My soon to be revamped myspace music page.

Back to EP recording and site revamping and pondering whether I really want this bagel…

Hours later it is dusk and I mount a hill at Fort Green Park, the sky is a tumult of cloudless blue and Manhattan is part of a horizon that stretches to the sea, it is the only view where New York seems like it belonged to the world, like the world is a constellation. New York is all a horizon, it is a city about horizons, it’s another north star, but it’s all a constellation.

We saw this film “What’s on Your Plate” at the BAM outdoor film screening, at Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn.

The film is directed by a broadly thinking social justice documentary filmmaker Catherine Gund, and hosted by two New York middle schoolers. It is a movie that will be shown in schools and to people who are dipping their toes in the world of more progressive sustainability reform. There are several particularly brave moments in it, especially for a film that could have wallowed in safe yuppy yoga mat zone. Gund brings it into the realm of environmental justice, as opposed to eco-chic.We hear about food deserts in ghettos, Latino immigrants inclination to farms, and they even pull out the statistic that there are more prisoners than small farmers (for a cursory primer on some of the wonderful world of environmental justice, read Van Jones’ blazing tract, Beyond Eco-Apartheid).

Gund neatly and provocatively takes an issue that is deeply political and algebraic, and makes it tangible and accessible. The girls have just enough experience living in a city all their lives to be equally in awe of the workings of nature, but worldly and Sesame Street enough to think that growing up vegetarian and eating a plethora of ethnic foods is worthy of a “doesn’t everybody?”. So to them, the idea of making the food system local and fair is as obvious and inescapable a challenge as buying a prom dress.

My friend Kelly and I met the girls and director afterwards, and they all have that sort of matter of factness about the issue, the way kids go about getting a drivers license or a prom dress or a job, that is refreshing, and well, duh.

Duh. Horizons people, horizons.

(this song is so good, Dance Anthem of the 80s. )

– Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Iced coffee. Waking up to a long lost friend lounging in your living room. Leftovers from home (in Massachusetts), small speakers make for crunchy music, the fan and the street noise and the breeze make up for it. Natural lighting. Good lyrics. Random updates from family and friends via the internets feels as good as is ever has whether through carrier pigeon or pony express or tribal chants. HELLO HELLO say the drum beats. HELLO HELLO says a webcam. Finishing a song. Iced coffee.

Tonight, a pile of drunk friends from some outer city, not here, are trying to figure out where the late night 2 and 3 trains are bound. One guy gets off at 42nd st, and another friend commiserates to the ringleader “you better watch after your friend, he doesn’t know where he’s going.” The ringleader points at the girl next to him “she doesn’t know where she is. That’s worse than not knowing where you’re going.” He looks at me for approval. “Poetically speaking, yes.” He looks triumphant.

And other things we do on the subway.

I was being between blinded by lunatic spotlights, trying to figure out where the edge of the stage was, where my friend Curtis was sitting, and if the wildly eccentric nightowls who run it actually work a job in the day that could even possibly compare to the gypsy life they lead after rush hour ends. And suddenly it seemed that the microphone head was surprisingly ergonomic. Considering the motley decor of broken trumpets, busted drums hanging on the wall, old cutouts of kids who’d made the big time and bong jokes, that seemed unlikely. The ancient metal microphone I was singing into had formed to shape lips.

It’s the only geology the East Village has. No stalactites. Just old instruments, young bucks on pianos who explode into superstars, and bathroom graffiti. Old, metal microphone carved by lips like cliffs by the mouths of two generations of troubadours. It makes you emote harder, look sultrier, somehow reverse kiss Regina Spektor and Ani DiFranco. They never got rid of it. Just like they will never get rid of their emcees or the woman who plays banjo there, brilliantly. What would do a better job?

One thought ran through my head, not “swine flu” or “cooties”, just, simply, “New York.”

And he’s just one of many people I’ve realized this about in the past few days. I wrote a song with one ever-epic friend, talked shop with others, wore wigs. Today I continued a recording session which had been set up as a connection that my voice mentor sent my way. This was held in the old South Dartmouth countryside I grew up going to. Nashville likes his stuff, and apparently likes me as well, which was a little surreal.

Later tonight I was walking onto my soggy alma mater, playing old CDs my sibling haven’t thrown out yet in the mild mist, knowing all the turns and stop signs from driving it hundreds and hundreds of times, sneaking into my friend’s dorm and avoiding RAs, remembering what this weather felt like last year, the year before, the year before, the people who’ve come and gone..about the people I know in New York.

In the end, all I can think of is a Rilke quote, about the “constellation of things” that draw us together, and feel a little like an astronomer. I think of a Dorothy Day quote, ““We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community” and realize we all act so new to this, but it is so deep to our nature.

“this city is for strangers like the sky is for the stars but i think it’s very dangerous if we do not take what’s ours”

My temp job at HSS ended today, I suppose I should have been freaked out, but I wasn’t.

I ended up riding up to St. Marks to meet my friend for dinner at an Afghani restaurant before heading to the Mercury Lounge to support a friend’s sometimes band (Elizabeth & the Catapault). I got to St. Mark’s early so I went to Mudd coffee shop. Milling around the village that is the East Village I was just struck by how beautiful everything was and it was really grey. Everything ordinary seemed heightened and worthy of gratitude, creativity and truth in lyrics and simplicity and democracy of music that people can sing along to, the rain, the promise of green, the motley humanity of the east village, not having enough of a coat, only enough quarters to buy black coffee with sugar, eavesdropping on conversations.

