We haven't talked in a while, city

Dear friend Hannah inspired me with her latest post, which made me realize I hadn't talked to my city in a while. So I sat down and talked to her. Here's how the conversation went.

Oh, hi New York. Hi. It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? I mean, I’ve been here, and you’ve certainly been there, but I feel like we haven’t really talked in a while. The tolls are so high. The tolls are just so fucking high. If you google “toll-free, antonym,” I swear to God “New York” should be the first search result.

I know this. I know this because last weekend I left. I rented a car with two friends and drove to Asbury Park, New Jersey. I know, what the fuck, right? It was for love. Not for, like, “love” love, like I’m going to marry this person love or anything crazy. Nah. But some kind of love. There are lots, you know? Love is the color wheel on the Wheel of Fortune, just more or less annoying, depending on how you feel about Wheel of Fortune. There are, like, 100 varieties, but an infinite number of possible combinations. It can be fun.

Anyway, I drove to Jersey. Actually I didn’t drive. I was drunk. My friend drove. We went down on the FDR, fingered the island on Houston Street, then finally finally fucked the Holland Tunnel to get out.  It was good. It was really fucking good. It was cool to be in a car in the city, watching all the drones walk around me. I felt rich, except I know I’m not. I felt like a prince on an elephant in the middle of the dessert, except I know I’m not.

Once we were out, we encountered like a thousand toll stops. Seriously, every 15 to 20 minutes there would be another toll. Why you gotta be like that, New York? Northeast? In the South, there are no tolls. Period. There miiiiiiight be a toll on the bridge to Dauphin Island off the coast of Alabama, but I can’t really remember. Soon it won’t matter anyway because the whole thing will be covered in oil, ugh. But that could be kind of cool, I guess, because it will basically be a huge slip and slide. And who doesn’t love those from their childhood? Weeeeeeeeee!

Toll. Drive. Toll. Drive. On the way back too, driving at 1, 2, 3 in the morning, tolls. Why are you so hard to penetrate, New York? It’s hard to get in, and it’s hard to get the fuck out. Why do you separate yourself like that? I mean, I get it. You’re “New York.” You’re “Manhattan.” You feel threatened, you gotta protect yourself, you feel like people owe it to you to pay obscene amounts just to cross your borders. It’s probably Sex and the City’s fault. Name off all the things you dislike about yourself, dear city, and I promise you I can trace their source back to that fucking show. But whatever. What’s done is done, and it’s a good fucking show anyway.

 The tolls are confusing too. It’s not like it’s straightforward, you know? It’s not like “drive here if you have cash, drive here if you have a credit card, drive here if you have that E-Z-Pass shit.” I mean, technically, yeah, that’s how it’s set up, but all the highways in New Jersey I swear to God are like 25 lanes. So cars and trucks and hippie minivans are swerving all over the place, and then there’s us, and we don’t know where we are or where we’re going, we just know we have to pay to get there.

What? Don’t be a smartass. Of course it’s appropriate. Huh? Oh yeah, of course I know I’m using a hackneyed symbol for the crisis of the American youth. I don’t really need you to tell me that. And I really don't need you to tell me not to use the word hackneyed because it's hackneyed! But you know what? There’s nothing new under the sun, New York. Besides, what are you doing that’s new? What shit are you making? I had a dream last night that I got a tattoo of a turtle on my arm and he was wearing a CBGB T-shirt. Fuck you.

Oh, shit, I guess it is time for your monthly bath. Already? Goddamn. I feel like you just had one. OK, I’ll let you go. I’m not mad at you. Actually I’m quite content with you. It worries me. I’ve never been content with you before. Did I change, or have you changed? You look so different to me now, compared to just a few months ago. I should probably be more pissed than ever at you, but somehow I’m not. I’m just like, it’s OK. A cool stream of “it’s OK”s keeps swimming over me as I dunk my head under the brim of summer. I just sit on my bed and strum my guitar and those six strings vibrate with how little I know, and the sound bounces off the walls of my lonely little room, but it’s comforting, you know? I’m just like, it’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK. Splash.

