she divides the audience into three sections and we all sing a three-part harmony along with her. It's so beautiful. I recorded some of it with my phone.

unlock the cage

2011-11-08T18:05:00.002-05:00

life is beautiful

2011-11-04T15:08:00.002-04:00

Last week a good friend of mine sent me this poem, which appeared in The New Yorker in June 2009. I loved it so much that I decided to send the author, Stephen Dunn, a Pulitzer prize winner, a letter in the mail. I told him I had recently been introduced to his work and that I love his poem and told him thank you for writing it. My friend also sent a letter, separately. And today, we received his response!

Dear Chris + Meghan,
Very sweet of both of you to write to me about my work. Know that it matters to me, and that I'm grateful.

Sincerely,
Stephen Dunn

God is Love, and Love is God

2011-10-25T11:57:00.001-04:00

This is hard to watch. But it's beautiful and I think it is very insightful about Love - the real kind, the Divine kind, the unconditional kind. Can we learn to love each other like our dogs love us? Can we learn to accept our pasts, forgive all those versions of our Selves that betrayed us, and bathe in the light of Love?

Last Minutes with ODEN from phos pictures on Vimeo.

"That guy that was in prison - it's been ten years - I don't really even know who he was. To tell you the truth, I don't even think like him. I look back and think of the guy that was - it was just some poor, pathetic guy. He wasn't even really tough or crazy, just some pathetic guy who made a lot of decisions based on fear. A whole life based on fear, and smoke and screens - it was a real dark time in my life. I wasn't taking care of myself spiritually at the time. I really couldn't, I don't think, I wasn't willing to. I don't know if I was able to. I needed to go through what I needed to go through, and [Oden] was there the whole way through me, man. From the beginning to end, completely unjudgmental. He would just lay next to me like it was another day. And he knew when I was hurtin'.

He showed me through his example how to Love, and I Loved him. I don't think I showed him how to Love, I think he showed me how to Love. It may sound crazy, but it was like some universal job; God gave him some job to do here, to take care of people. "

birdhouse

2011-10-25T10:51:00.003-04:00

Hush, restless heart.
Quiet down, reckless heart.
Still the flapping of your wild wings,
and rest a moment in my hand,
so I may tend your wounds with my grace and forgiveness.

For I know you have sinned,
and I know your desperation.
I know your rooms filled with longing,
and then your rooms filled with dust,
and especially I know
those brimming with Love and Sorrow.

But for now I’m interested in the rooms I don’t know at all,
those with locked doors and shuttered windows.
Invisible to everyone and to me,
they open as I sleep
and close up again when I awake.

So hush now, careless heart,
and be still -
I’m after
a lock
that turns.

on Love

2011-10-22T21:17:00.002-04:00

If you want a loving relationship in your life and can't figure out why one is eluding you, remember this: you can either choose Love or choose fear. When you choose Love your options narrow because you have chosen to walk a narrower path of trusting your intuition and feelings over the five senses ... And if you have Love this means you must give it away with no expectation of return. Any expectation of return is not love, but the fear of not having love creeping back in ... Trust that you are perfect Love in this moment and only allow in a person that resonates on this vibration.

The Truth is that finding True Love is effortless for those who sit in Trust that they already have everything that could ever be sought after. This Trust will attract a person who is equally fulfilled;
this is the only type of person capable of Love, one who has Love to give away.

- Jackson Kiddard

well this really drives it home

2011-10-18T23:27:00.002-04:00

I hate when people ask what a book is about. People who read for plot, people who suck out the story like the cream filling in an Oreo, should stick to comic strips and soap operas . . .

Every book worth a damn is about emotions and love and death and pain.

It's about words. It's about a man dealing with life. Okay?

- J.R. Moehringer

my little rainy mornin prayer

2011-10-18T12:08:00.000-04:00

May I always believe in magic and miracles and God's grace, until my last breath. If I ever stop believing in these things in the core of my Self, may I die soon thereafter, for life will no longer be worth living. May I then be granted a fresh go at it. May I remember that I will die, and may this recollection give me Courage. May I release the physicality of things so that even when it appears that my beloveds are absent, I may know that they are on their way to me, or - when I am mindful enough to pay attention - already abiding in my heart. May I be ever compassionate and kind toward others, no matter how difficult I find it to overcome my own suffering. May I recognize that every other creature is also suffering and striving for happiness, and may I reach beyond my pain to try to help others overcome theirs. May I always live in Love and may my heart never become bitter or angry. May I always be able to laugh at myself. May I always acknowledge the universe's abundance and be grateful. May my Love always conquer my Fear. May I always keep the Faith. May I wish all of this not just for myself but for all living beings. Amen.

share this with someone you love

2011-10-16T10:00:00.003-04:00

the laughing heart

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

- charles bukowski

PS this one is also incredible.

truth + light

2011-10-13T10:01:00.001-04:00

Too often we do not say what we are feeling in our hearts and we hold back our true words of love, courage and compassion that should be said. When you become courageous enough to express the Truth of how you are really feeling, you set yourself free and align with the vibration of your Truth. This is when miracles, synchronicities and amazing things begin to happen.

At first it might be a little rough, because you are clearing out everything that isn't true for you. But it's my promise to you, dear friend, that once you've reached a clean slate, your Truth will set you free, your Truth will make you happy and your Truth will always provide for you. My biggest promise to you is that your Truth will deliver a life greater than you have imagined. All you have to do is let go of what is not true for you and let in what is.

-Jackson Kiddard, yogi+writer+lover

I really need to just get a tumblr. Mostly now I just re-post others' words + insights. As of late I'm struggling with organizing my own.

still amazed i didn't lose it

2011-10-03T10:30:00.001-04:00

My eyes fell on the colorful copy of Love in the Time of Cholera as if it were the only book on the table. I was on St. Mark's and it was raining. This old man had set up his table of books under an awning. I saw the book, passed it by and made it about 10 feet before I turned around and walked back.

I picked it up and turned it over in my hands, feeling the gloss of the cover slide against my damp skin and allowing the pages to pour one by one across my fingertips. I asked the old man how much it was, and he said seven dollars. I told him I had six, and a $20 bill, hoping he would read between the lines and give me the book for $6. Instead he took my $20 and gave me $3 in return. He still owed me $10, but he only had two $20 bills left in his wallet and he said, wait here, I'll go get your change. He handed me the book and told me to stand by the table, and that if I sold anything he would take a dollar off the price of my book. As he walked away I felt a little uneasy twinge in my stomach, a pang from my past self, the fear that maybe this stranger would take my $20 and never return with my change. But as I stood there alone with my half-purchased book, I looked out over the piles of paperbacks and realized he had just left a wanderer with his entire table of wares. Trust is funny that way: it's only hard when you look at it as a one-sided thing. Which it never is.

When he returned with my money, he thanked me and called me beautiful, shook my hand and asked me my name. He said, I'm Marshall and I'm here every Saturday. I said, only Saturday? He said, Saturday's about all I can take.

He said, let me know what you think of the book, I think you'll really like it, it's wonderful.

I said, I will.

the possible meaning of 42

2011-09-29T11:41:00.000-04:00

Thanks, Chuck.

"There are three totally different kinds of humans on the Earth, meaning that they perceive the One reality in three different ways, interpreted differently. The first kind of human has a chromosome composition of 42+2. They comprise a unity consciousness that does not see anything outside themselves as being separate from themselves. To them, there is only one energy - one life, one beingness that moves everywhere. Anything happening anywhere is within them, as well. They are like cells in the body. They are all connected to a single consciousness that moves through all of them. These are the aboriginals in Australia. There might be a few African tribes left like this. Then, there is our level, comprising 44+2 chromosomes. We are a disharmonic level of consciousness that is used as a steppingstone from the 42+2 level to the next level, 46+2 ... These two additional chromosomes change everything... The main change will be a shift to the "unity consciousness". Every cell in your body has its own consciousness and memory. You, the higher being that occupies your body, make the millions of different consciousnesses in your body work together as one being ... Think of yourself as a cell and the grid as the higher being. We will still have individual consciousness, but will be united in the form of a higher being in order to work as one entity." - Drunvalo Melchizadek

the number 42 is haunting me

2011-09-28T17:51:00.001-04:00

I see it everywhere/all the time here recently. I look at the clock at exactly :42. It's (seemingly) randomly included in Facebook comments directed at me without the commenter's knowledge of my relationship with this number. It pops up on website error messages, in flight itineraries, in phone numbers. What does it mean? Also, I just learned this last week. Weird.

fall beginnings: a mood board

2011-09-27T11:10:00.001-04:00

I wrote this in my journal in 2009, way before I ever did yoga.

these boots are my soulmates.

I’ve learned to ask myself one question when I’m trying to decide whether or not I should take a role. Because I’ve come to learn that the decisions that I sweat over, that I labor over, and that I ask everybody’s opinions and I make lists, positive and negative - the answer in that situation should always be no. I’ve learned to make a decision by asking myself one question: What does my heart yearn for? It’s simplified my life in a way I can’t describe. I think that’s the single best piece of advice I’ve ever had in my life. Because your head can be your own worst enemy.

on yoga

2011-09-26T10:30:00.000-04:00

The big thing with me lately is that the past is present as I'm working to manifest my future. I've always thought of the past as the past and the present as the present and the future as the future, but I'm learning that things aren't often as simple as that. This straight line of chronology through which we all think we move is not so straight at times - it bouncily doubles over on itself like a seat in a movie theater, it loops around and sometimes it pauses in a space that feels like it's outside of time altogether. I suppose I've always "known" my past experiences are part of my present, because they've led me to this moment - but never in my life has my past been such a tangible presence. Never has my own understanding confused me so much.

It seems that my yoga studio - or, more likely, the yoga itself - is a wormhole to the past. Near the end of my training as a teacher, with my heart as wide open as it had been since before I moved to New York, I thought about A, in passing. (Remember?) It was a Saturday evening. I was walking from the studio in the East Village to meet a friend for drinks in the West Village. I thought, "I wonder what I would do if I ran into A in the city." I watched myself have the thought, wistfully interested in why I was thinking about this man who (I thought) broke my heart, and whom I had not even passively considered in more than a year's time. I also asked myself why I was thinking that thought specifically, when (at least as far as I knew) he doesn't live in New York. Piggybacking on that thought, more thoughts bubbled to the surface, and memories from the time we shared together, and then I found myself thrashing at my covers, trying to shake him out, wondering why the fuck all these images still live within me when I so unequivocally banished them.

A sort of bizarre sequence of events led to us having a conversation, A and I. He told me he had been in the city the day I thought of him. I had no way of knowing he was here that day, nor did I have a reason to think what I thought. He also told me he thought the same thing about me when he was here, what he would do if he ran into me. Synchronicity. Since that conversation there has been a revolution in my heart, a sort of open-chest surgery I'm performing on myself, blindfolded.

Then the other day, I taught class at the studio. After class a student approached me. She said I looked very familiar to her and asked me where I'm from. I told her Birmingham, Alabama. She said her too. She asked me my name. I told her, and as my name escaped my lips, I recognized in her a glimmer of a young face I once knew. I said her name as she told it to me. She went to my middle and high school. She was a grade above me, and we were never close friends, but I remember her because she was always performing and singing at school concerts and plays. We talked for a while and she told me she moved to the city just two days after me, on Jan. 1, 2009, to pursue a career in theater. She told me she had also just done a show down in Virginia. I befriended her on the book of faces, and learned that she is friends with another actor friend of mine who I just visited in Virginia last weekend. And so the past folds in on itself, and that fold folds in on itself again, like one of those wooden Chinese toys where you hold the end of a chain of blocks that tumble over each other repeatedly in an irrational way, clink clink clink clink clink.

For the past year or so my actions have largely been fueled by the belief that a higher power is guiding me to a destiny of its design, but lately I'm considering the possibility that I was born, that we are all born, to find and courageously follow our own hearts - that our hearts are our destinies. For me, yoga is a portal to my heart. Everything that comes along with that - past, present, and future - all present themselves to me, in ways I never conceived. Yoga helps me harness the power to transform all three, however I see fit.

Today I practiced yoga and the woman next to me in class had a tattoo on her forearm that read, "You have everything you need." And I think it's true.

on my heart

2011-09-21T10:11:00.001-04:00

The thing about the human heart is that, like the earth, it is much deeper than most of us immediately give it credit for. Sometimes we plant seeds in its soil, and the stems grow, and the flowers blossom for a time, and then the winter freeze rolls in and we know that those tender petals we once caressed to life are dead and gone. We imagine them reabsorbed into our very being to be re-distributed for another use, another season, galvanizing us against the next winter, whenever it may come. And then a strange turn of events can reveal to us, still swaying in the wind and reaching for the sun, the garden we long took for dead.

The discovery can be so shocking that it casts a new light on everything that’s happened in our lives since we first thought we laid our garden to rest. Maybe everything we’ve done since that moment has led us to this singular re-discovery. Maybe all the work, all the growth, all the choices, the mistakes - maybe it was all some cosmic plan to till the soil of our hearts, to ready us for the season of harvest. It's been said that an insight the size of a mustard seed can bring down a mountain-sized illusion that's holding our lives together. It’s at this point that maybe the anger comes, the protest - we thought we knew ourselves so well. We thought we had sufficiently healed the heartbreak that came when we turned our backs on those blooms, casting them in a shadow to ensure their demise. How dare they continue to thrive in the darkness, and how dare they reveal themselves to us again, now.

It’s not like we’ve been miserable. We’ve been the opposite of miserable - we’ve discovered levels of joy and exhilaration beyond what we believed possible. We’ve gotten to know ourselves better than ever before, we’ve grown to love ourselves more than we ever considered permissible. We’ve been so happy we cried and cried so much we laughed. We’ve gotten healthier, we’ve gotten stronger, we've gained understanding. We’ve learned, we've loved. Which is why this discovery is all the more unsettling. How could we, in our happiness, have been so unaware of the truth? Where was our secret garden this whole time?

So the problem becomes what we do with what we’ve found. Do we simply sit and observe for a while? Do we pick the buds and string them purposefully through our hair as it grows long? Do we water them, thereby encouraging them to grow taller? Do we one-by-one yank them out by their roots, painstakingly making room for some new breed to grow in their place? The whole venture becomes increasingly absurd and unreasonable - we begin to legitimately question our sanity, and we feel so painfully alone, as if we're sure that no one else in the history of the world has ever felt this way - it's too foreign, too strange. None of it makes any sense. We might ask ourselves, we might ask the universe, we might ask God: what is this trickery? What is going on? We feel like an old piece of rock being polished - run through a spinning buffer and then tossed around in a river with no banks in sight. But why? What is this strange alchemy?

