conversations

Atlanta (2006.2) - put your arms here

2006-11-14T03:47:08+00:00

It wasn't spartan, and it wasn't center-aligned or itemized, but when I walked in and closed the door behind me I thought immediately of the simplicity of a monk's cell, and I looked at its inhabitant and thought, "I'd rename you 'Monk' if I thought I could make it stick." I said nothing. I've been accused of that many times, more times than I care to recount; I talk more than I once did but the ratio of words hushed to words spoken still runs somewhere around six-to-one.We'd talked my visit up for a week, in sass and verbal sparring, and it was simpler and stranger and odder now that I was actually there, because somewhere along the way I remembered that this was a new person to me and wasn't I supposed to be cautious around new people and not say everything within the first five minutes?

"Did you bring a jacket?"

"I did, but it's in the car."

"It's going to get chilly out tonight. You're going to want something." He opened up his closet and pulled out something I didn't recognize, unfurling it in an unspoken request to put my arms here, in the armholes. "Navy peacoat." I shrugged the garment to my shoulders knowing immediately that I would not feel comfortable wearing it out; the shaped shoulders were fitted to a body much wider than my own, and the sleeves covered my hands.

I laughed to myself, amused to finally have proof that I have been a child in adult's clothing all along, and promised to retrieve my trench coat from the car.

* * * * *

In my world, I am equal enough to open my own doors, but the sphere of my world overlaps with the sphere of others, and if a doorway happens to get wedged in the middle, I have to look for cues to figure out who is going to open it. If the woman chooses wrongly, she annoys the other person. So I watch for cues; I maintain cruising speed toward doors and watch the body language for intent. Speeding up, or an angling arm, portends an intent to open the door for me; should that happen, I am gracious and verbally thank the person. If not, I am not insulted; I am perfectly capable of opening my own door. Forcing someone into a sham of politeness is not politeness, it is imposition.

I learned the proper Thai usage of a spoon, and as the meal progressed, I relaxed. I reminded myself that the Amy-the-librarian lanyard was elsewhere, and that outside of the Isle of Aisles I was still my own person and might still speak freely.

We spoke of life and love over appetizers and of travels over entrées, and when we stepped out of the restaurant with a slowly-firming friendship, him leading the way through the plate-glass doorway, the leaves swirled through the parking lot, eddied by the same winds that swirled the tails of my trench coat around my legs and made me shiver as I shut the car's door.