Well, I mean, I feel OK, which is what makes me worry and feel not OK. Like a gnawing in the back of my mind, like my old self jumping up and down saying, ‘Remember when you used to be unhappy!? You were so much cooler and more artsy then!’ I guess that’s one thing: New York, you’re the only place in the world where contentment raises blood pressures. Systolic over diastolic, steady climbin', like a bridge over a tugboat where there’s probably a goddamn toll.

OK OK, I’ll let you go. Talk soon.

Love,
Meghan

several things

1. I made a new blog today in a moment of divine inspiration. It is called

eyjafjallajokull shit.

It is sort of funny?? Check it out.

2. Zac edited/uploaded/did a wonderful job on the video from our epic 10-hour trip to NOLA last Tuesday/Wednesday. Basically whu ha happened was I found this amazing special on JetBlue for $10 tickets, and pitched a last-minute trip to New Orleans to Zac and Hannah, which they agreed to because they are rock stars. And then we filmed the entire thing and here it is. It is amazeballs.

3. After you watch the video, this will make sense.

And that is what I did today. What did you do???

eyjafjallajokull!!!!!

i have to put my sunglasses on 'cuz otherwise i can't see

Hannah and I read poetry the other night at Cornelia Street Cafe in the West Village. It was a lovely experience. Here's a video, which I cringed through as I watched and am now forcing myself to upload so the entire Internet can see.



Zac awesomely recorded/edited this for Hannah and me. There was a part at the beginning, which he cut, where I put my sunglasses on and said, "I have to put my sunglasses on, 'cuz otherwise I can't see." I was trying to make a joke. No one laughed, which made me meta-nervous because I was all, if they're not gonna laugh then they're not gonna cry. But as far as first readings go, s'aight, I think. A couple older, more legit poets complimented me after I was finished, which I'm sure was completely unrelated to alcohol. You be the judge.

Words I don't want in my biography: regret, timid, and rusty needles.

iPhone Inspiration: Two months in random thought

As I've mentioned before, I write a lot of stuff on my iPhone. If I have an idea I consider remotely interesting or worth saving, I'll write it in the notes app of my phone, and then later I'll go through them and pick the good ones to develop as blog posts. Other times, like yesterday, I look through them and go, What the fuuuuuuck? I don't remember writing this at all. And one of the cool things about the iPhone is that it timestamps everything you write, so I even have my cell phone telling me when I wrote the things I don't recall writing. Awesome. Here, I share with you some of the most, um, memorable little snippets of things that I apparently can't remember writing over the past couple months.

March 4, 8:13 p.m.
(A drummer on the 6 train said this. I have no idea what the fuck it means. It was the only thing he said before he commenced drumming.) 


If anyone here follows science, you will know that we are in the most critical parts of life.



February 26, 9:33 a.m.
(Sometimes I see images in my brain and I have no idea where they come from, what they mean or why they are there. If I were Dalí, I would paint them, but since I am not, I just write them in my iPhone so  I won't forget. And then I forget anyway.) 

Image of a girl, topless, seen from behind, with a big analog clock drawn on her back.

What time is it?

February 26, 9:24 a.m.
(I guess this was right before the previous one.)

New York is beautiful because there is art all around. In the past three days I've seen at least three incidents of people on the subway making art. The other day I saw a young man with dark, pretty hair sketching other people on the train with no semblance of order, just violently scratching at his note pad with black ink. Then another day I saw a black boy, probably high school age, pull out a notebook, turn it to a blank page, sigh, pause and look at me. His headphones were in and I could tell he was thinking about what he wanted to write. I got off the train before I saw him write anything, but the promise of a creation is almost as weighty as the thing itself. And today, I'm standing next to an older Asian man who is flipping through a notebook filled with sketches, mostly of human faces. He's sketching now. Black pen. Light strokes. And I'm writing this as he draws. New York is inspiring because it's filled with inspired people.


February 22, 9:25 p.m.
(I wrote this when I first saw the writerly guy I mentioned above.)

A blank pad and a pen is everything.


February 8, 8:23 a.m.

Would you rather have amazing sex with mediocre people for the rest of your life, or mediocre sex with genuinely amazing people?

January 24, 5:56 p.m.