The answer, of course, is Love. The answer is always Love. And if Love isn’t the answer, we’re probably not asking the right questions. Love isn’t black and white, it isn’t linear. It doesn’t fit inside any chronological framework we’ve created to interpret the events of our lives. It doesn’t adhere to the rules we’ve written for ourselves, nor does it acknowledge the density of the walls we've built. It doesn’t implore us to focus on the bad times, only on the good. Or, rather, it humbly turns our attention to all times equally. Winter, spring, summer, and fall are all the same in the eyes of Love. A field of flowers is the same as a field blanketed in the thickest snow.

Someone planted in me the seeds of Love long ago, and it took learning this lesson for me to finally see them begin to mature: in loving others, I am actually loving parts of my own heart, a perennial garden of buds only beginning to break through the ice of a long and stealthy frost. The polishing continues.

the original you and i

2011-09-20T07:00:00.000-04:00

What June did for me was post signs along the way, lift me when I was weak, encourage me when I was discouraged, and love me when I was alone and felt unlovable. She is the greatest woman I have ever known. Nobody else, except my mother, comes close. June said she knew me – knew the kernel of me, deep inside, beneath the drugs and deceit and despair and anger and selfishness, and knew my loneliness. She said she could help me. She said we were soulmates, she and I, and that she would fight for me with all her might, however she could. She did that by being my companion, friend, and lover, and by praying for me. June is a prayer warrior like none I’ve known.

We connect somewhere between here and heaven.

in memoriam

2011-09-11T18:13:00.001-04:00

I walked from the East Village to Bryant Park today, where A Tribute 9/11 has been set up for the past few days. There are 2,753 empty chairs on the lawn, one to represent each person killed on 9/11. It is quite eerie and beautiful.

An interactive public art project called Collective Memory included a pool of typists set up at a table each day from 12:30 to 2:30, recording people's responses to the question, What would you like the world to remember about 9/11? I didn't get to the park until around 4 today, so I missed the typists, but there was one lone typewriter still there, and I sat down to write. Someone is collecting the writings and will eventually display some of them at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. You can also see them here.

on 91st street

2011-09-06T12:35:00.000-04:00

All the leaves said,

"Just wait."

I felt you push the wind

through them

as they trembled.

So I will wait

under their gentle cover,

allowing the sun to warm my skin

and the rain to bathe it,

season after season,

until the snow comes.

the calm in the storm

2011-08-26T11:35:00.003-04:00

If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda
Read by Madonna

("implacable sweetness" is the most beautiful phrase I think I've ever heard)

Today an earthquake came to New York

2011-08-23T22:58:00.002-04:00

Today an earthquake came to New York

and also the ground moved beneath me.

i want to love in fall

2011-08-22T13:54:00.001-04:00

Fall is coming.

Fall is my absolute favorite time of year. It's so full of promise, encapsulating the past, present and future so well. Fall was driving over the hills of Alabama and Mississippi, listening to Iron & Wine until the CD scratched, and eating candy corn. Fall is walking around Central Park with hot hot coffee and peeking out from under your scarf to pose for a photo in front of Lady Bethesda, and college football. Fall will be when we fall in love again.

city life

2011-08-21T20:57:00.000-04:00

On the 1st avenue M15, an old woman who spoke no English turned to me and pointed to a piece of paper that said simply, "To 59th street." She had the sweetest eyes, and they asked me silently where the bus would stop, when and how she would make it to 59th street. We were only at 23rd street. I spoke to her but she acted like she didn't understand my words. She would make murmuring sounds with her voice, but she wasn't speaking another language, so I got the impression that she just couldn't speak at all, but that maybe at one time she could. I tried to communicate to her, with my eyes and my hands and my smile, that I would let her know when we got to 59th street so she could get off the bus. Her eyes were so sweet, they smiled in return even though her mouth never really moved that much. We got to about 54th street and I tried to let her know to get off at the next stop, which was 57th street. She looked confused and pointed to the paper, handing it to me and motioning for me to write down what I was saying. So I took her pen and wrote "get off the bus and walk two blocks up to 59th street." When the bus stopped at 57th street, I escorted her off, walked back to my seat and watched through the bus window as she walked to the stop and fished her umbrella from her bag. It was raining pretty good. I motioned to her through the window which direction to walk to get to 59th, but I don't think she saw me.

I hope she made it to where she was headed. 59th street is long.

denim on denim

2011-08-20T23:10:00.000-04:00

i wish i didn't have to title my blog posts

2011-08-19T22:31:00.000-04:00

108

I just did 108 sun salutations.
I'm not the same person,
just like I was before.
And also,
my legs hurt.

nothing is wasted

2011-08-16T11:39:00.000-04:00

It's been raining in New York City for three days, and it's chilly. When it feels like fall, whether it's really fall or not, I fall in love everyday with a person who's not there. I listen to a lot of Ryan Adams and I close my eyes and see the fire treetops and write so many poems in my head that never make it down to paper.

The universe is awe-some. A poet named Laura Gilpin wrote my favorite poem, and I just learned today that she died the day after Valentine's Day in 2007 in Fairhope, Alabama. She studied at Columbia University, so she lived in NYC for a while. So the circles keep opening and closing, and my life has become this beautiful work of art being created in each moment by something that is not me and I sit idly by and watch, sometimes laughing and sometimes smiling and sometimes crying, but always joyous.

life after death by Laura Gilpin

These things I know:
How the living go on living
and how the dead go on living with them
so that in a forest
even a dead tree casts a shadow
and the leaves fall one by one
and the branches break in the wind
and the bark peels off slowly
and the trunk cracks
and the rain seeps in through the cracks
and the trunk falls to the ground
and the moss covers it
and in the spring, the rabbits find it
and build their nest
inside the dead tree
so that nothing is wasted in nature
or in love.

just cuz

2011-08-05T14:46:00.003-04:00

It's been a while since I blogged. Life has been amazingly hectic but mostly hectically amazing. I'm in training to become a yoga teacher. It's a 200-hour program stretched out over 10 weeks, six of which I have completed. I started in late June and will complete at the end of August, if all goes as planned. I'm training at Yoga to the People in the East Village. It truly has been a life-affirming, inspiring and altering experience. I feel like I am on my way to finding the truest expression of myself - which maybe sounds crazy considering that I only started practicing yoga in May - but when I found yoga it really did feel like I was coming home and unfurling at the same time, both coming back to my true self after so much searching and simultaneously branching out into the unknown parts of myself that also comprise my core. To have even an opportunity, as a future teacher, to help others also find this amazing gift - is an honor and a privilege.

Remember that short film Love Sand I wrote last summer and filmed with Zac? The leading lady, Haley Strode, just booked a film with Sean Penn and Ryan Gosling. I am so happy for her and honored to have participated in her journey - what an incredible thing. I knew when I met her last summer that she had something special and significant inside her. I wanted to re-post the film here so you can watch how wickedly talented and beautiful she is. She's gonna be huge.

Love Sand from LBO Productions on Vimeo.

Thinking about being the girl who wrote (and, at least partially, lived) the sad story of Love Sand is a weird thing. I opened this blog post hours ago and watched the cursor blink at me for a while - I felt an unexpected inauthenticity as I thought about what I would say here about my life over the past few months. So much has happened, so much has blossomed for me, and I am more my Self now than ever before. I am so happy. I experience sadness but I have finally learned that the sort of destruction I experienced before resulted from my own hand. I am coming into my power as a woman. I am teaching myself never to say I'm sorry unless I truly mean it and to love myself unconditionally. As women we are conditioned to apologize at every turn - for raising our voices, for extending our bodies in space, simply for being ourselves - and I am undoing years of that. I am not sorry. I have a voice, I have a body, I have a mind - and I have a power inside of me. As a child in Alabama, I dreamed of living in New York City, creating a space for myself and living a free life where I could dance and write and use my heart. I'm on my way to that very life - one might say I'm one foot in, or maybe just a toe or two - and what a gift. What a power lies inside me! I don't say this to selfishly lift myself up, but rather to shine a light on the Source of this power, which is something I'm only beginning to become intimate with.

I saw this written in a bathroom stall. It's important.

Because, beautiful as you are, you hide so much of what you are, which of course is part of what you are: the hidden and the hiding.

the dance

2011-06-19T19:07:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow, when the guests have departed,

the balloons deflated,

and the champagne de-fizzed,

you will sit alone

and contemplate how the years zipped.

But tonight, tomorrow is just a figment,

and with my hand in your sunworn hand,

we twirl round and round,

and I hope that you see:

I’m yours now more than ever,

our eyes, thunderstorm mirrors,

and your heart?

I carry it in my heart.

torn

2011-06-09T13:35:00.001-04:00

houdini streets

2011-06-03T00:50:00.000-04:00

It was one of those magical nights that only happen in New York, where impossible things edify themselves right before your eyes, and you pump your fist through an open taxi window and the warm breeze electrifies you from your feet up, and you realize with no small amount of wonder that you perhaps have never felt so alive as you do right now.

You ponder what it is that's making you feel this way. What it is floating amongst all the concrete and lights that could possibly bring so much animation to your soul. You're running late and the cabbie tells you how pretty you look, you smile and thank him, you think of those blue eyes that wait for you at the end of your journey tonight. The bluest eyes you've ever seen, the ones you saw only twice a year ago and not since, but that have somehow been emblazoned on the backs of your eyelids for 365 days and counting. Your lids flutter, and you realize you've stopped breathing. You instruct yourself to push all the air from your lungs and then to take a deep, passionate breath in.

Breathe like he kissed you, you tell yourself. Slow, and with purpose.

Schiße

2011-05-23T11:29:00.003-04:00

Oh yeah, mein blog! Just a small post to update y'all on some shit I've been doing that has been exciting!

Number one, I interviewed Lady Gaga's musical director Fernando Garibay. I KNOW. I basically shit my pants. He was so sweet and humble and told me so much about how BORN THIS WAY was produced. It was recorded on the road all over the world while Gaga was on tour. My favorite quote from him: “Picture this,” he begins. “Gaga’s walking off stage—she’s pumped full of adrenaline—she comes in, and we start. I play her these chords, and immediately she’s like, ‘Put up the mic!’ And off the cuff, from her head, she recites this whole song.”

I've started writing for Thought Catalog. I've written a few pieces. It's fun.

There's a new East Village-based lit journal called The Vein and they published a couple of my poems.

The most surreal thing ever, my piece "2011: Gagalations" will be studied as a part of Dr. Victor P. Corona's Sociology of Culture course at Columbia University this summer. My weird nerdy high school brain teachers would be so proud of me.

I've started practicing yoga and in just a few weeks it has changed my life.
Gaga sings about St. Jerome's in HEAVY METAL LOVER. Bestill my heart.
I will be in attendance at Gags' GMA performance in Central Park this Friday.
I'm a warrior queen.
New York is not just a tan that you'll never lose.
Fleet Week begins Wednesday.

subway kids rejoice

2011-04-27T09:53:00.004-04:00

In January, I turned 25. For my birthday, a friend of mine gave me The Alchemist. On the title page, he wrote a note: "MCB, I found this one of the most inspiring books I've ever read. I hope it resonates as much with you." It took me a few weeks to finish the book. As I was reading, I knew something important was happening. The book served to reflect aspects of my spirituality that I had learned over the past six months or so. I put the book on a shelf, feeling cemented in my beliefs, but also feeling like I had missed something, that some of the metaphors were lost on me.

I pulled the book from the shelf yesterday, to share it with a man I've been seeing. I put it in my room to remind myself to give it to him, but decided not to take it with me yesterday. It sat on my dresser all day. This morning before leaving for work, I decided instead to re-read it myself, and I put it in my bag. I pulled it out on the train at 86th street and started reading. I stood from 86th street to 14th street reading, then some people got up to exit so I took a seat. I was sitting there reading, and the man sitting next to me looked over and said, "Your first time reading that book?" I said, "No, my second." He said, "Ah. It helps just to re-read it every now and then."

I agreed with him and pretended to keep reading, but there was an incessant pounding on the inside of my chest, demanding that I keep talking with this person. He was older a bit, probably in his 30s, and he seemed really nice and I liked his vibe. I ignored the pounding for as long as possible until I couldn't ignore it anymore.

"How many times would you say you've read it?" I asked him.
"Ummm, about three."
"Yeah."
"Why are you re-reading it now?"
"Um, well. I just read it for the first time a few months ago."
"Oh really? That's pretty soon to be re-reading it already."
"Well, I feel like I missed some of the metaphors so I want to go back through and get a better understanding."
"I see. Are you in the middle of a big life change?"
In my heart: yes.
Out loud: "Um, well, I really want a new job."
"Ah. What line of work are you in?"
"Well, right now I work in magazines."
"And what do you want to be doing? Healing?" He laughed.
"Well, I write magazine articles, but I really want to be doing something more creative. Like writing books or screenplays." Mind you, this is a complete stranger and I've never even told some of my closest friends that I want to write screenplays.
"Have you thought about taking a loan out to pursue higher education?"
In my head: Um, wow. Damn. Straight to the point.
Out loud: "I've thought about grad school but haven't done any in-depth research on it."
"Well," he said, "I'm throwing caution to the wind and taking out a $100,000 loan to go to school for psychotherapy. I feel like it's my calling."
"Holy shit. That's a lot of money."
"There's this school out in Boulder, Colorado called Naropa. Have you ever heard of it?"
"No."
"It's a Buddhist-founded university with graduate programs in writing. They focus on contemplative learning, meditation and stuff like that. It's really cool, you should look into it."
"All right, sounds awesome." Or something equally inane.
"Have you ever heard of Allen Ginsberg?"
In my heart: fucking Christ.
Out loud: "Yes."
"The library there is named after him. He was involved with the writing school somehow."

My stop came. I thanked him and told him to have a great day.
I got off.
I walked upstairs.
The sun hit my face. It was warm.
I went to get an iced coffee but I didn't really need it.
I held back tears as I walked to my office.

Synchronicity.

midsummer dream's night

2011-04-22T10:02:00.009-04:00

All I want from life right now is a warm night. Just one.

