Where last week I languished in my bed, donning three week old pajamas, doing my best Mrs. Havisham impersonation, stricken with a depressive state of mind brought on by my eternal state of liking someone too much who didn't like me back enough (the fog on this one was blessedly short and is lifting...or I've just gotten really good at rejection), the beginning of this week found me in a flurry of creative/career/sun fueled happy busyness. I feel some wings sprouting; little, bloody nubs breaking through the skin and any day now I'm taking off, man. Or I should see a doctor.
When the week begins with a day off during a spacious, sunny Monday, it is easy to feel better. Even if you weren't feeling down already, you still just feel better. I had a floating holiday so I jumped on top of it and rode it all the way downtown to watch a film and do some gliding around. There was a new film showing at the Angelika by the same director that fed my heart through a shredder with Oslo, August 31. His new film, Louder Than Bombs, was well acted but ultimately, didn't live up to the hype I alone created in my head. (This is a good metaphor for the pattern of my life, btw. So many things are way better in my head.) But that's not really the point. The point is, I was given the opportunity to see a film on a Monday afternoon in an empty theater! A private screening where I could chew my popcorn loudly and put my feet up, pretending the world was made up of just me and the movie. Is there anything better?
The answer is a hard maybe. I got to go to Housing Works bookstore where they had all of their poetry books on sale in honor of National Poetry Month. I walked away with three "new" books and the impetus to attend a poetry reading/open mike that a friend of mine puts together every month which was happening the next night. I kept planning to go each month and life kept interrupting my plans but not this time. I spent Tuesday evening listening to extremely talented poets read their work and I got a chance (after being convinced by the very persuasive two Summer Shandys that whispered their lemony confidences to me all the way through my bloodstream) to read two of mine, one of which I wrote five minutes prior. There were about 10 people in attendance but, just like Jeff Tweedy I shake like a toothache when I hear myself... speak in front of more than two strangers. No matter. I did it. I'm hoping that next time, the tremor in my voice will move down a level on the Richter scale.
On Wednesday, I attended a meeting in midtown where I got to hear a group of authors discuss their forthcoming books and I ran into many of my colleagues, met people who are a big deal in my field and just generally felt as though I was getting away with something. I have been taking notes on how to sustain such a feeling so am currently in the market for such situations. I then spent the afternoon headed up to Westchester County for more career reasons than are able to be disclosed and got a chance to do yet more of my favorite things which are, in no order of importance:
- spend some time in Grand Central station
- sit on a train and stare out the window
- visit a new library
- walk around a new neighborhood
But then Thursday came and Prince died and it depressed me because it reminded me that this year is unspooling into a long train of loss for music and art and memory. With the death of people who have seemingly "always been there" as superstars on center stage in my memory and more on the dependable periphery of my adulthood, I feel the loss. But instead of the blood draining, carving out feeling of deeply personal loss, it is more like the feeling of malaise or existential melancholy which can sometimes be worse. It lasts longer and covers more surfaces.
I was watching Purple Rain with my sister last night and (aside from the overt, very 80s sexism in a LOT of the film), during the performances, I just felt a wave of sadness that a true original is now gone. It feels trite and cliche to even use those words to describe him, but I don't have anything better or more true. I wish I did. I wish I had words that felt just like his aching vocals during the last few verses of that title song. But I don't.
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