I find that I am surprised by roundness in the city. In a place where the very structure is made up of blocks, straight lines and corners, a rounded turn is a lovely rarity. Most of them are underground, which seems appropriate. A train curves around a bend in the track. Whether I'm on the train or standing on the platform looking at it, it's never an expected thing. While on the train, it's a bit more shocking. If I'm sitting, I like watching standing people sway and catch themselves on metal poles. If I'm standing, I never can remember when the turns are, no matter how much I've ridden the path, and my hands shoot out to steady myself or snatch a wall or pole.

January 21, 8:34 a.m.

Today is my first birthday in New York, and I am spending it with Lady Gaga. I really can't think of anything more appropriate. Last year I was in DC for my birthday, watching the first black president get inaugurated and watching the beginning of the dissolution of my relationship with A. That was a process that would essentially last a full year, and I am now thrilled to put it behind me.

But now is a different time. I am alone, but I celebrate my aloneness. I read books and magazine articles and I feel inspired to write, and I do. I tell my parents how much I love them. I pray thanks for my second family, here in New York. I pray thanks for my health, though it has been up and down for the last couple of months. I am 24, and though at times I feel much older, I am thankful for every minute of it. I have had several dreams in my life, and I have lived all of them. I still have some left to live, of course, but so far I feel blessed to have experienced things few get to.

Come onnnnn train I have a 9 o'clock mtg y'all.


January 20, 7:37 p.m.

Girls on the subway talking about what they would do with $3 million: "Get the fuck out of New York."  

January 15, 11:42 a.m.

I sometimes think I can see atoms. This has been happening my whole life. I see little bright particles swimming around in my eyes, usually when I'm looking at a light source or something illuminated.

When I was little and this would happen, I used to imagine I was some sort of superhuman. Like I had a special talent no one else in the history of the world has ever had. It wasn't really a marketable skill, being able to see atoms, but at least it was interesting.  

January 8, 9:59 p.m.
(On my way home from sharing some extremely stout whiskeys with Hannah.)  

This E train is so empty. We are at 23rd street now. I'm far from home. My feet are warm, and the tingling is gone. I really like Hannah but I sometimes have the bizarre experience of feeling like she is two different people. I hear her voice differently when I read her writing than when she is talking to me across a dark bar. I wonder if she perceives me that way too? I hope not. I want people reading me to hear me just as I am. But I wonder if that's impossible.

The underside of the left half of my tongue aches. It was hurting before I drank tonight. Perhaps I've been talking too much?

More people are getting on the E train now. Ugh, y'all, I hate the E train. It's the most unreliable train in Manhattan, which makes it all the more appropriate that tonight, when I felt I really needed it, it pulled in to the station right as I did. I have never greeted an E train in a head-on simultaneous collision, but tonight I did. Typical.

I feel so much tension in my body, all the time. In my back, in my legs, in my arms, in my head. I feel all curled up, like I need to unfurl like a snail. This woman across from me looks like an older version of this beautiful woman I met the other night at an event. After a while, everyone in this city starts to look the same, though no one looks like anyone else, really.

Except for me. I see my face in every face I see and every train door. It's inescapable. I remember this one time I was on the train and these two young girls got on the stop after me and I was listening to some music but I could still tell they were talking about me. They were standing directly in front of me and looking me up and down and saying things to one another. I have no idea whether they were saying good or bad things, but I remember feeling uncomfortable about it. I felt like I was 12 again and my friends were talking bad about me and I didn't know just what to do to stop them.

That was many months ago, and I was a different person. I think now I might feel differently.

The Haus of Meghan

It's no secret at this point that I am obsessed with Lady Gaga more than I've ever been obsessed with any artist in my life. I dressed as her for Halloween, and spent a good six hours bedazzling my bra for the occasion. I have purchased not one but two hair bows from the Internet to wear on two separate occasions. I am getting my Gaga-inspired hair bow tattoo on March 6. Whether it's right or not, in my eyes, Gaga can do no wrong. She represents, for me, everything I want to be and achieve artistically in my life. And this is all due in no small part to what she calls her Haus of Gaga.