Where I can wear a dress with my thighs exposed, maybe a jean jacket, maybe be warm enough to take it off and drape it over my slingbag. Where I welcome the wind to my face with my eyes closed, cheeks pointing to the sky like bobbing baby fists. Where I can walk through Harlem, maybe over to the East River, and the wind there will be cooler, but not by much, and I can sit on a bench and feel the chills climb my spine as it tousles the strands of my scalp. Maybe it's about 7:38pm, and the sun is just about down, but not quite, and I can still make out Queens in a purple haze. Perhaps I imagine little Italian families preparing dinner in their heirloom apartments across the river, and then I wish I had a big plate of spaghetti.

Once on the 6 train between 33rd and 42nd streets, I peeked up from my book and saw, sitting across from me, a young timid Asian woman asking an old white man for directions to Penn Station. He told her we had just passed the stop she needed to get over there, to the West side. She had missed her chance. She looked confused and just kept repeating, "Trehn. Trehn." The man just kept shrugging and looking around helplessly. She said, "I'll just wait. I'll just stay on the trehn."

I caught the glance of a beautiful young black woman sitting next to them, with a buzzed head and a black RUN DMC t-shirt. She was eavesdropping too. She rolled her eyes and smiled and I smiled back and we both turned our attention back to the Asian woman. The man didn't know what else to say to her. He looked defeated. Then the black woman reached over the man, tapped the Asian woman on the shoulder, and said, "Just get off here at Grand Central, take the shuttle to Times Square, then take the 1 or 2 train down to Penn. You need to get to the West side." The Asian woman looked like she understood, smiled, and thanked her, clutching her little red backpack. She got off when the train stopped. The black woman looked at the silent white woman across from her and smiled. I smiled back.

Point is, I felt the warm night I wanted inside that subway car, and I carried it upstream all the way home.

Hustle mean hard work: The arrival of Emcee B.

2011-04-14T09:46:00.000-04:00

So, I'm entering a rap competition. Yeah I know, it's whatever. I wrote the verse and made the video all by myself, and I'm pretty excited about the result! It was really fun and my new favorite thing is downloading beats and writing verses on the 6 train in the mornings. You can watch the video below, and (if you likey) I implore you to go to the YouTube page and vote for me by clicking the thumbs up sign below the video! Duhhhhhh. Thanks y'all :)

beautiful no-sun

2011-03-30T13:17:00.003-04:00

I wish it were

and that I could burrow

where you couldn’t see me

and I couldn’t see you

until my heart stopped beating

and my stomach collapsed

and my brainstorm short/circuited

like number five

(but)

i am alive

and the sun will rise and i

with it.

i want to break free

2011-03-01T09:56:00.000-05:00

88 days/89 nights

2011-02-26T12:51:00.007-05:00

I had this awful dream last night, or this morning, that you told me you didn't love me, you loved someone else. You were my lover and my trainer; you were training me to be a gymnast. You were trying to get me to do a release move, something very high in the air, and I was just swinging so high in the air above water, and I couldn't let go. You got angry. I told you I was too scared, it was too high, I couldn't let go. You disappeared into the bowels of the ship and when you came back you said so many mean things to me, that I was weak and you had never loved me and what we had together was fleeting and meaningless. You said that you had found a woman who was brave and real to love. She was there too, and though I don't remember what she looked like, I remember her cruelty. It felt like when I was a child and people used to make fun of me for being a little bit chubby, or wearing pants that didn't flare quite enough at the ankles, or having bangs that stairstepped down my little forehead.

I wake up crying and the sun hits my face and I slowly realize it was only a dream. I think of my high school philosophy teacher, who said dreams were more a reality than our waking hours. Dreams, like all the times I built you in my bed, bringing a pillow close to my face and remembering when your blue eyes glowed back at me as we fucked. I try my hardest to remember, to re-create their explosive sheen from so, so long ago; I graze my lips across the surface of the pillow and remember how you kissed me, the breath that lingered between our mouths. I think that’s when it happened, when we exchanged those pieces of ourselves, whatever this thing is that makes me invent you time and time again, that haunts and thrills me. My gymnastics coach once took my 10-year-old pointed foot in his hand and looked at me and told me I would be in the Olympics some day. He was wrong; I never made it to the Olympics. Instead I got real sick and spent a summer in the hospital and missed a vacation with roller coasters and, much later, thanked God for keeping me alive.

I close my eyes and pull the pillow even tighter to me. I don't mourn the back handsprings or cartwheel beams or my Olympic dreams, but I do still thank God for life. I have no reason to love you, except that I have every reason not to, and of all the dreams I've had of you, this was but one. The open road reveals itself to me, and I drive on.

2011: Gagalations

2011-02-24T09:50:00.001-05:00

After I noticed some striking (read: obvious) similarities between Gaga's Grammy performance and Alvin Ailey's modern ballet Revelations, the lovely ladies over at Gaga Stigmata agreed to let me write a piece for them comparing the two works and their meanings in the contexts of their debuts. You can check it out here. I worked a lot on it and am really excited to share it!

I also recently interviewed legendary hairstylist Vidal Sassoon. There's a documentary about his life out right now in NYC and L.A., and I saw a screener. It's so amazing, and he is an inspiration for anyone who has ever wanted to make art or do anything completely different and revolutionary. He also once cut Grace Coddington's hair - and we all know she is the only remaining badass at American Vogue - so that, added to the fact that in a period of 15 minutes he legitimately referenced Bauhaus, Camus and Sartre, confirms him as a visionary and, possibly, my soulmate.

I leave for a week-long tryst in Spain in about two weeks! If anyone has any advice about what to do in BARTHELONA, let me know. xoxo

enter the void

2011-02-21T12:42:00.001-05:00

Dear Kanye: Thanks for taking my favorite song on the album and making a video that directly copies a really bizarre art film about being in love with your sister in Tokyo.

I mean damn, you could have at least cited Gaspar Noé. Extra bright, indeed.

Born This Way: It's for 2011, not 1990

2011-02-11T15:09:00.001-05:00

My review of Gaga's single Born This Way, which dropped this morning around 5 a.m. (yes, I did set an alarm and arise), is up on Sound System NYC. I want to post it below in full as well, but be sure to check it out over on the actual site! xo

“Born This Way” was not love at first listen for me: I found the opening lines banal and drab, the melody weak and the song as a whole monotonous and sort of, well, boring. Compared with “Bad Romance,” the debut single off her second album The Fame Monster, with its epic climbs and falls, its oh-u-oh-u-ohs, its screeching profession of love, “BTW” seemed lackluster. But I listened to it again, trying not to make it into something it’s not – that’s right, it’s about to get real meta in here – and I liked it more.

I played it again and liked it a bit more. I played it again and liked it even more. By the fifth listen I was dancing in my bed – where I was sitting after waking up at 5 a.m. to hear the song – and picturing a sunny, warm New York afternoon, walking around the city in shades and jamming out to this track. It reminded me of her summery tracks circa The Fame, with the same upbeat lyrics and happy-go-lucky “I love life” attitude.

In fairness, the track wasn’t particularly surprising. Lady Gaga has been saying for months that it would be the gay anthem of our generation (even Elton John vouched for this), and she’s been saying since the beginning of her time in the spotlight that the key to a happy life is loving yourself and having self-confidence. With the release of the lyrics via her Twitter account – a bizarre move that made me wonder why an artist would want to release a piece of work chunk by chunk – we got the message loud and clear.

It’s a gay anthem all right, in the most in-your-face way possible. With the release of the song in its full form –with melodies, bass and tempo – the literal nature of the lyrics made more sense. It seems the whole Internet is up in arms because, they argue, the song sounds identical to Madonna’s 1989 freedom anthem “Express Yourself,” but aside from a similar melody and chord changes (newsflash: all pop and rock music operates on about four chord progressions) I don’t think it’s identical at all. In fact, I saw more similarities to Madonna’s anthem from the following year, the epic “Vogue” – which, if we’re being honest, also sounds a lot like “Express Yourself.”

“Vogue” was a gay anthem for the 1990s, taking its inspiration from the underground New York gay clubs chronicled in Paris is Burning, where voguing was a dance form and a lifestyle. BTW’s lyrics mirror those in “Vogue” much more directly than anything in “Express Yourself”: “All you need is your own imagination/So use it, that’s what it’s for/Go inside for your finest inspiration/ Your dreams will open the door; It makes no difference if you’re black or white/If you’re a boy or a girl/If the music’s pumping it will give you new life/You’re a superstar, yes, that’s what you are, you know it” mirrors Lady Gaga’s verse: “No matter gay, straight, or bi/Lesbian transgendered life/I’m on the right track baby/I was born to survive; No matter black, white or beige/Chola or Orient made/I’m on the right track baby/I was born to be brave.”

“Vogue” and “BTW” are the same – they have the “same DNA,” if you will – in that both Madonna and Gaga aimed to produce pop songs that would speak to the masses while representing a culture they wished to pay homage to. The difference is this: in 1990, Madonna had to be subversive in her lyrics, because homosexuality was more of a fringe-society experience than it is now; in 2011, Gaga doesn’t have to, so she simply doesn’t. Perhaps the literalism of her lyrics is just her attempt to capture the zeitgeist for a generation not prone to holding much back re: expressing ourselves. We curse, we talk dirty, we promote weirdness and, yes, we love the gays. Gaga has said she wrote the song in just 10 minutes, which has pros and cons. But maybe if she really aimed to write the anthem of her and our generation, all she had to do was sit down and let the words flow. It seems that’s what she did – how successfully she’s done it will be determined over the course of the next 20 years. For now, beauty’s where you find it.

Patti Smith at St. Mark's Church

2011-02-10T20:11:00.001-05:00

Last night I had the most incredible Patti experience thus far, the amazing opportunity to see her read poetry with Lenny Kaye on the 40th anniversary of their very first performance in the same church where it all started. I wrote a review of it for Sound System NYC, and took some shoddy video on my iPhone. This woman is truly inspiring in every way: universally talented, rousing, kind, warm, gentle, humble. She is everything I aim to be in my life. She is a true artist.

I've seen Patti three times over the past year, but this time was different because I had never seen her read poetry before. I recorded her reading "Ballad of a Bad Boy," a poem she wrote about Sam Shepard and his car, over the grisly hum of Lenny Kaye's electric guitar. It was the definition of badass. Turn your volume way up.

monday at midnight

tuesday at two

drunk on tequila

thinkin' of you ma

I drove my car on ma

wreckin' cars was my art

sartre in the subway

2011-02-09T15:08:00.001-05:00

hell is other people.

published in amphibi.us

2011-01-25T16:19:00.001-05:00

I went to the NYC Department of Housing and Community Renewal today to ask them a question about my apartment building. I walked in and I was convinced it was the bleakest office in New York. It was fluorescent, not just the lights but everything, and there were no books or magazines. You had to talk to the government through a large Plexiglas sheet, and there was a sign on it that said NO EATING, like a zoo. The office is on Beaver Street, so animals were a theme.

After waiting for about 15 minutes a woman waved me in and talked to me for another 20 in fragmented sentences. She curtly asked me to quit clicking my pen. She asked me for a different phone number than the cell I offered her because, she said, the city of New York cannot make long-distance phone calls. I could see the sky through a window, it was very gray outside but the snow had stopped. She went to make a photocopy and I absent-mindedly checked my e-mail and I had an acceptance from Amphibi.us, an online poetry journal. I walked in me and walked out me, but a different me, a published poet me. The fluorescent cooked me like plaster, in the most brilliant, beautiful, living art I have yet experienced.

winter solstice

2011-01-17T19:41:00.000-05:00

The winter really affects me. I wish it didn't, and I suppose I could power through if I really tried, but mostly I just end up depressed and/or unmotivated to do anything but curl up with a book or a movie. Anyway, 2011 so far has underwhelmed me, but January always underwhelms me. I can't remember a stellar January, ever.

A couple sort of cool things, though. Skins premieres on MTV tonight and I interviewed the cast and creator, which was extremely cool. I've seen the first couple of episodes and I really like it, perhaps despite myself. It makes me long for teenagedom, doing stupid shit and raging with hormones and living a completely free life. I think even for people like me who don't actively long for the high school glory days, we spend a large part of our adult lives trying to recapture that spirit. Anyway, here's the story.

I also interviewed SNL's Seth Meyers for the February issue. I obvs have a huge crush on him so you can imagine my excitement about this. My dream is that Meyers will find my Stefon Twitter and invite me on SNL Weekend Update to battle the real Stefon. For now, I will settle for talking to him.

More to come soon, I hope. I made ice cream out of snow the other day. It was awesome.

eternity is in the snow

2011-01-12T16:31:00.001-05:00

Because I lack inspiration as of late, in an attempt to reconcile my relationship with snow, here is a video of me frolicking in it. I made an infinity sign by accident, prompting me like a double rainbow to ask, what does it mean???

i shoot the lights out

2011-01-02T13:44:00.002-05:00

I woke up this morning and I had a headache and my whole body hurt. Two nights ago I rode a mechanical bull in fishnets and sequins; I wasn't even drunk, I just wanted to do it. I stayed on for 55 seconds and I have a big bruise on the inside of my right thigh, but it was fun. Kanye West's song 'All of the Lights' was playing, my favorite one on the album, and it seemed like a sign, an appropriate way to round out New Year's Eve, begin 2011. The thing about that song is that Alicia Keys and Elton John both sing on it, but their parts are tiny and they're not credited. I didn't know until later. The thing about riding a mechanical bull is that no matter how hard you squeeze your thighs together, you're going to fall off. It's inevitable.

Patti Smith once said about New Year's Day, so as today, the rest of the year. Meaning whatever you do on that day, you will do for the rest of the year. I don't know if it's true though, and it makes me anxious. I slept until 1:30 on New Year's Day and then showered and put on a full face of makeup and sat around watching a movie and just nothing particularly interesting happened. Then later before dinner we were all talking about resolutions and sort of went around in a circle stating them as fact. All I could say is I want to make more money in 2011. Which is true, but really what I want for 2011 is to do more than I talk, and to start surrounding myself with doers, weeding out the talkers. I felt bad all day yesterday because I can tell 2011 is going to be a year of difficult decisions.

When 2010 started, I had no confidence that it would be an amazing year. I didn't think it would be bad, it's more like I didn't think about it, I just moved forward and did stuff and then amazing things started happening. I did a lot in 2010, produced a lot of work, and I'm happy about that, and I feel thankful. But in its aftermath I feel a pressure that I didn't expect to feel. I'm trying to force myself to be positive going into 2011, but in a way it feels false. My dreams are bigger than ever, so the pressure follows suit. Last night we went dancing and it was so crowded and hot and a large man stepped on my little toe and it hurt really bad and I limped home alone and thought, what if I never make myself stand out.