Friends started dropping out of nowhere. I magically had dinner with two dear people I initially met completely randomly in this city doing something I practically respirate (activism and music), eating food from a country I’m just short of obsessed with (Afghanistan), and by the end of the evening ended up seeing far more awesome people from the 4 corners of this city than I had expected to see. I was a little blindsided with gratitude and community and baselines and D chords.

By the way. Ezra & the Harpoons is the best band I’ve seen in a long, long time.

I felt like for the first time I’m free to do what I need to do, in the right place, with the right people, ready to own what my phantom limbs and joys are.

Let’s start with my Brooklyn Bridge walk yesterday and leave it at that.

i wrote over at flickr:

“still missing a camera (oh phantom limb), so this is from my phone.

but i walked some of the brooklyn bridge after work today, at one point i thought to look back, it was such a BOOM. further realized why i’m here. last time i was on the bridge was in july, i decided to move here. here is to what spring holds.”

On the same note, there is this really magical gig that happens monthly at Banjo Jim’s on the Lower East Side once a month called Exceedingly Good Song Night, where people simply sit around in a circle singing folk songs. It’s genuinely heart warming and healing. I was explaining it to my boss, and she looks at me with a laugh and says “it sounds like the 60s.” I tried to explain it wasn’t Woodstocky, and she replied “No, the 60s were a sweet time.”

Earlier this week, while returning from said Song Night, all patched up, tumbled and turned out into the starry night, one of my friends who is involved in theatre was telling me that big Broadway is going to be knocked down. “I have seen incredible theatre on street corners” she said, likely in this Recession, as things come tumbling down, theatre will be built up from street corners, with minimal sets.

I’m reading The Revolution Will Not be Microwaved by Sandor Ellix Katz, which basically advocates the synthesis of old folk food ways with modern, progressive and/or urban networking, technology, and ideals. Canning, but in Harlem. Underground bakeries. Guerilla gardens.

On that note, I baked all my own bread this week. Exuberantly empowering, and fits well inbetween ads while watching Grey’s Anatomy. Ha!

I don’t think that people are trying to be nostalgic, it seems like it’s been there waiting for the hyperbole and Humvee exhaust to settle a little.

That said, I love dancing, a lot of my friends in MA are brilliant DJs and have a wide variety of house, psychedelic, trance, and electronica. Most of our dance parties were in living rooms, dilapitated studios, warehouses, and were nigh near euphoric gatherings.

Last night: After lounging on my couch all day, I get up to go to a friend’s birthday at a bar in midtown. I don a pair of worn handmedown jeans you’d tend a garden in. And since it is SNOWING, and I have no health insurance, I put on wool socks, andLL Bean Snow “Duck” Boots. A purple scarf, brown long sleeve t shirt, and eyeliner. OK. The bar itself is super casual, with a rock band and beer being the drink of choice.

After 45 minutes, one of my friends – S – comes rollicking in. She seems like she’s been partying already and ultimately has a plan. She declares that we are going to go dancing. She’s fun. Within minutes she has hailed a bus in the middle of the avenue out of sheer gumption and pizazz, and informs me we are going to Chelsea. I snort.

Chelsea? The land of all that is cool, waxed, and chic. Her friend says there’s a dress code. I agree. I figure in my outfit even McDonald’s would have a dress code. S systematically refuses.

We’re in Chelsea. We go to find a bathroom at this Punjabi deli. It’s hopping inside, and the Besan Barfi is calling my name. My best friend calls me on the phone, and I decide I’m ending my evening here and will order some Pakistani food with the merry crowd of clubbers and use my free minutes for a while. S refuses. They’ve decided on the club. Marquee.

“Is Marquee worth all the drama at the door to get in? The chi-chi West Chelsea hotspot from the folks behind the promotion of the formerly trendy Suite 16 is the kind of place where, if the too-cool-for-school doorman deems you unworthy of entrance (straight men without women, beware), a couple of beefy security guards will forcibly evict you from the velvet rope line. Even if you pass muster, you’re going to have to wait on that damn line anyway; only the beautiful and the well-connected get a free pass here.”— Sean Kennedy, The New Yorker

Goodbye Naan and Cashew Barfi. Hello bouncers and disgrace. I figured it’s the price of dorkdom, you get thrown out of cool places now and then.

Waiting in a standstill, with uber hotttttt denizens, all my attempts at bowing out have fallen on deaf ears, S strikes up a conversation in French with two French guys who are in some special VIP-line moving really fast. At this point it seems like an adventure, and I have a vested curiosity as to whether I’ll get in. She tells me to say I’m French. I reply, “je m’appelle Mercedes” and we get in line while I make small talk in Spanish.

At the check I keep my coat on tightly, tousle my hair, and hand over my IDm and smile pretty. Everyone else has passports, visas, I have Massachusetts, from the boots to the handmedowns to the ID. I smile at the guy, a big smile like we’re buddies. He waves me in. S seems unfazed “I told you so” she laughs. I mean earlier she had hailed a bus, and she had said “New York is crazy, I only try cause I know anything is possible”. She had gotten into the VIP-esque line. She’d gotten a granola bar into Marquee. All in a night’s work.

(Oh, and I got my Pakistani pastries later).