The Haus of Gaga is basically Gaga's closest group of friends. They are all creative types and they assist her with everything she does - making her outfits, designing her stage, deciding what element of performance art to play with next, and generally inspiring her music and art - but Gaga emphasizes that these are her closest friends, from back in the day when she was just little ole Stefani Germanotta. Here's a clip of her explaining it in an interview.

MTV Shows

The most elusive truth about artists is that no artist can work alone. Every artist over the course of history - whether a poet, playwright, painter, dancer, musician - has had a group of people around her who inspired her work and helped her be the best artist she could be. While I have only recently realized that I would like to think of myself as an artist - for a long time I found the term "writer" sufficient, but lately I've been wanting to devote my entire life to creation and art - I've had a Haus for a long time. I haven't been fully aware of it the whole time, but I started building it more than five years ago. Or, more accurately, the universe started building it for me, and now that I have a clearer idea of the things I want to do with my life, I could not feel more fucking blessed. I want to introduce them to you.

Christine

Christine is my BFFFFFF. She came into my world five and a half years ago - which is really hard to believe - when we lived next door to each other in the dorms freshman year. We seemed like polar opposites - I was really girly and wore a lot of pink and big hoop earrings and my blonde hair in stupid ponytails - and she was sort of punky and loud, with a really short haircut and a rather unique sense of style. But we were drawn to each other for some reason - I had never met anyone like her - and we quickly became really good friends. She's easily the most amazing person I know. She's unique and creative - she writes haikus and designs pillows and decorations for her house and stuff - but she also has one of the biggest hearts I've ever encountered. She's a social worker, so she spends all her time trying to improve the lives of those less fortunate than her - which is obviously very inspiring in itself - but beyond that, she treats every person she comes into contact with with an incredible amount of respect and love. She's the least judgmental person I know. She inspires me because she reminds me of the best parts of myself, even during the rough times.

Zachary

Zac has been my BFF for almost three years now. For the longest time, we worked together at the student newspaper in college but were not friends; I never really talked to him because I was shy and weird, resulting in him thinking I was a huge bitch. But once I broke the seal by coming to his birthday party in August 2006, we slowly became friends, gradually building until the spring of 2007, when we became really good friends and I started to realize that we probably had the same brain. We would finish each other's sentences and sometimes say the same thing at the same time, and in the fall of 2008, after an epic dance night at a trashy gay club in Jackson, Mississippi, we realized we were dance soulmates and our relationship was basically cemented. He inspired the original name for Hautey Toddy, as well as being my co-conspirator on the Bloglossary, which (BTW) was born way before this blog in the fall of 2008. (It's still a work in progress, of course.) He continues to inspire me every single day with his biting sense of humor, incredible intelligence, and fearless pursuit of his goals. He reminds me all the time of why I'm in New York.

Jenny

My friendship with Jenny was born a little later than mine and Zac's. Zac and Jenny come as a pair, basically, but right after the three of us got close she moved to New York and left Zac and me to fend for ourselves in Oxford (bitch). She and I didn't talk that much (or at least not nearly enough) the year I was at Ole Miss with Zac, but after I moved up we swiftly became BFF again. She is easily the most successful of the Haus. While in college she was the photo editor at the student newspaper, and she shot all the production shots for the theater department. Since then she has worked her way up to photo editor at Broadway.com, where she regularly shoots lots of broadway shows and famous people on red carpets. She also shoots a lot of stuff on the side, always working to create beautiful new images and improve her craft. In addition to being an incredibly talented photographer, she is one of the sweetest people I know. I have recently decided she is like my mom in New York, because she always hugs me and kisses me and makes me delicious food. She honestly doesn't have a mean bone in her body, which is something you can't genuinely say about many (most) people.

Una

Una LaMarche is literally the singular reason this blog is what it is now (um, sort of good? or all right at least?). I met her through work, and discovered she had a blog after we became friends on Facebook. I can remember last September, sitting at work on slow days and reading every single post she had ever written. That is not an exaggeration. I saw myself in her, and quickly realized that she's the person I want to be when I'm 29. Her amazing voice - hilarious, truthful, nerdy, at times awkward - helped me to find mine, and was the catalyst for taking BtoA from a journal-y type personal blog to a broader conveyor belt for the human experience, at least as I encounter it in New York. She is a brilliant writer. Remember her name: U-n-a L-a-M-a-r-c-h-e. She also writes for the Huff Po. You will see her name again, if not on the next big sitcom or semi-reality-mocumentary-but-it's-actually-fake television series then on the cover of a bestselling book over a somewhat awkward photo of a child with a unibrow.