I don't think this year is going to be bad, but I can feel that it's going to be hard. I believe in my purpose and I will do anything to achieve it, and when that's your starting point, you know it's going to be hard, people are going to get hurt. I'm not a good diplomat. Someone once told me I seem to care about no one but myself, but I think that's just a burden ambitious women carry a lot of the time. Is wanting to achieve a dream fundamentally selfish, and is being selfish even a bad thing, or is it a mindwash? My dreams are my dreams, but it's not about me crossing a finish line. There is no finish line, it's a basic truth about art, it just keeps on going.

Change is coming, I feel it. All I have is my faith, and the knowledge that I can use lessons learned thus far to deal with things yet to come. And a belief in myself and my purpose. I don't really have resolutions for 2011, because resolving takes time and we're only two days in. My only thought so far is to be brave, but careful and smart, with myself and with others. Things have to change, not because 2010 was bad, but because it was so good. And because things always have to change. That's a given, the challenge is to avoid becoming a monster.

Top 10s of 2010

2010-12-30T10:22:00.002-05:00

I'm working on a post trying to sum up what 2010 gave to me, but it's been really hard because I learned more in 2010 than probably in any year prior. But I came up with a couple of my top 10 lists to bide the time. Deal with it!

Top 10 Albums of 2010

1. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
The haunting sound of tires spinning on pavement managed to conjure so many of my high school memories, along with a wicked nostalgia, and cemented this album’s place at the top of my list.

2. Big Boi – Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty
Big Boi’s solo debut gave us the best and most innovative rap album of the year. (Sorry, Yeezy.)

3. Freelance Whales – Weathervanes
This album is the musical version of puppies. Additionally, it’s brilliant.

4. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – The Social Network Soundtrack
Transcends Facebook.

5. Girl Talk – All Day
How does Gregg Gillis know every single song from my childhood and probably yours?

6. LCD Soundsystem – This is Happening
The album that defined summer 2010 for me – and reaffirmed the legitimacy of the cowbell.

7. Drake – Thank Me Later
The album that changed my mind about Drake.

8. Robyn – Body Talk
Because it’s the best dance album of the year, and because she ate a banana on stage when I saw her perform.

9. Owen Pallett – Heartland
Owen did dark and twisted and beautiful way before Kanye.

10. Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Because it’s legitimately a great album, albeit over-hyped – and because if I don’t everyone will poopoo my list.

Top 10 Films of 2010

1. The Social Network, David Fincher
What everyone expected to be simply "the Facebook movie" transcends its subject to tell a human story about ambition, creation and the sacrifice required for both. Brilliant writing, directing, acting and scoring make this the best all-around film of the year.

2. Blue Valentine, Derek Cianfrance
My second-most anticipated film of the year (behind a disappointing Black Swan), BV didn't let me down. Raw and honest, it is perfectly beautiful in its beautiful imperfection; it captures the feeling of a first film but with 12 years of development.

3. I Am Love, Luca Guadagnino
This Italian film trumps genre by being stunningly beautiful in every category. It made me fall totally in love with Tilda Swinton, and John Adams' score, reminiscent of Philip Glass' work for The Hours, became my writing soundtrack for weeks after I saw it.

4. The King's Speech, Tom Hooper
I watched this film a few days after I watched A Single Man for the first time, and I now hold firm to my belief that Colin Firth is our best living actor. His face can change in a millisecond and is utterly convincing; the story is great, the cinematography is gorgeous and Helena Bonham Carter is one of my favorites.

5. The Fighter, David O. Russell
Two words: Christian Bale. If he doesn't go home with an Oscar, it will be outrageous. The story is good and Mark Wahlberg and especially Amy Adams shine too, but Bale outperforms every other aspect of this film. Just unreal.

6. The Town, Ben Affleck
This is one of my favorite films of the year, and would have probably ranked higher had it not been for the other amazing films I considered. I love Affleck's performance and Jeremy Renner will certainly be nominated for an Oscar for his role. Transcending the traditional cops and robbers film, it tells the familiar story of leaving home and the people you love in search of a better life.

7. 127 Hours, Danny Boyle
While my fascination with James Franco isn't exactly understated, this film is an achievement separate and apart from that. It tells a story about the slowest, most boring subject - one man stuck in a canyon for days - using quick camera shots, rapid-fire humor and a thumping, brilliant score by A.R. Rahman.

8. True Grit, The Coen Brothers
I will happily watch Jeff Bridges eat a sandwich. The Dude does not disappoint in this re-make, delivering humor and, yes, grit in equal proportion for a country-style feast. The Coen Brothers are surprisingly less nihilistic than usual, which I appreciated.

9. Howl, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman
Franco shone again in this bio-pic about Allen Ginsberg. The film was obviously inspiring to me as a writer, and I liked the use of the poem, which is cut in with the interviews Ginsberg did with The Paris Review, to reveal something about the creative process. I also saw it a few doors down from the Chelsea Hotel, which gave me the warm fuzzies.

10. Burlesque, Steve Antin
Yes, I'm really including this in my top 10. Like the wise Cher once tweeted, it isn't Shakespeare, but it's not supposed to be. The film is actually very well done. Fun, entertaining and glittery, yes, but the writing isn't bad and even rather witty at times. I only saw it once, but after it was finished I wanted to watch it again and again, which is more than I can say for Black Swan, the other "dance movie" which I did see twice in theaters. And I adore Stanley Tucci.

Worth noting: I have yet to see Rabbit Hole or Winter's Bone, which are both lauded as two of the year's best films. But I can only rate what I've seen. I'll consider them honorary contenders until I see them - which should be soon - at which point I may edit my list accordingly.

keyboard tetris

2010-12-28T18:28:00.001-05:00

and you won't look back

2010-12-26T01:30:00.000-05:00

A year ago I ran through the front door with my phone in my hand. It was cold out but I didn't put a coat on. Cut glass rattled in wood as the door fell shut behind me. It would be my last ditch effort, and your response would be the last ditch period. You told me she was moving there to be with you, I paced the driveway. I asked you how that felt, you paused and said, pretty good. I went back inside and later I drove my car to a friend's house and made some more phone calls but this time no one picked up.

Just something about this place, if I'm here too long I feel swirls of a person I used to be, and it makes me surly. Sitting at a table of family friends, sweet people with happy unexamined lives, being asked over and over if I have a boyfriend yet. When am I getting married, ideally. I shrug and churn out a number. Really I'm only dreaming up answers, but I can't say that aloud. I'm already too strange, too far away.

She said, times have changed. She said, in my day, if you weren't married by 21, you were considered an old maid. I said yes, times have changed. The thing is, my parents didn't raise me to be an expert at finding boyfriends. They didn't buy me school workbooks at the toy store so that I would be a good wife. Most people can have babies, and most people do. Most people want to get married, and most people do. Most people vote, but it doesn't mean most people should. A woman in a mall looks me up and down and says she likes my outfit, asks me where I'm from. My mom smiles and says, she lives in New York, she's a writer.

I remember in high school, I got into this fight with my parents. I don't remember what we were fighting about, I can just vividly hear myself saying, I'd rather be alone at the top than not be at the top at all. The memory is transcendent, like I'm remembering someone else say it. I see myself standing there with a fire in my eyes. I find it equally comforting and frightening, like the old me knew the new me would eventually show up and was readying the fort. In my darkened bedroom, I taped my poetry to rose-colored walls.

There's this amazing poem that's stuck in my head since I read it. These lines: This is for every little boy and girl who stood between home and a tornado, weighed the options, and took a chance on the twister. The image of the tornado is violent and accurate, but I think the writer neglects the other half of the story, something the Dorothies may find comforting. That once you've chosen the tornado, it becomes your home.

People keep asking me when I'm coming home, coming back to the South. I just smile and say I don't know, we'll see, we'll see. But really the tornado is my home now. I love the turbulence, pressing my face to the wind and stretching my limbs over an unlimited expanse. I can never go back to living on the ground. I need the scorch to live. The only way to go is up. Up and away.

she's like montana

2010-12-24T07:00:00.002-05:00

She likes to wear layers. T-shirts over dresses, dresses over jeans, things that don't make sense. She pulls her socks up to her knees and wears high heels with them. I don't understand how it's possible, how I see her body better in all those clothes, how it deviates and distends as she reaches to fill her cup with coffee each morning. The more clothing she puts on, the more I want to disrobe her, piece by piece. It's devastating.

The first time I saw her, it was raining. She walked in the bar on a Thursday night, when I go to drink beer and watch soccer with strangers. I've gone every Thursday for three years and had never seen her before. She walked in like she knew the place, and she was dripping wet. The rain pounded against the panes but I couldn't hear it over her voice. She sat at the bar three stools down from me and asked 'tender Tommy for a towel and a tonic. Just a tonic? I asked. I don't drink, she said. You walked into a bar, I said. She said, yeah, it's raining and I wanted to dry off.

Later, much later, I would ask her why she drank tonic. Why tonic, and not soda or juice or water. She just smiled and said she liked the natural taste of bubbles. We would lie together on the floor of my apartment, sometimes naked sometimes not, smoking and listening to film soundtracks on vinyl, our heads sharing a pillow but our bodies in opposition. She would listen to me talk about anything and that's why I fell in love with her. That, and the softness of her ear as it grazed mine. It's amazing, how her ears are good for all kinds of things.

She got very angry at me one night about something I said to her friends at a party. I remember not knowing why she was so mad. She wouldn't speak to me on the way home. I got on my knees in our bedroom and unbuttoned my shirt and told her I adored her and didn't know what I had done wrong, but everything I said just made her more and more angry. She locked herself in the bathroom for a few hours and I sat on the floor leaning against the door frame and when she came out she climbed on top of me. Her face was covered in tears and I held onto her and she kissed me and said she would love me forever and I believed her.

I took a photo of her that night, after the fight, after we made piles out of our clothes and I ran my fingers along her body. I brushed her hair out of her face and used my thumbs to rouge her cheeks, and told her to look at me like she had never seen me before. Her mascara was smeared and her lipstick was gone but she let me take her photo anyway, and it's the most beautiful thing I own or will ever own. There is only one copy, and I made her promise to let me keep it no matter what, in case one day she is gone and all I have left are sweaters and socks.

ask, tell

2010-12-22T17:58:00.002-05:00

I woke up at 9:30 this morning and read Twitter. I'm in Alabama and I read that Obama was signing the Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal into law at 9:15 EST, and there was going to be a live video feed of it on the website. I had my time zones confused and thought that meant I could still watch it. But it was too late.

I went to the website anyway and there was a live video of a press conference with Robert Gibbs. I thought about how I hate publicists, how the implication of a publicist is that a person doesn't trust himself to self-represent in an appealing way. The implication of a publicist is that somewhere, truth is lost, or that truth doesn't matter. I don't like to think about how the artists I admire probably have publicists. I admire them because I believe they are telling me the truth about life.

I shut the computer and burrowed back into the covers and slept til noon for the first time in months. It felt good. While sleeping, I had a dream. I had a co-worker who was a teenager, maybe 16 or 17 years old, a boy. He asked me if he could come over after work and I said yes. He came over and we talked and he sat beside me on a couch and leaned in and buried his head in my neck. He cried and said his grandmother had died that morning. It made me very sad and I ran my hands through his hair and told him it would be okay and that I was sorry. Then he started to kiss me, but he didn't know how to kiss because he was so young. It was so sweet, it made me want to cry. I kissed him back.

A person I used to love works as a publicist now, or did the last time I spoke to him, nearly a year ago now. I thought about that as I crawled out of bed at 12:45 and fixed myself a sandwich. I don't know if it was breakfast or lunch.

it must be nice, to disappear

2010-12-21T07:00:00.004-05:00

This Christmas, a loneliness has crept up on me, a feeling I haven't felt in a while. That feeling of wanting so badly to kiss someone and having no one to kiss. Going to a holiday party at a friend's house and staring at a flickering candle, wishing you were anywhere else with any other flickering candle. Trying to be social but not able to fake enjoyment or interest in new people. Trying to drink more, to feel brighter, but just feeling sleepy.

But it's okay, because the fear of loneliness is so much worse. Living in some dark in-between place where you write letters to former flames and pray to god for some guidance, anything, a response, some hate mail even. You trick yourself into believing you can't be alone if someone hates you. You shield yourself from the reality that you are always alone, no matter what, hated or loved, a night light flickering on and off. The fear becomes your shadow, or a security blanket you drag behind you like a weight. It never leaves you.

But when you stop fearing your solitude and accept it, then graduate from accepting to embracing it, loneliness gets this odd sterling lining. You feel sad but the sadness doesn't dominate you. There's no shadow, no blanket, and it's okay. You watch couples holding hands on trains and you don't feel bitter or wonder if you'll know what that's like again. You pick a person and a place and you make up stories to fill that space, you temper loneliness with creativity. You see a diner on a cab ride to an airport, and you imagine stopping in alone on a rainy day, your rubber soles scuffing linoleum, sitting at a table and warming your hands on a cup of coffee. You look up and a man is watching you from the counter. Not in a creepy way, he's just drinking coffee too. He walks to the bathroom and on his way back you reach out and grab his hand and ask him to join you, just something they do in the movies. The whole script takes place right there, just a conversation across a table with a man you love by the time the check comes.

When you embrace your solitude is when you can make something beautiful out of it. Until then, you're just a coward, cowering in the crevices of the candlelight, hoping a strong wind won't blow you out.

a lock of his true love's hair

2010-12-20T15:04:00.000-05:00

i wish it was christmas today

2010-12-16T10:31:00.001-05:00

It is really cold in New York right now. It's February cold in December; the kind of cold that makes you hurt from the inside. The sort that makes you want to work extra hours at your job, out of gratitude for being able to pay for the roof over your head, the clean pillow underneath it, the chocolate you eat under blankets.

I left my office tonight and saw the same man I see often, sitting underneath the scaffolding outside the door. He's in a wheelchair. The first time I saw him, he was grappling for his dropped cell phone. This time a woman, a stranger, was helping him with his sleeve. I couldn't really see what she was doing, but I heard her say, Is that better? His face is partially paralyzed so he can't talk very well, but he mumbled something in response. He was bundled up, and I wondered who had helped him dress. I thought about goodness.

