“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.
mercy bell 