saturday night, saturday night

2003-07-23T06:13:20+00:00

The lead singer, Cara, likes to photograph her audience. I've learned to avoid the feedback loop by picking a nice side spot at the bar. Here, I'm just another shadowy face, a friend who hangs out with Colter between sets once a year, contributing surprisingly good gig photos for the band's website. Colter's the only one who recognizes me. That's fine with me. I like my anonymity on ice, thanks.It's odd to think that there are thousands of cover bands, just like this one, playing in every major American city tonight. There are thousands, perhaps millions, of people above age 25 whose sole Saturday night desire is to go to a familiar bar and hear familiar music while dancing with someone perhaps not quite so familiar. The bass player has a thin sheen of sweat around his temples halfway through the first set. Never let it be said that playing in a cover band isn't work. The cords of muscle and tendon that jump into heavy relief with his stringed tug-of-war are testament to the exhausting, detailed work it is. I said I'd only stay through the beginning of the second set. I'm rethinking that half-hearted excuse at the moment. It's not the excitement of the music; it's the urge to not go home. Not just yet. Just one more song. The dancers seem to share my opinion. First set ends. Dancer-man in the blue-white striped shirt and wandering hands becomes yet another corporate drone introducing another ex-co-worker to his new girlfriend. Disappointing. He was more honest as he groped for a disco-tinged piece of his girlfriend's ass on the dance floor. The girls are in their clubbing clothes, but this is a yuppie bar. The men are wearing casual-Fridays, colored work polos and khakis. Their beer is domestic; their tabs payable by Visa. This is a Bud Light crowd; play 'Funky Cold Medina' and the thirtysomething men scuttle from their chairs, reluctantly trailing behind scantily-clad girlfriends as they shimmy onto the dance floor. Why are they here, if not escapism? Why else would they pay to sit in a bar to replay familiar music, if the old wasn't somehow just a little more comforting than the new? Time's up. Colter catches the lobbed signal from the drummer. Break #1 is over, and it's time to return to the stage. He's asked if I'll photograph him with his new purple guitar early in the second set. I'm trying to finish a paragraph in my trademark looped scribble before the lights come back up and it's time to play photographer again. Note scrawled and left on seat: "Photographer sitting here - please don't take this seat! Thanks!" Do the posh yuppies in the audience know how those on the other half of the stage live? The bassist and the guitarist both have full-time day jobs. They share an apartment whose kitchen sports neo-collegiate collections of empty international beer bottles and music magazines. If gigging was a living, they wouldn't be sharing an apartment on Kavanaugh. Instead, it pays for equipment upkeep and the occasional new toy or two. The dancers have no idea that the curly-headed guitarist is considered by most of his friends to be the most obnoxiously talented guitarist they've ever known. Even if they did, they wouldn't care. Part of me aches to see Colter on stage like this, because his talent is wasted on this room. He's the kind of man who has a gaggle of female friends who are always a little too much in love with him for their own good (and, conversely, not quite enough in love with him for his own good). This guy has talent. Serious, obnoxious, you'd-hate-him-if-he-wasn't-so-sweet talent. If there was justice in this world, he'd be playing his original music to crowds jammed and silent, ready to pay attention to nuance and intonation, and appreciate them for the deliberate choices of musicianship they were. But this is not a perfect world, and we are scribblers, he and I; scribblers who have piles of incomplete music, night jobs in cover bands and half-finished novels. Reality, like an untouchable blonde, is never quite so glamorous as it looks from the back of the bar. * * * * * Twelve hours after the gig, we are hiding out in his favorite coffee shop down the street. I am carefully breaking my chocolate-chip cookie into manageable bits and submerging them briefly in my ultra-hip coffee mug before letting the chocolate dissolve in my mouth, coating my tongue with the mingled, bittersweet flavors of coffee and chocolate. The caffeine speeds our conversation a bit, like a cassette player subtly pulling a tape faster and faster as it reaches the end of the side. We will say everything we can think to say, and then we will click to a halt, finish our coffee, and head back to the Kavanaugh apartment for side B of this conversation. It is one of those stereotypical Arkansas weekends; a day of equal temperature and humidity. Eighty-three degrees Fahrenheit and eighty-two percent humidity makes for air so thick and still it coats lungs and skin alike with a sheen of miserable sweat. The full-blast air conditioning condenses the air into its solid and gaseous components, and returns only the gaseous portions for our breathing pleasure. We talk. Mutual friends. (Hi, Heath.) The difficulty of getting paying gigs. Felines. The inexpressible difficulty of the lifelong shy admitting that, the overwhelming majority of the time, a person can be an observer or a participator. But not both. We both secretly suspect we're either doomed to a life of heedless action or mindful stasis. We go back to his apartment, and he picks up his guitar. I realize that I can sit in this conversation and analyze it, plan about how I will write it later when I return to Alabama, or I can decide to put down the scribble tool that is my mind, and enjoy the day. With that thought, the notes end. Even I have my priorities.

An accounting of the day

2001-09-12T02:00:53+00:00

I am part of the chain.

Jeff, on the answering machine this morning: "Amy, turn on the television now."
Ten minutes later, to Kat: "Kat, turn on your television now. What channel? Any channel."
To Brad: "What are they saying up there? Please, tell me something I don't know already."
To Andrew: "Hold on, hold on….my God. It's gone."
To Heather: "Is Andy okay? Have you heard?"
To John: "Can you believe? Can you comprehend?"I sat, cross-legged, in front of the television as I mourned the loss of life and our loss of innocence. How ironic to state that anything about America, this crass old jaded bitch of a country, is innocent—yet we never, ever believed that a day like this would come.

I saw the footage of the second plane slamming into the WTC with a mix of horror, fright, and nausea. I am the person who can watch anything in cinema with the comforting knowledge that it is all faked, and that at the end of the scene, the actors get up and walk away.

By the same token, I cannot watch "reality" shows; the caring, nurturing part of me cannot bear to see that kind of pain and torment. But I watched this morning—I made myself watch. I grieved as the plane exploded … inside … the building, knowing.

This was no scene.
These were no actors.

The knowledge that you are watching someone die is horrifying, awful. Imagine multiplying that single incident by hundreds, thousands, and you understand my horror and anguish as I watched the towers fall like so many glass cards.

I did not cry. I have not cried. Yet. But I fear the tears pushing at the corners of my eyes as I write this, as I make myself come to grips with what I saw this morning, this afternoon, this evening, shoved at me over and over again.

I fear this is not over. I fear this means war. I fear myself because my heart says, "Find the motherfuckers and blow them to bits."

Death is the original unsolvable puzzle. Once life, and peace, and innocence, are undone, the thing cannot be mended. Even more death—justice though it may be, and richly deserved it may be—will not bring back our innocence—or the dead.

Lastly, to my mother: "We are safe, we are okay, we love you."