In my work neighborhood there is a Dunkin' Donuts with a mirror on one side that runs the entire length of the space. I go in every morning and spend three dollars and 48 cents on a coffee and an orange juice, plus tax. I don't like to think about how much money that really is, or how I never used to drink coffee. There is a Latino woman who works the register. Sometimes she remembers my order before I say it, and sometimes she smiles. Some mornings she does neither of those things, but every morning she's there.

The other day as I was leaving an older man was coming in. I let him in first, and in passing I smiled at him and said good morning. The blue sky was making me feel friendlier. As I went out, I caught a glimpse of him in that long mirror. He had whipped around and I saw his face following me, stunned. I think he had forgotten what good morning sounded like coming out of a complete stranger.

The thing about a city is that it embodies all the people in it. It is only as good or as bad as the eyes that see it. It contains the properties of the people who observe it. The thing about a city is that it is just like everything else.

the worst are full of passionate intensity

2010-12-15T09:58:00.001-05:00

I bought a new type of soap the other day. I thought it was lotion and it was really cheap and it promised to provide seven different types of hydration, so I bought it. When I discovered it was soap I felt surprised then disappointed then excited I wouldn't have to buy soap for a while. For sale, soap and a full range of emotions.

The soap is scented. It smells like my ex-boyfriend. Not the one who pushed me down onto the bed, but the one who tied me there. When I shower now I feel mesh knots grazing my wrists and hear flesh rubbing against flesh and taste red wine. One time we got really drunk on red wine and stayed up til six in the morning fucking and talking and fucking some more until the sun came up and we blacked out. Even after living in New York for two years, that night might be the closest I've come to a rock star life.

We had problems. He drank too much, like everyone else in college. He was on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds to help him cope with the loss of his parents. He was an orphan by the time he was 19. When we started dating, I knew his mother had died fairly recently, and one night we were at his apartment watching a movie and there was a scene with a funeral or something. He mentioned casually that it reminded him of when his dad had died, years ago. I told him I had to use the restroom, then I sat on the toilet with the fan on, crying.

The pills made him numb, I think. Not completely, but partially. He always appeared to be just on the brink of a sincere emotion, except for when we were intimate. When he kissed me, when he held onto the back of my neck while he made me come, when he rested his head on my stomach, that's when I saw who he really was. But outside of that, he lived in a shell. I saw him cry one time, on the eve of his college graduation. He said, No one will be there to watch me walk. A lone tear fell from his eye and I crawled into his lap on the edge of my bed and pulled his forehead into my neck and cradled him. Women who say they don't want to take care of men are lying. People want to take care of other people.

He was good at comforting too. Since I was a kid I've had this compulsion to scratch myself. My parents always said it was scented soaps and detergents, but really it's a coping mechanism to deal with stress and anxiety. Sometimes I scratch myself in my sleep. I would wake up in his bed with these red welts on my legs, blood drawn. He would pull me into the bathroom naked, bend down and run his hands along my marks and say, Oh sweetie, you have to stop scratching.

Another time, I was with him when I found out I had ovarian cysts. I had the worst period I've ever had in my life. I lay in his bed in the fetal position, unable to move from the pain. He went out and bought heating pads and laid them across my lower abdomen. They were the kind that stick to your skin, so I fell asleep with them on me, like leeches. I woke up in the middle of the night covered in sweat so I ripped them off and cranked up the central AC and curled my body into his. We were only together for eight months or so, but we took care of each other like we had been together for years. It was strange, like children, we never said I love you.

I asked him once if he believed that things happen for a reason and he answered no so immediately and coldly that I knew he wasn't lying. It was the first time I knew we wouldn't end up together. They say the strongest human sense is smell, but really I think it's loss. The sense of loss and the scent of it, haunting and halting only when you reach the bottom of the bottle.

A conversation with Ciara

2010-12-13T11:05:00.000-05:00

A few weeks back I interviewed Ciara at her album release party in the West Village. Then I reviewed her album Basic Instinct, which comes out tomorrow. The album is basically a buffet of female power anthems. It makes me miss living in Atlanta, driving around in summer with my windows down and my speakers cranked.

When I met Ciara for the interview, we were both wearing fur vests. It was sort of hilarious. Here's a photo of us together. Sorry for the crappy quality.

teach me how to dougie

2010-12-08T12:02:00.000-05:00

Just a couple thangs.

When I was home for Thanksgiving, my childhood best friend Ashley made me walk on train tracks in six-inch heels while she took photos of it. They are here.

I didn't write about it (not really), but at the beginning of November I went to a taping of Inside The Actor's Studio with James Franco. It was so amazing and inspiring. A few weeks later, author/fave writer Stephen Elliott wrote about Franco in his Daily Rumpus e-mail. Franco optioned The Adderall Diaries and plans to direct/star in a film version of the memoir. I wrote Stephen back and told him about the taping, and he asked me to edit my notes into an article. So I did. Then it was linked to by USA Today. So that was a good day.

Because good things usually come in threes: I have watched this like ten times. I think it says something.

i have seen the moment of my greatness flicker

2010-12-07T10:55:00.001-05:00

Have you ever loved someone so much, whatever love might be, that you just sit in their lap and cry? You look at that person, and think about all the times you ever felt so alone, so ceaselessly alone, like the universe. You take that person's face in your hands and you try to say something that will touch your universe to the other person's. You say, I love you. You say, oh my god. You say, before I knew you, I waited. You say, never leave and I won't either. A tear might fall from the other person's eye, or maybe the person laughs, and that's when you lose it. A hundred nights of asking God for a sign seem like another life altogether. Once the sign comes it's easy to forget about the miles of stretched out concrete that led up to it. And equally easy to forget that whoever is in charge of making the signs does so without err, but doesn't account for the flecks in your eyes.

You take the person's face in your hands and a tear falls or a laugh bubbles up, and that's when you cry. You cry for every person you've ever loved, your mom and your dad. All the people you used to love but don't anymore. You want to actually curl up into a ball so small it's visible only to that person, then you want to press into their stomach and disintegrate into their skin. Being in love is wanting to disappear.

And all the other times, when you've been alone so long you nearly forget what it's like to love someone, you can allow yourself to remember. You can lie in your bed with a book and a pen and you can write in cursive letters, Sometimes I want to fall asleep with the light on. And then you'll wake up at 4 a.m. and the lights will be on and you'll crawl blind to switch them off, and then just before you drift off again, there it is, that feeling you haven't felt in this life.

You pull the blanket up around your nose, take your face in your hands, and cry. You pray for a sign.

we are all little boys and little girls

2010-12-06T10:25:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was my Kid A reading. It was really amazing - Cake Shop was packed out and pretty much everyone I know in New York City was there, plus a couple people from out of town. It was definitely the largest group of people I've ever read in front of.

My assignment was to write a poem inspired by Radiohead's song Motion Picture Soundtrack off the album Kid A. The song is a part of who I am, and I wanted so badly to do it justice. After listening to the song for the 10,000th time this year, I came to the conclusion that it's essentially a love letter to suicide, a tale of the battle between the good and evil forces that plays out in all of our lives.

Here is my poem. Thanks to everyone who came out yesterday. Sometimes it is like the movies.
---

we are all little boys and little girls

1.
I had a discussion with a friend
over monitors
about Freemasons,
who is one and who isn't.

I said I didn't know what
the big deal was.
People always say artists sold their souls to the devil at a crossroads
to get the talent they have,
whatever talent might be.
He said,
who knows.

Instead,
maybe they sold their souls to God
in the back alleys of their minds.
Because eventually the road ends,
and it's either death or nothing.

People start to believe things they said they'd never believe.
People curl into themselves under sweat-soaked bedsheets.
People tousle the clouds under their feet as they walk upon high,
on rooftops so gilded,
they strip soles of humanity.
People smoke cigarettes and flick ash into the fire.

2.
I have measured out my life with IM boxes.
I have cried onto my keyboard,
drawing myself into a cube with tears running a river through Qs, Rs and Ts.
I have confused names and old faces and
I have forgotten who I am.

I have imagined defenestration
and masturbation
and a different nation,
one run entirely by machines,
leaving people like me
to capacitate and then undo their demons,
all while in their pajamas
or maybe never getting dressed at all.

3.
I am a Freemason.
You are a Freemason
And you and you and him
and his yellow dog too.
It's one of those things
we can never disprove so it may as well be true.

God is a Freemason.

4.
The fall is nearly as thrilling as the high,
and it’s a cheek turned to God.

Because eventually the road ends.
All the parts you thought made you
shut off at once.
The grinding halt reverberates off slick bricks,
the rooftop blown off.

You're left barefoot and childless.
Loveless neon signs vibrate through whiskey glasses,
wooden stools steal your shirts,
people tell you things but you can't remember.

You remember when you used to hope,
but the feeling is distant
like a city you read about in a book but never visited.

5.
I think you're crazy maybe,
but worse yet I think you're dead.
Every day is a memory of the next.

I have seen you beg for your soul,
stirring it around in a bucket of shit,
over and over to the tune of a harp
that's strung with the hairs of the people you loved
who didn't love you back.

6.
At the end of the road,
there’s a sign.
It is the same in all languages, at all times,
and it reads:
What do you live for?
What do you live for?
What do you live for?

7.

I live for a newspaper pressed into seedy cement on the street in Harlem.
I live for nights spent with strangers on SoHo benches.
I live for my mother, who said you can always come home!
I live for saltwater seeping into my skin as I step onto the floor of silent seas.
I live for must, and do, and will, but never should.
I live for the guiding light of glow in the dark stars stuck to the ceilings of our skulls.
I live for muzzles butting mirrors and stretching to their ends.
I live for a saxophone in a subway station squealing syncopated sadness.
I live for reflections in rocking cars, breath beating upon bombs planted in our bellies.
I live for my disembodied spine dancing in the dark to an invisible drum.
I live for church organs and choirs and stained glass thrown across my chest, broken.
I live for visions and revisions and reversing my decisions.
I live for the smell of your incense, your insensitive hands throwing me against the wall.
I live for the fucking Freemasons.
And I live for myself,
The only person who will never leave me,
Because I won't let her.
The law of their God is in their hearts.

cultivating habits

2010-12-01T07:00:00.003-05:00

She went with a friend to a chain bookstore on her lunch break. She went to buy a new book by a famous rapper, in which he writes the meanings behind some of his lyrics, like with footnotes. The book has one of Andy Warhol's Rorschach paintings on the cover, in gold metallic foil. She was waiting in line to pay, talking to her friend about Camus, because he was looking for a copy of The Stranger. She said, did you know that Bohemian Rhapsody is based on The Stranger? He said, yeah you've told me that before. She said, oh yeah. She said, what's that other book he wrote? Something about a man in a cage. And then there's the one, like The Flu or something. Not The Flu but an epidemic of some sort. The Epidemic? No. Shit. What is that book called? A man in front of her in line turned around and said, I think it's called The Plague. They both laughed. He said, but I like your title better. He walked off to pay for his book. She laughed and laughed, then bought her book about rap/poetry. On his way out the man turned around and said to her, You just made my day. She said, no sir, you made mine. They both laughed again. Then later, walking on the streets of New York, in the drizzling rain, she said: Now I will never forget the name of The Plague. She thought, I'm glad I didn't buy this book on Amazon.

we cannot always predict rough air, a short

2010-11-30T12:09:00.003-05:00

shot over america.

i will see you in the next life

2010-11-22T14:49:00.000-05:00

My love affair with Radiohead's song Motion Picture Soundtrack began in January of this year. I bought the album Kid A online and was sitting in my room on E 118, listening and writing. As soon as the song came on, I stopped what I was doing and sat straight up in my bed. I started sobbing, and sobbed and sobbed. The song struck a very real chord in me, it felt like it had actually come out of me instead of coming from outside. It haunted me for weeks.

You can hear the original version of the song here.

The song played an integral role in the writing of my first short film, Love Sand, and earlier in the fall I was asked by Melissa Broder to write a poem inspired by it for her Polestar Poetry Series. The reading is Dec. 5 at Cake Shop, and there's a possibility that Love Sand will make a real-life premiere there - I hope some of you can make it!

a love letter to st. jerome's

2010-11-18T11:11:00.003-05:00

I've never told this story on my blog, which is a massive oversight on my part. Better late than never: how I came to fall in love with St. Jerome's.

On a brilliant but oddly cool Sunday in April - it's always "oddly cool" in April in this city, it never seems normal to me - four friends and I got blitzed on bottomless mimosas at Benny's Burritos' brunch in the West Village. Then we went to a convenience store and bought Darjum Specials and walked around the city like we owned it before heading up to the High Line for a lovely stroll, then drinking (more) afternoon beverages on the Gansevoort rooftop. Two people had to make their exits, leaving Zachary, Jenny and I the sole troopers remaining to find something to do with the rest of the evening. We were still on the West side, but I suggested we go get dinner at the Sunburnt Cow, one of our favorite restaurants on the LES. So we hopped on a bus across town and got (yet more) wine and food while we talked about art and our dreams and hopes for the future.

The Sunburnt Cow, it should be said, has changed a little bit in the recent past, but it used to be staffed by only gorgeous and super-friendly Australian men. While we were drinking and eating, we decided we still weren't done with the day, and wanted to go to a bar to wrap it up. We asked our server what he recommended in the area, and he told us about an awesome bar named St. Jerome's on Rivington and Suffolk. He said, on Sunday nights they play an awesome mix of rock-and-roll and old school blues. He said, there's no sign on the door, you just have to know where it is. He said, I go there every Sunday night after work. We said, sounds amazing, before stumbling over, taking photos along the way.

Taken moments before our first trip to St. J, in a graffiti-covered alcove across Rivington.

We walked inside, and it was like a dream. It was dark and foggy. There was a disco ball spinning, and classic rock bumping on the stereo. The bar was practically deserted. I don't remember if there were any people in there aside from us and the bartender and maybe a few people sitting at the bar. The rounded seats were musty and falling apart at the seams. The walls were maroon, but everything seemed like it was in black and white. I didn't learn that the walls were maroon until later. Candles flickered on wooden tabletops. It smelled of whiskey and wood and tack on the backs of punk rock stickers. We sat down. A sign behind the bar read, $2 buds, every night until midnight. It was perfect. I had found my bar.

Before that first visit to St. Jerome's, I knew a little about Lady Gaga's pre-fame life go-go dancing and playing shows on the LES, but I didn't know any specifics. Some time after we first went there, I learned that St. Jerome's was her bar. She danced there, and she and Lady Starlight and Luc Carl and that whole gang of LES outcasts used to hang out there all the time. I couldn't (and still can't, really) believe that I learned about and fell in love with this place completely independently of any knowledge of Lady Gaga's former presence there. Some places just have energies.