Jessie

Jessie is without a doubt the most go-get-'em writer I know. She's the creator and writer of 20-Nothings, a blog dedicated to the sometimes-funny-sometimes-really-fucking-sad trials and tribulations of single/dating 20somethings in Manhattan. Since I've known her, she's written several plays, penned at least 12 monologues, and published a book based on her blog. So she's a blogger, a playwright, and a published author. What the fuck? Oh, and she's 26. Oh, and she also got her blog optioned to be turned into a television show at some point. Oh, and she has an "agent." I don't even really know what that means. Bottom line: the girl can write, and not only that, but she knows how to make shit happen. She is one of the main reasons I was inspired to write a play based on one of my blog posts, the production of which (PS) is still TBD.

Hannah

Hannah Miet is my blog soulmate. I discovered her blog randomly last August, clicking on it from another random blogger's list of favorites. I quickly realized this discovery was not random at all, but something along the lines of fate: the first things I learned about her were that she lives in New York, she's attracted to women in addition to men, and she loves Beyoncé. Um, duh. I stayed late at work one day and read through post after post after post, and realized we had too many uncanny things in common. I e-mailed her that we should meet for drinks, and we did, and we got drunk, and we talked about love and life and writing. Since then we've met for drinks an additional time, and kept in touch via twitter and e-mail and all that. She inspires me because she openly dabbles in the darker sides of life and New York, and because, of course, she's a brilliant writer. She's inspired me to explore parts of myself and my writing that I probably would not have otherwise, and to be open about my feelings on my blog. Her words also helped me through a tough emotional time, and I still sometimes recite them to myself when I'm having a hard time of things (true story, Hannah). Remember her name too. You will see it in black and red someday.

Brittany Bell

Brittany is another fellow Ole Miss graduate, but we weren't really good friends in college since she was a year above me and I didn't really run with most of the theater kids. But we've gotten close since I moved to NYC, and I feel confident saying she's a total, hilarious, crazy mess. An amazing actress, she can distort her face like no one else I've met in my entire life. You scoff, but it's really fucking impressive. Oh, and she can rap. Like legitimately, she could have a rap career if she really wanted to. She has also been known to cry whenever Empire State of Mind comes on in the bar, which just means she has a huge heart and she loves this city just as much as I do, if not more. She wholeheartedly believes in her dreams and in her craft, and for these reasons she is truly inspirational.

Susan

 

Last but most definitely not least is Susan, the amazing lady who gave me my first-ever paying magazine job (read: internship) in the city last March. We worked together for a few months before I got hired full-time in June, and now she's moved on to bigger and better things with a kick-ass job at The Knot. Since she left my company, we've gotten closer as friends (weird how that happens) and I've grown to like her more and more as I get to know her better - an extremely rare and therefore meaningful experience for me - and I learn that she is hilarious, quirky and painfully honest. Yesterday, she sent me the following text message: "I just bought two trays of Vday cupcakes because they were BOGO. New low??" To which I responded: "Girlllllll. You are seriously my soulmate." And anyone who knows me knows how true that statement is. I kind of owe her everything about my life in New York, because if it weren't for her I may still be - shudder - unemployed. And if I were unemployed, I would be spending all my time on Craigslist instead of writing blog posts and plays and going to staged readings of my friends' monologues and posing for photos and shooting video and generally living an amazing art-filled life. So thanks, Suz.

Love and art,

2.16.2010,

Lady Meghan

Don't you try and tell me that you never loved me

Tomorrow is Monday, which sort of sucks, so I wanted to share this video with y'all. It makes me very happy.



I discovered it on the Tumblr of my new favorite blogger, Hannah. I've never listened to much Kate Nash, but I like this song a lot, and the illustration is so cute. Siiiiiigh.

Happy end-o-weekend!