ain’t no depression

Went to see Anais Mitchell the other night. What she achieved with 5 instruments and a small space was deeply, deeply moving and evocative. She is a singer songwriter out of Monteplier, VT, and her music was a theatrical concept piece she based in the Orpheus myth in a “post apocalyptic depression” revolving around hobos, soup lines, banjos, arias, and shindigs. It’s beautiful, refers to the sounds of the Depression, and yet distinctly modern.

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.

take me out

Let it be known I am a hippy. And a dork. And a geek. Tonight I was over the moon when
some folkster pulled out an archaic mandolin/satire love child. I audibly gasped when another guy pulled out an accordion. Scene set.

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).

thanksgiving

A quote sent to me by a friend I don’t get to see enough of on the day:

“Now is the time to deeply compute the impossibility that there is anything but Grace.” -Hafez

My office is participating in a inter-office promotion. They give out scratch cards for good customer service, and the first person to spell out a word wins lots of money. I was walking out to lunch the other day and overheard several of my colleagues who were outside taking a smoke break. One of them had just advanced further in the scratch card contest. I joked “I never win anything”, I was about to add “but I don’t care”, but was interrupted by one of the women who said with an urgency that stopped me dead in my tracks “You have life.” I looked at her. She took a smoke. Pointed at my legs. “You have your legs.” I suddenly was aware of my legs. “Thank you.” Was all I could manage. And I went off for a bagel.

Happy Thanksgiving.

(stuff rattling around my brain) – If you don’t listen to This American Life, this is possibly one of my favorite episodes. An homage to Studs Terkel with tales of the Depression. Joyful, striking, ironic, and unforgettable as usual. – Who Do You Think You Are?

Sufjan Stevens – Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

rhapsody in blue

Election night was more than celebration for a candidate. The elation in the streets here in New York was palpable and spontaneous as a sonic boom or thunderclap. I was at Professor Thom’s bar in Greenwich village. It was full of twenty somethings, several of whom admitted to me they often had a hard time admitting they were American, they exploded with unbridled joy, and started chanting “USA! USA!”.

The running and screaming on 14th street and 3rd Ave, hugging and discussions with random strangers who stopped their taxis to get out and join the throngs, was visceral in a way I have only felt at times in my life when I had been living with a level of choking fear and was given a good diagnosis. Something lifted.

Throughout history, empires have collapsed, the best and brightest nations have succumbed to governments that desire power. The past 8 years have felt like being drunk and trying to climb stairs. Conspiracies and blind hysterics fail to do the real truth justice with regards the Bush Administration. But depth of inspection handily reveals just how terrifyingly and gravely close Cheney & co. came to redefining the way our government operates. To quote Dorothy Day, “Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.”

And right now we have far too many problems on our hands to be so excited because we elected some groovy young international candidate. We’re excited because on Tuesday we woke up whether we know it or not.

My subway ride back to Brooklyn from Union Square at 1 AM illustrated this. An exhausted slightly tipsy young guy questioned whether any of this really matters.

“Can people really change? Can Obama really change anything?” said the guy.
“I have seen apathy disappear” I said.

This immediately spurred a discussion amongst complete strangers as to how we can continue to be involved in the government and make change when Obama does begin to make mistakes, because he is only human. Volunteer said one person, continue to bother your representatives said others, be environmental, spread awareness for immigrant, gay, and human rights, read the newspaper, said another. A girl who had volunteered in Thailand and Calcutta said, wake up tomorrow and do something. Our portion of the subway was engaged in a town hall discussion, that moved past Obama. It was about us. When you looked around, people were listening. My friend Jess quoted an old African proverb, “When you pray, move your feet.” We ended the ride trading names and phone numbers, one led to a very cool documentary project called Creative Migration.

You have to understand, this doesn’t happen in New York on a subway at 1 AM.

But tonight we were a committee, we were a cabinet, we were the new administration. We just have to work as hard as our president is going to.

thoughts for an upcoming election

Life is all mystery.

But today, in the midst of a Recession, there’s only one I want answered. Somewhere in Chelsea, on 6th Avenue, why does a place called “Great Burrito” advertise with a prominent piece of pizza?

On to the topics at hand.

On Universal Healthcare

Night of the presidential debates. Outside of one of the subways headed to the Whitney Museum on the Upper East Side, there’s a homeless guy on the street. He’s rocking back and forth pretty adamantly muttering something incoherent. By his splayed legs there’s a cup. I move around him. One of his legs is deeply discolored and taut around a bright red open wound. The guy needs help. So the cup had some quarters, and there was a debate raging in Oxford Mississippi. But healthcare wouldn’t get to him as fast as the gangrene would. I gave a dollar and said a prayer.

On Retirement

I went to Banana Republic and was milling around waiting for my roommates to finish their shopping. An attendant flagged me down, and despite my protestations, she had decided I would have a Banana Republic card. Despite my protestations and coming short of explaining my nasty credit, she had me signing up. I took out my passport resigned to pleasant conversation to reduce her embarrassment at having to turn me down. She said simply “I cannot wait to get one of these”. She turned out to have lived in Lebanon, then in Venezuela. We shifted our conversation to Spanish. She relayed her life briefly, while paying brief attention to the computer screen, sweeping her hands describing California, speaking Arabic. Then suddenly said she wished she would be underground within the next few years. I didn’t know if she meant suicide or just to be dead. “La vida es bellisima” I said, Life is beautiful. “Possiblemente, porque tu eres joven”, Possibly, but you’re young, she said. Her son had been killed somehow, the detail lost in translation, she was having a difficult time getting a passport, she missed home. I didn’t get my Banana Republic Card, I was holding up the line. I realized I had to find my friends, she said it was good to meet me, and seemed sad to end the conversation on that note.

My Lebanese-American roommates, gleeful at finding trench coats and flats, needed a checkout woman. They got a discount that night.

On Public Transportation, Part 1

A stately Russian woman who tapped my shoulder at the 77th street subway.
“Do you know where the 4 train is?”, she asked.
“The 4…bus?”
“Yes, bus.”
“It’s right here.”
“Yes but…” she was at loss for words, so I walked over to the bus stop. There was a sign in English
“NOTICE this stop has been rerouted due to RAGAMUFFIN PARADE please use stop at 74th street.”
“Ma’am you have to walk down because it’s been rerouted” She is practically glowing, but she has no idea what I am talking about.
“I don’t understand” she laughed.

I don’t know any Russian. I grab the bus pole, and shook the bus sign with all my might till it shook. I pointed down the blocks waving two fingers. she laughed again,

“Ah two blocks, thank you.” She gently touches my arm and walks off.

On Public Transportation, Part 2

Subway morning commute. packed so tight it must be violating something, people balance coffee and newspapers and fight for grabbing surface. out of a medley of shoulders and knees a small infantile hand shoots out and grabs precious pole space. a small Chinese 2 year old being held by his grandmother is secured to a pole, and he ain’t lettin go any time soon.

On Public Arts

Sunset Park, walking up to the train station around 9 PM. Merengue music is booming from outside of either a stereo shop or Spanish food restaurant. Ahead of us is a father holding his young daughter, lazily involved in the music emanating from some crevice, presumably a speaker from the sidewalk basement service entrance. Upon closer inspection there is an actual band in the basement. Same band possibly spotted in Red Hook baseball field periphery a few weeks later.