Lady Gaga and Darian Darling in St. Jerome's, circa 2007.

Zachary and I in St. Jerome's, summer 2010.

Lady Gaga and Lady Starlight in St. J, circa 2007.

Zachary and I in St. J, summer 2010.

St. Jerome's is my bar, it's our bar. I haven't been in a minute, and I miss it terribly, especially now that Zac has moved to New Orleans. It just seems like our place, and it feels weird going there without him. I still love it there, and I'll drink a $2 bud anytime, but it's not the same.

Lady Gaga released her first song off her new record, "You and I," this summer. It's a love letter to her boyfriend/St. Jerome's manager Luc Carl, but I hear it, at least partially, as a love letter to St. Jerome's. I learned the chords and recorded myself singing a version of it - my love letter to St. Jerome's, a bar that materialized at a time when I was just beginning to be re-born and which has stuck with me throughout. I love you.

There's somethin, somethin about this place
Somethin about lonely nights, and my lipstick on your face...

Premiere: Love Sand

2010-11-17T14:22:00.012-05:00

On a late-night stroll through the LES en route to St. Jerome's this summer, Zachary asked me if I would write a script for our friend Haley - an actor transplanted in NYC from L.A. for the summer - that he would then shoot, direct and edit into a short film. I was sort of taken aback by his request, as I had never written a film before and had no idea how to do it. But I said yes, and asked if he had an idea of what sort of film he wanted to do. He said no, I could write whatever I wanted, no guidelines. Thrilled at the opportunity to create something without any rules, I played the phrase "no guidelines" on repeat in my head until the first scene came to me, while I was walking alone one night on Bedford in Brooklyn. The rest was largely inspired by Radiohead's song "Motion Picture Soundtrack" off their 2000 album Kid A, which had a deep impact on me during the winter months earlier this year. Love Sand was born.

We filmed it over the course of a weekend in June. It was an incredible experience. The filming fell together so beautifully and easily - we had 10 people come together and lend their talents for no pay to make it happen - that it seemed like it was meant to be. Zachary and I sound edited it on a Friday night over burgers and fries in his bedroom in Harlem. The entire thing was edited and uploaded using his four-year-old MacBook Pro. The film's budget was less than $10 - for a pack of cigarettes used in the third scene. Time is a more valuable currency than money.

I'm so excited to present Love Sand to the world now. Although the time it took to conceive and film the project is relatively small, I consider it to be the product of a year's worth of experiences. 2009 was one of the hardest years I've ever had, and I went through some things I had never been through before, and while I learned a lot, I was essentially destroyed. It's an incredible miracle to be able to take a year of my life that, at the time, seemed like it was comprised of pointless devastation, heartache and hopelessness and to have a group of super-talented people help me bundle it up into a singular work that gives validity and even beauty to those experiences. I now see 2009 for what it is, at least in part: the year that gave me Love Sand.

Sometimes things just fall into your lap and happen so easily that they seem to somehow spin your life in a new direction, and I think Love Sand might be such a thing for me. That's yet to be determined, but at the very least - the project is extremely close to my heart, and I feel proud of the finished product. Zachary put together a beautiful website for the film, and you can also watch it below or here. If you watch it on the Vimeo site, it's in HD, so you can blow it up to the size of your screen and the quality is the same. Pretty amazing!

Love Sand from LBO Productions on Vimeo.

A big thanks to everyone involved and especially to Zachary for doing so much work on the film, and for asking me to write it in the first place, for having faith in my words. And thanks also to anyone who takes the time to watch it - your thoughts and ideas are more than welcome.

I will see you in the next life...

a little bit man, a little bit

2010-11-16T18:25:00.000-05:00

This summer I told photog friend Jenny I wanted to get dressed like a man and have her shoot photos of me. She obliged, with Zachary art directing and lending boy clothes. The transformation shots ended up being some of her favorites.

Click on it to see it larger. My breasts were not all too happy to be taped down.

inside the franco: a dirty tale set on the nyc subway platform

2010-11-12T10:33:00.000-05:00

I thought I just saw James Franco on the subway platform. I imagined James Franco boarding my car and me saying to him, you're James Franco, and him saying, yes. And me telling James Franco I was coming to see him tomorrow night, I had a ticket. And James Franco asking me what I was doing today and me saying, going to work. Him asking me where I work and me telling him. James Franco asking me to play hooky. Cut to us sitting in a diner, drinking coffee across a table. Him telling me, this isn't about sex, and me saying, right because you have a girlfriend. Him saying, no because I'm gay.

when thanks are in order

2010-11-11T10:56:00.002-05:00

Today is Veterans' Day. I think it's so important to take some time out to show gratitude to the people who have made so many sacrifices for the everyday freedoms we often take for granted. My dad is in the military, and has been my whole life, so I know firsthand even the smallest sacrifices armed service people and their families make in the name of serving our country. Say what you will about the wars we involve ourselves in and the politics of war - I've said them too, much to my father's chagrin - but there's no denying that as a woman, I can freely sit where I'm sitting and do the things I'm doing and write what I want to write thanks to the people who gave life and limb because they believed and had faith in something.

So, in this week's The Local Voice, I show my slice of gratitude by dedicating my column to all the veterans who have served our country. Thank you so, so much.

daylight savings account

2010-11-08T09:37:00.002-05:00

I know we've only won an hour,
But it feels like twenty, more,
Plenty.
The time fairy
Has dropped it off in the night,
Deposited it in a bag made of dreams.

How many hours I've spent
Pondering your eyes behind glass -
They remind me of childhood,
Like how the yellow bumps
Of a New York subway platform
Press into my soles,
Resurrecting an era of baths
In a stranger's house.

HLLWN 2010

2010-10-21T09:51:00.000-04:00

scenes from a waffle house

2010-10-19T10:36:00.004-04:00

I see you in the light of the table lamp, switched off.
Sprawled on your back, chest to the sky, arms open,
I am filled with a sudden rising anxiety that you might take off,
A vessel in flight over swelling waters.

I crawl to you like a fish sprouting legs,
Evolution guiding my fingers over land,
Skin and bones and meat and heartbeat shocking my tendons.
One nail in front of another other other,
No longer starved, they simply linger.

You stir,
Dancing shadows across your face,
Watching me from behind your lids,
Fashioning your limbs into a trap -
I volunteer myself, a nubile victim,
In your sleeping ear: "Tie me up."

We stir,
Coffee and cream across a lacquered table.
Your wheels are up.
In one motion you slide from your seat to share mine,
And in my pouring ear: "With you, silence is not so bad."

Browned on the griddle,
Smothered,
Covered,
I'm done.

My name is Weezy but I ain't asthmatic

2010-10-15T10:09:00.000-04:00

So I've got a guest post up today over on Una's blog, The Sassy Curmudgeon. I wrote about my recent STD testing (serious) and how it interwove nicely with the release of a Weezy song named after an STD (not as serious). Hope you like.

On that same note, my coworker/friend recently pointed out to me a massive oversight on my part. Weezy and the predator look just alike!!!! How have I never seen this? Really, y'all. Really.

when discussing lunch

2010-10-11T12:04:00.002-04:00

A strawberry and a honeydew were in love and wanted to get married but none of their friends or family were supportive so the strawberry suggested eloping and the honeydew said, "We cantaloupe! They'd think we were bananas!"

love is a lemon now-and-later

2010-10-06T10:13:00.001-04:00

She is thinking about him a lot lately. Waiting for December, wondering again what it will bring, wondering why that month in particular always holds this magical promise for her. Last December she wanted to kill herself. She thinks this one will be better.

Wondering if she will be less pretty or prettier than he remembers, and if his body will feel different under her hands. If they will fall in love or start anew in January. If he will have an apartment full of Bibles and other books she's never read, movies she'd never watch on her own. Wondering if that matters.

She asks, what is love? Is it the way someone makes you feel when he walks through the room where you're sitting on a couch twisting your hair? Is it knowing what he means when he says he's never been much of a poet? Or knowing and not caring if the only writing he's done is your digital exchange. If he's graduated from college, or not. What the fuck is love? It's making her angry, this debate of deserts. She considers that maybe these things keep us from love, not help us find it.

There's this song she likes that always reminds her of him. It goes if you're partial to the night sky, if you're vaguely attracted to rooftops. It's fast and light and bubbly and there is this line in it about martinis and then a line about lemon Now-and-Laters. She thinks, that's what love is. A lemon Now-and-Later. Sour, sweet, timeless. There's no reason this song should remind her of him. She's known him only two days and there was no music. It's a song someone else would have put on a mixtape for her two years ago, but that's not why she likes it.

She'll know she loves him if he tells her a story while they are naked in bed together and it doesn't seem long but she wishes it was.

in the dark of fall

2010-10-05T09:57:00.003-04:00

I've seen three movies in the past five days. There's something about fall this year - the way it's pouring onto the city in wet puddles and cold winds, instead of spreading from the top down with leaves red, then orange, then yellow - that's making me want to sit inside in the dark and hunt for inspiration on a screen. I've not been disappointed so far. I saw The Social Network Friday night, the day it opened, and the theater was totally packed. Then yesterday Stephen Elliott, increasingly becoming my favorite contemporary writer, wrote about the film in his daily Rumpus e-mail. He talked about what touched me most about the film - whether or not Mark Zuckerberg is tragic, or an asshole, or neither. I wrote him back, which I do a lot, and he asked me if he could post my response to The Rumpus. I was thrilled. I said yes.

Last night I saw Howl and Never Let Me Go. Never Let Me Go was beautiful but ultimately bleak and it made me want to be in love. I liked Howl, mostly for the scenes depicting Allen Ginsberg's interviews with the Paris Review, which you can read here. He talked a lot about his writing process, and a few things stood out to me as a prophecy for my own experiences with writing. Here's a snippet from that interview, and my response below.

"Usually during the composition, step by step, word by word and adjective by adjective, if it’s at all spontaneous, I don’t know whether it even makes sense sometimes. Sometimes I do know it makes complete sense, and I start crying. Because I realize I’m hitting some area which is absolutely true. And in that sense applicable universally, or understandable universally. In that sense able to survive through time—in that sense to be read by somebody and wept to, maybe, centuries later. In that sense prophecy, because it touches a common key . . . What prophecy actually is is ... that you know and feel something that somebody knows and feels in a hundred years. And maybe articulate it in a hint—a concrete way that they can pick up on in a hundred years." -- Allen Ginsberg

When Allen Ginsberg first read Howl at a bar in California in 1955, he was 29 years old and unpublished. I find that comforting.

I think if people have great things inside of them that are meant to be shared with the world, they will be shared. God doesn't operate on human timeframes. It's quite the opposite. Ideas will emerge in their own time. Before he wrote Howl, Allen spent eight months in a psychiatric hospital trying to '"rid" himself of his homosexuality. I think he was around 21 years old at the time. Do you think he wrote during those eight months? I don't know, but it seems unlikely. I wonder if he tortured himself about not writing. That seems more likely, but still improbable. I imagine it's hard to find time for either writing or self-injury when everyone around you is getting shocked with electricity and lobotomized. The act of brushing one's teeth becomes one's poetry.

Allen shared Howl with the world when he was 29, and I find that comforting. Self-injury is mostly just a waste of time. At my most self-injurious, I never really produced a piece of work I felt proud of. Mostly I just laid around and cried and struggled to find words to describe what I was experiencing and ended up submitting myself to my wallowing. But when I've found my path again, which by the presence of God I've always found a way to do, I've felt invigorated and filled with words. Even if on that path lied sadness or fear or grief, I could find the words for it. Spending a night watching television is better for one's poetry than spending a night hating oneself for wanting to watch television. God is, for the most part, very forgiving about television-watching.

If you were born to express something, do not be afraid. It will be expressed. Just keep writing, or whatever it is that you do. God will carry the rest.

And if you were not born to express something, also: do not be afraid. That too will be revealed in time. You can still lead a happy life and love and make the world better by living through your heart.

It's all useful.

guest post for a rainy day

2010-10-04T11:01:00.002-04:00

George Wallace, a friend of mine and talented poet responsible for organizing a lot of the readings I've been to in the city, e-mailed me a poem this morning. He maintains PoetryBay.com as well as the Long Island Quarterly. The weather in Manhattan is rainy and cold and dreary today and it has been for a week and it's going to be for a week more. I've been feeling hints of depression and lack of inspiration, my insides mimicking my outsides. I haven't written a decent poem in weeks. But I really liked his so I wanted to share it with everyone. Sometimes things just happen and the reasons escape us and we go to bed and we wake up with headaches and we take the train to work and we don't know how any of it was possible before coffee.

biggie smalls is rapping on the radio

biggie smalls is rapping on
the radio -- biggie smalls
that’s his name – his
name's wallace too –
that’s right wallace like me
christopher george latore
wallace -- but everyone

calls him notorious

B.I.G. & he's got a　

cousin named Lil

Deceased or something

close to that -- which

& i know it's a little

obvious but I like

that name too & I

like how biggie spits

out his words -- drawls

them out -- a brooklyn

kind of loose easy action

he spits out his words

like broken teeth or

pieces of cement

& i like how

he tells a story

i mean not in the

usual way -- o & by

the way biggie smalls

is dead – shot four
times in the chest
in southern cal

in ‘97 -- that’s

thirteen years
ago -- it’s a
shame --
it’s a
mystery --
like wikipedia
says the murderer
was never
found –
o & by the
way last week
a college kid
jumped off
the gw bridge –
he was gay he was
from new jersey & his
roommates played
a trick on him &
now he’s dead –
people jump off
bridges a lot -- never
make a splash
-- but this one
makes a
splash &
the world
sits up from
its big stew
of nothingness
& says something
-- & now everyone’s
saying something even
ellen degeneres who cried
about it on national tv – every

body has an opinion & for

chrisssake the college kid

had a name -- tyler clementi

– nothing big nothing
notorious -- just tyler
& nothing’s ever going
to change in this world –

christopher george latore

wallace was just trying to

make some money for his

daughters -- tyler clementi
was just trying to find some
love – & me I’m trying to
make out the words
to this song –　 there’s
words for everything –
this world’s a big stewpot
of words – this world’s

a big mystery　 – this world

sits up & then it lies back

down again in its big

stew of nothingness &

dreams -- who killed biggie –

who killed tyler clementi --

murderers never get

caught -- ‘if you

don’t know,
now you know,
biggie’

blogger's block, other things

2010-10-01T10:17:00.001-04:00

I've been really busy recently, with a friend in town for a week, dealing with my ear infection and subsequent antibiotic-induced illness, and trying to combat a depressive writer's slump commonly known as "block." I've just been feeling sort of uninspired, like I'm not sure where to focus my energy. What I have been doing: reading a lot and writing a lot for work.

I wrote the culture page for Gotham's October issue, which drops today. Our cover star is Jon Hamm (Don Draper FTW) and I interviewed Galt Niederhoffer, one of the screenwriters for Prozac Nation and more recently the author of the novel The Romantics, about the film coming out based on her book. You can see the page here.

My latest column in The Local Voice talks a bit about my recent brief visit to an NYC emergency room, unwanted touching from strangers on subways, and the mystery of being a human being. You know, the usual stuff you talk about with people while The Price Is Right plays in the background.

PS, Happy October everyone! My favorite time of year is soon approaching. Scarves and coffees and boots FTW.

Free shoe day Friday

2010-09-17T15:51:00.005-04:00

Working at a magazine def has its perks. Today, I got an IM from my managing editor. It went something like this.

Ed: What size shoe do you wear?
Me: haha, ummmmm.... 7/7.5. y?
Ed: Yay!!! You win!

She proceeded to bring a Sam Edelman box to my desk, which I opened to reveal these:

Shoes were always my big thing before I moved to New York. I was obsessed with them. Heels, platforms, stilettos, boots. I loved them all and wanted them all. Then I moved to New York and had to walk everywhere and was basically like FTN fuck that noise.

Today brought a nice reminder that I still, in fact, fucking love shoes. These are perfect. They are sparkly, they are black and they are flat. I can wear them in the city without wanting to kill someone, so that is good. And they were FREE. Thanks, universe.

It couldn't have come on a better day, because I found out today that I have a fucking EAR INFECTION. All caps attack necessary. Am I five years old??? On top of that, I'm on my period, so yay TMI Friday this morning I basically felt like a snotified zombie lady with intent to kill.

But my new sparkly shoes made me feel better. Happy Friday everyone!

PS, I interviewed the guys who made the Facebook film CATFISH that everyone is talking about. My story is here. I encourage everyone to see it - it's shocking and thought-provoking, especially for those of us who belong to the Internet Generation. Ahem, that means you.

standing and walking and wandering

2010-09-15T10:01:00.002-04:00

When you stand on a street corner in New York with your eyes closed, you really feel the wind. It’s scary. When I was a teenager, I remember thinking to myself on the way home from a late night out somewhere that I knew the road so well I could drive it with my eyes shut. I closed them with my hands on the wheel and made it three seconds before I opened them again and thought about how stupid that was.

Testing blindness on a street corner is sort of the same. First, you know there are people all around you. You assume, at best, that everyone is looking at you, thinking you are crazy. You hope, at worst, that no one will attack you or steal your purse while you are defenseless. It goes against your every instinct to stand there still, listening and feeling and smelling but not seeing. Like lying down in the middle of the jungle, trying to sleep in a den of tigers.

Walking from my building to the train after work, I pass a disabled black man in a wheelchair. He is sitting with one wheel against the scaffolding that surrounds my building, not moving. He has his headphones in, and I follow the cord with my eyes as I walk: past his long arms, which are curved in places they aren’t supposed to be, and his hands, which are curved everywhere, to the end of the cord plugged into his cell phone. Then I see the phone fall to the ground, as if I had willed it there with my mind. It clatters.

I walk on, but I turn my head back. I see him struggling. He can’t seem to bend down at just the right angle. His phone has fallen slightly under his chair, and it is hard for him to reach it. I stop walking. I wonder if I should offer to help him. I wonder if it is safe and then I wonder if I might offend him. I watch for a few seconds longer to see if he picks it up himself. He doesn’t. I start walking back toward him.

I approach him from behind, watching him curl over and lurch for the phone in an awkward motion. I peek my head cautiously into his line of sight, and say, "Do you need me to help you?" He looks up at me just as his hand finally wraps around the phone and he retrieves it from the ground. "No, I got it," he says. The words are not articulate but I can make them out. His face is half-paralyzed, but he smiles at me. I can make it out.

A dear friend of mine recently told me he felt like he didn't know who I was anymore. It made me think. I thought about the changes I've gone through over the past year, all the pain and the fear and the joy and the anxiety and the loneliness of growing into a woman and finding myself as an artist. I thought of who I was a year ago today, and confessed to myself that I could not say with certainty, "I am the same person, at my core," which is what people say in these conversations. It's a gut response. My gut wouldn't let me say it. My core had been shaken so deeply, in ways good and bad, that I barely even recognized the old me. Like a friend I used to know but who moved far away and forgot to call on my birthday.

The man in the wheelchair smiled at me, and I realized something. I will always be moved by the beauty of tragedy and struggle and humanity. I will always try to help someone who needs it, if I think I can. I feel and do these things not because of some moral code stamped into me like a seal pressed into molten wax, and not because I thrive on the pleasure of knowing I did something good for someone else - but because those feelings and actions are who I am. They are not my core, not just a part, but the whole. They are me. Everything else is just wandering.

The man in the wheelchair smiled at me, a reminder that people are strong even when they seem weak. Simply moving forward in time is an accomplishment, and I am thankful for the opportunity I’ve had to wander.

early morning saturday

2010-09-11T10:09:00.000-04:00

I'm up on Saturday at 8 a.m.
It feels like never.
I am not in New York,
I am in some other place where people drive cars
And use radio dials, switching from lane to lane,
Parallel parking in front of their houses
And pressing buttons to lock their vehicles.
They actually use their phones as phones.

Last night someone tried to charge me $13 for a vodka
and I laughed in her face.
I'm snooty about being poor -
That's the only way to be about it.
I watched my friend dance on her own,
And a strange drunk man came up and wrapped his arms around her waist.
She slinked away and I remembered
That some men play games with women's bodies
Like boys with their marbles.

I stood, drinkless and motionless,
Remembering when I used to call this fun:
Standing in five-inch platform heels, wax in hair
And gloss on lips,
Feeling pretty and famous.
Now I just felt like an outcast,
And it was a long walk home,
And the balls of my feet felt like sandpaper soles.

We went into town this morning,
Bright and early in a red car,
The most gorgeous fall day
Blowing through rolled down windows,
Reminding me of the parts of my old self
I want to keep around forever.

if you must speak, please don't

2010-09-10T10:26:00.005-04:00

Nothing tries to spoil a beautiful early morning in Manhattan like a woman yelling on the 6 train. She takes a seat beside me, her face pointed up toward her standing colleague, her mouth broadcasting something about work and funds and projects. She flips through her manilla folder filled with papers.

I am trying to read A Moveable Feast. Hemingway named it that because he considered Paris itself to be a moveable feast, an experience a man keeps with him his entire life. But I think it just shows his genius because the book itself is a moveable feast. It is a treasure I carry around in my bag with transportive properties beyond my grasp. My copy is old and worn, with notes inside from a previous owner’s trip to Germany. There are train directions, and something about the Museum of Modern Art. It is a tiny book, and it fits perfectly in my hands.

I'm still early in the book. I just got to the scene where Hemingway discovers this woman who runs a library out of her house. He is poor and doesn't have enough money to pay the membership fee, but she lets him take as many books as he wants anyway. He is touched by her kindness and goes home to tell his wife about what he has found. They have a simple conversation about their evening plans and she says to him, "And we'll never love anyone else but each other." And he says, "No. Never." She asks him how his writing went earlier in the day and he says he thinks it went all right. I think simply, this is the type of love I want.

But the woman is still yelling. I have put my earbuds in and am listening to Philip Glass at near-full volume and I can still hear her. Not even God drowns her out. I look over and see her papers with designs on them for a presentation. Her colleague has a brown leather briefcase. They are both professors. I hear them say words like "dean," "school," "courseload." It's not just her proximity or my countenance that makes her seem loud. She is actually just very, very loud. She seems to have forgotten the most basic lesson children learn: the value of quiet.

I read the same page over and over, but I'm not actually reading. Her voice is a barrier to the deepest part of my brain where literature belongs. Not wanting to do wrong by Hemingway, I close my book. I close my eyes. I paint a picture in my mind of the man I will one day love and the walks we will take along our version of the Seine. I let Philip's repetitive piano strokes fill my mind and serve as the soundtrack for barefoot dances along water's edge.

I open my eyes and see that my stop has arrived. I put my book back in my bag. I adjust my headphones and exit.

I realize it's been a few minutes since I heard her voice.

Once outside, I see that the morning is beautiful.

I hung out with Big Boi on his tour bus

2010-09-08T14:20:00.004-04:00

About a month ago I found out that Outkast's Big Boi was coming to Brooklyn Bowl as a part of his national tour in support of his incredible, groundbreaking, motherfucking epic album Sir Luscious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty. After I finished having a fit of pure joy, I decided to pitch a concert review to my online editor at Gotham. She accepted.

I went to the show and Jenny came along as my photographer. The show was incredible. Life-changing, even. Afterward, I found myself sitting on Big's tour bus, talking to him about life, God and Hemingway. Please read the story here, let me know your thoughts and spread it around if you deem it worthy. I've never written a concert review before, so I really wanna know what everyone has to say.

I wanted to say here what I left out of the story: Big Boi (real name: Antwan Patton) is an amazing human being. When I got on the bus and walked in on him sitting near his wife and son, I felt like I was being welcomed into his living room - which I'm confident had everything to do with his Southern roots. He was kind and gracious and completely down-to-Earth. He shook my hand and laughed and smiled with me. His positive energy was tangible, and I was completely floored and humbled by the kindness of everyone on his team. I sat next to arguably the most innovative rapper alive and he treated me like an equal. I will never forget it.

What follows is the most epic photo of me that has ever been taken. I'm hoping for more to follow.

PS, here's the New York Times review. The videographers there interviewed Big right before I did, though the video itself is MIA.

PPS, If 17-year-old Meghan could see this, she would squeal louder than all the speakers in her Camry bumping Speakerboxx.

as of late

2010-09-02T11:28:00.000-04:00

I've been really busy as of late, which is really just another way of saying I have re-prioritized as of late. I am writing columns for The Local Voice (the latest is here, and I encourage you to download the whole newspaper here). I am writing more and more about culture, mostly music, at my job (here, here and here), with some more exciting things coming up.

Also on my list of priorities, this:

When I was a little girl, this was my favorite song. One of my most vivid childhood memories is of bursting through the little plastic shutters on this little plastic playhouse in my kindergarten classroom, singing this song at what I believed to be full volume. I didn't have a lisp, and I'm confident that I wasn't anywhere near this adorable, but obviously her performance reminds me of that day.

If you watch this and don't 1. bawl your eyes out, 2. squeal and cover your mouth in delight or 3. tell someone you love them, then you should probably seek spiritual guidance because you are an empty shell of a person. Also, I realize I am two years late on this, but it doesn't matter because it is timeless.

All children are artists.

maybe i should submit something to the new yorker

2010-08-26T15:13:00.005-04:00

I have a subscription to The New Yorker because one day I got a letter in the mail at work offering me a really cheap deal for being a member of the "media." I was like hell yes and sent in my reply card, eagerly awaiting my first copy. I killed my subway transit hours by reading New York until the day The Hallowed Book hit my desk.

That was last winter. It is now creeping up on Fall, and I have a stack of New Yorkers on my desk. I have a weekly ritual. When I get the week's issue, I immediately open to the table of contents. I find where the poems are, and I read them. I ponder them. I read the mini-biographies of the poets in the front of the book. I debate whether or not to just-for-the-hell-of-it open an e-mail to the poetry editor, free-write some poetic prose in less than five minutes (a la Miss Hannah Miet) and click send. I decide not to. Then I add the New Yorker to the stack of other New Yorkers, a nice little family of New Yorkers taking up residence in my office. I never touch them again.

This week, as usual, there are two poems in The New Yorker. Here is one of them, replicated in its entirety.

ON THE INEVITABLE DECLINE INTO MEDIOCRITY OF THE POPULAR MUSICIAN WHO ATTAINS A COMFORTABLE MIDDLE AGE

O Sting, where is thy death?

-- David Musgrave

While I'm thinking about what poetry is and if I consider OTIDIMOTPMWAACMA to be whatever poetry might be, I get an e-mail. It just says, "Hi sweetheart, how are you today?" My heart stops and starts up again. I am reminded that, sometimes, one line is poetry.

Gmail --> Compose --> Paul Muldoon @ New Yorker --> Subject line --> Poetry Submission --> Email body -->

ON THE INEVITABLE DECLINE INTO MEDIOCRITY OF THE POPULAR WRITER WHO ATTAINS A COMFORTABLE MIDDLE AGE

The fuck?

-- Meghan Blalock

Dunkin' Sonnets

2010-08-25T07:00:00.003-04:00

Sadly, thanks to my travels in August totally kicking my ass, I am now addicted to coffee. For the past couple weeks I've gotten a cup of Dunkin' everyday at work - and I thought I might as well make something good out of a caffeine addiction, yeah?

This is just the first line of what I hope will become a sonnet. Yeahhhhhh I know it's almostbutnotquite iambic pentameter, but whatevz. I blame the fact that I was still near the top of the cup when I did this. I'll continue the sonnet one post a week, or more often if I feel like it. There's no shortage of coffee cups to choose from.

i love you already, from afar

all the sweetest winds

2010-08-19T14:47:00.000-04:00

Inspired by my recent trip to Mississippi, I reached out to the folks at The Local Voice, Oxford's alternative newspaper, and pitched a column to them. They liked the idea, and agreed to let me wax poetic about my nostalgia, longing and introspective thoughts about the South - all from the comfort of my crowded commute on the NYC subway.

You can read my first column, Somewhere In Between, here and download it here.

It feels good to be back, if only sort of halfway.

young women blossom upward

2010-08-17T10:58:00.001-04:00

I.

And the great cities, Lord, what are they?
Places disintegrating and abandoned.
The city I know resembles animals fleeing from a fire.
The shelter it gave has no shelter now,
and the age of the cities is nearly over.

Men and women live there, stunned, thinned out,
in darkened rooms, afraid of any human gesture,
more fearful than a heard of yearling steers.
Your earth opens its eyes and breathes,
but they are no longer aware of the breathing.

A child lives its growing years at a windowsill.
The shadow makes the same angle there each day.
It doesn't realize that there are wild roses calling
to a day of open places, gaiety and wind.
It has to be a child and becomes a sad child.

And young women blossom upward toward the unknown
and feel a longing for the peace of childhood;
what they are burning for, however, is not in the world
and their body trembles as they close themselves once more.
And the disappointed years of being a mother
go by in apartments out of the light.
Night after night they have no will and weep,
cold years go by with no power and no real battle.
The deathbed waits in a still darker room,
and they wish themselves slowly slowly into it,
and they take a long time to die, as if in chains,
and die still dependent on others, as beggars are.

- Rainer Maria Rilke, Paris, 1900

II.

I awoke with a start in the middle of the night to the sound of a child screaming.
My blood curdled -
This was not a scream of hunger or fatigue,
But the sort of terror that might only exist on the streets of war
During a suicide bomb,
Or in the black alleys of Harlem at two in the morning.

I got up and peeked through the blinds on the back of my building.
I thought I saw a person crouching sinisterly in the darkness of my neighbor's garden,
But the person did not move, and
I decided it was just a bush.
I saw nothing,
But I walked to my bedroom door and locked it anyway,
For the screams were gone but their aftermath lingered,
And frightened me to the marrow.

I want to move to a big house in the middle of the country,
Where I can look out from the frame of my front door
And see nothing
But land and trees and sky for miles.

It would be quiet there.
And I could write and be connected to the earth
And I could play music.

It would be nice to be near a town,
So I could gather with other artists and feel a sense of community,
A common purpose.

I want to travel the world.
And then I want to live free in the open air and the sunlight and the rain.

I want to make love on our porch.
I will look to the sky and say, "Do you hear that?"
And you will say, "What?"
And I will say, "There's a storm rollin' in."
And you will say:
"Drown it out."

the internet is making us all worse artists

2010-08-11T10:02:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I read the comments on other people's writing,
Poring over twisty noodles mixed with olive oil and parmesan cheese (the cheap kind),
Mixed with turkey sausage and sauteed pears (I ran out of onions),
And I say aloud,
"Fuck them. I'm not like that. And I shouldn't try to be."

I know I'm right,
But it's the same fucking people (or bots, or what have you) who make me upset
When they don't comment on my writing.

Everyday, everyday,
I tell myself it takes years to complete a masterpiece,
Then I google how long it took Picasso to paint Guernica:
One month.

One month.
My ears are popping.
One month.
Fuck the Internet.

Schmom B. Says: Probs.

2010-08-05T12:33:00.001-04:00

leaving for lollapalooza (aka gagapalooza) today, i have only one word for you, c/o Schmom B.

off to a field in chicago for three days to jump around and hopefully dance in the rain and maybe rub mud on my body. probs. bai.

treefingers

2010-08-04T07:00:00.002-04:00

On the upstairs platform at 14th street, I see a man with a book in his bag called

How To Be An Existentialist.
I laugh out loud at his silliness.

Downstairs at 14th street, a man in monk robes comes up to me and offers me a book on yoga,
asking for change in return.

I give him a handful of coins.

I open the book and a card falls out with a chant on it. It instructs me to repeat the chant to make my life sublime, and it guarantees satisfaction.

I laugh out loud at its silliness.

harlem sundown

2010-08-02T14:39:00.002-04:00

I wrote this as an e-mail response to brilliant writer Stephen Elliott's Sunday daily Rumpus e-mail, in which he post-scripted, "Where are you? What are you thinking about?"

I am in East Harlem, sitting in my apartment on the third floor, listening to two hipster girls move into the apartment on the second floor where my best friend of three years used to live but which he vacated two days ago to move to New Orleans. They are blasting Indie rock music that I don't recognize, and the lead singer is a girl.

I am thinking about love, and how real it is versus how fake it is. I am thinking of the e-mail I got last night from a sailor I met when he was in New York for fleet week. I've never openly said I'm in love with him, but I know I am, or I was, in some way or another. I used to believe in the innate power of those words, saying you love someone, or that you're in love with someone. I used to see them, without knowing it, as a sort of death sentence - like when you say it aloud to someone, or even just to yourself, your life as you know it is over, and you've committed yourself to a forever feeling. It used to give me panic attacks. I don't believe that anymore. I know now that love has so many variants, an infinite number, and that the way I was in love with my first boyfriend when I was 15 will always be a unique experience, versus the way I'm in love with my sailor, versus the way I'm in love with the ice cream I had for lunch today, versus the way I'm in love with the nights I spent dancing in my friend's downstairs apartment that now belongs to someone else. The only thing they all have in common is that they are temporary.

Anyway, my sailor is a little younger than me and he is floating in the middle of the ocean in a location he will not disclose to me, and in this e-mail he told me how he used to have a problem, here undisclosed, and how he had to drop out of college because of it and how he joined the military to help him get over it. When I read it, I thought of how we all have or have had problems, haven't we, and I thought of how I had shared with him recently the heartbreak I went through over the past year as the result of my problem with a man. My sailor said, "Keep your head up and your eyes open, and good things will happen, I promise." Men have always promised me all kinds of things, and not a single one has kept a single promise. This time I believe him because this particular promise is his, but it's up to me to keep it. Or maybe I just believe him because I want to. Maybe promises are equivalent to hopes - images of things that don't actually exist, just figments of our imaginations, yet the most necessary parts of life.

I am thinking about how I have this habit of keeping the men in my life at bay. For years I've only seriously dated guys long-distance, and more recently I've really only hooked up with guys outside of New York, or guys from outside of New York, like my sailor. My downstairs best friend used to get on to me for this, saying I was afraid of a real relationship that would require a daily commitment: seeing the same person every day or every other day or every couple of days, scheduling my life around this person. I used to disagree with him, assuring him it was just a matter of happenstance that all my serious relationships were long-distance.

But now I know he was right, he is right. I am scared shitless. Not of commitment, not of intimacy, not of waking up beside the same person every single day forever. I want all that shit more than I can say. But right now, I wake up from dreams with song lyrics and poetry in my head, and I roll over and grab my phone so I can record myself singing them, or I write them down in my notebook. But if I woke up beside my sailor, I would roll over and graze the back of his neck with my lips, and he would stir and roll over to kiss me, and I would forget my dreams and I would write nothing down because my hands would be full of man. This scares me shitless. A fruitless life of nothing but sex and love and passion and babies and white picket fences and blue eyes and dimples.

I just know I would wake up at 40, 50 years old, and ask myself what I'd given the world, how I'd changed anyone's life, and the answer would be that I had not given or changed anything, because I lost myself in this painful sort of love for another person, because it's easy to want, and it's easy to create, at least compared with art. And then I would down an entire bottle of anti-depressants and some whiskey and some pain relievers and my sailor would find me on the floor of the bathroom with a note by my head that reads, "I failed. I love you."

So yeah. I'm scared shitless of that. And this is why I'd rather, for now, have a figment love with a man I barely know on a boat I've never seen than have a real relationship with a man in the present space. And this is what I'm thinking about today, as I sit in East Harlem, in my little chair, in my little apartment, in my little world.

when we get crazy, it just ain't right

2010-07-30T14:20:00.001-04:00

Last night I saw Chromeo - who you might remember, I am mildly obsessed with - play at the Bowery Ballroom. It was a super fun show and watching Dave 1 perform live just cemented my love for him, for several reasons, which I will now detail.

1. He is awkward. Like, this man is not cool. He seems cool, because he dresses really well and he plays guitar and he writes music. But he is not cool. He sort of bumbled around awkwardly on the stage, and didn't seem entirely comfortable performing. Not in a bad way - more in a "I know I'm not cool but all these people think I'm so cool" kind of way.
2. You can tell he just fucking loves what he is doing. He was grinning like a goof ball the entire show.
3. He is so. fucking. cute.
4. They played a cover of The Eagles' "I Can't Tell You Why," and I just about fell over when he strummed those first five notes on his guitar, because I knew immediately what it was. I grew up on this shit. My mom has the Hell Freezes Over live album, which is a recording of the first concert The Eagles did after they "broke up" (or not, or whatever) 16 years prior. My parents owned (and still own) a giant speaker system that they keep in the living room, and I can remember listening to that album basically on repeat on Saturdays while my mom cleaned the house, and I pretended to help. Also, in the car. We listened to it non-stop in the car. It's so interesting to listen to a live recording of music before the studio recorded version, because the live version becomes your understanding of what that music is. I'm actually not sure I've ever even heard the studio version of this song. It seems appropriate that 15 years later I would hear it played live, for real, by the man I may or may not be in love with.

In conclusion, I am probably insane. And I have decided that I will marry Dave 1, and if I do not marry him, I will become him.

Badass.

hipster hymnal

2010-07-28T13:06:00.002-04:00

Apparently God is on Facebook. If I friend him, will he friend me back? When I post this blog post to my status post, will he "like" it? These are the questions I ask myself as I fall asleep.

Last night was part two of Zac's going away party, part one being a total shit show at St. Jerome's on Rivington where Luc Carl served us beers and I pondered how he used to fuck (and apparently maybe still does?!!) Lady Gaga before she was Lady Gaga. I don't even know if I've written about it here, but he is moving to New Orleans. Zac, not Luc Carl. Just for a bit is the plan and unlike most people his just for a bit usually means just for a bit. Not like when people say, I hate this job, but I'm gonna stay here just for a bit until I find something better, and then they work there until they're 60 and they retire and suddenly they wonder where their lives went and then they die of cancer or a heart attack or something caused by sitting at a desk for forty years while they were getting ready to quit to find something better. No, not like that. Just for a bit, then it's off with the winds.

Last night, Jenny showed us an amazing film she made about our friends and our lives in New York. I teared up once and stayed teared up for a few minutes. Then I laughed and felt OK, but just OK, and today I have an OK hangover, which is sort of worse than a whiskey hangover. When you're reading a book, finishing a chapter isn't nearly as painful as finishing the book itself. When you finish a chapter, it's on to the next one, but when you finish the book you put it down and just cry cry cry because now that book is gone forever and you can never see it again the way you saw it the first time you read it. At least that's what I do. I read books slowly.

Last night, I played guitar in front of people for the first time ever outside of my guitar class. I played guitar by myself in front of people for the first time ever. I was scared shitless, and it was only 7 people, my friends sitting in my apartment on my floor listening to my voice. It's possible that I have never been that scared in my entire life. Turns out, playing guitar in front of people is absolutely nothing like playing guitar alone in one's bedroom. You have to deal with a lot of things that just aren't concerns when you're alone in your bedroom. I was emotional, and I was nervous, and I was a little drunk and tired, so I forgot lyrics and I flubbed up chords. But two months after the very first time I picked up a guitar, I played a whole song, and I sang, and everyone applauded and told me I did a good job. I felt bad that I messed up so much, but I was touched by everyone's support. I thought about how I could have done better, then realized I didn't remember a damn thing I had done, right or wrong. The only thing to do better is to keep playing guitar.

Last night, after everyone left, I watched Zac and Jenny re-enact a scene from that movie Salt with Angelina Jolie, which I haven't seen, in his almost but not quite empty bedroom. They were upside-down and sideways and their hands were in the air and tied behind their backs with invisible chains. They described a couple scenes in which Angelina's character kills the bad guys, and they laughed and I thought about violence in films. How sometimes, and perhaps more often than not, we suspend reality so that we can feel a certain way, because we want to feel that way, because we need to feel that way.

Like sometimes on my way to work I stop at the bodega on the corner right outside the 6 stop at 103rd street, to get a juice or a coffee or a water pumped with vitamins. Each time I go in, I do a delicate dance with the gaggle of folks gathered at the counter using their pennies to scratch off their cards promising them the opportunity to win their millions. They suspend everything about reality to focus on this one little hope, some double digits strewn across perforated cardboard, nothing but ink on cardboard, but it's everything to them. Most of them will never win, and they know it. They have to know it, somewhere. I fish a dollar out of my wallet to pay for my drink. A dollar a drink, a dollar a dream.

Sometimes long songs seem short, and sometimes short songs seem really long. I haven't decided which is better. I guess it depends on how we want to feel, how we need to feel, what we are willing to suspend on that particular day in that particular moment. My pause and play buttons for suspension, and I suppose thereby for reality, aren't working very well recently.

They're worn out.

now i lay me down to sleep

2010-07-26T09:51:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I have this fever dream.

I walk around the edges of my room,

Tracing my fingertips along the walls,

Pretending they’re your body.

That way,

I would always be surrounded by you,

And I could sleep inside of you.

You would protect me from rain and snow and sleet,

And you would always keep the light on for me,

If I feared the darkness.

You’d have a doorway,

And I could leave whenever I wanted,

But I’d always know you’d be there when I came back.

You’d hold onto all my things for me,

My whole world inside of you,

And that’s where I’d want it to be.

That’s where I want it to be,

Because sometimes I read you’re welcome as thank you,

And sometimes I feel my weight pulled onto the Earth when I’d like to fly into the planets.

Because sometimes I stumble through the roses you send,

I lay them out to dry and then I tack them to my walls.

I hope you don’t mind.

unipulse

2010-07-23T11:11:00.000-04:00

Seeing a girl snort coke out of her purse at the LCD show made me wonder

How much art is made

To keep the drugged masses at bay

We are a drugged culture. We live in a culture of alcohol. It's considered normal. I've seen more people lose themselves in an alcoholic oblivion than I care to count. I like nights like tonight when I get high off music, thumping bass pulsing under my toes and through my veins and into my brain. Synapses firing and starting up again, refusing the trespass of fatigue. I don't feel tired when I dance. I felt like I could go on all night, except my feet hurt. But I could just remove my shoes and keep going. When music moves me, it makes me move. A bass drop is a vitamin B12 injection directly into my eyelids. I forget who I am, where I am, who I'm not, where I'm not. I am just alive. I am just bouncing. I don't feel happy, or not feel happy. I don't feel, I just am.

a stroll in dumbo

2010-07-20T07:00:00.001-04:00

I am obsessed with the rain because I can’t hear it anymore.
I am obsessed with the clouds because I don't see them anymore.
I am obsessed with my childhood because it won't have me anymore.
I am obsessed with my childhood because I’m trying to reclaim it.
I am obsessed with myself because it’s all I’ve got and know I'll have forever.

I am obsessed with the universe because it is the only immeasurable thing.
I am obsessed with the female orgasm because it is the only immeasurable thing.

I am obsessed with you because you give me hope in the dark.
I am enthralled by you because you don’t like to think of what you do to me.
And I am in love with you because only the thought of you turns me inside out.

Only that.