I Found a Reason to Smile

Thank you, Samezvous.

I have to write through this, if for no other reason than I feel like a hole has opened up in my Milky Way tonight and if I don't experience it, the entryway that exists only briefly will close. I have to sit here and feel this aching bittersweetness, both to a staggering degree -- so bitter, so sweet. Tonight I said goodbye to a blessed friend, my favorite local musician, and someone who has changed my world forever. Tonight over Red Bones cornbread we said goodbye. I thought I'd feel cold and broken. But there was too much sweet for that. I walked out into the freezing rain, tasting my tears, and the sadness lasted only minutes before it dissolved into gratitude and inspiration. Excitement for the future. He's leaving behind a new project for me. It's like Charlotte's Web, but with fewer spiders.

On nights like this I'm grateful that I have the words. They are what I turn to now, always, and somehow putting this whirlwind of emotions into nouns and verbs heals my soul.

I was inspired listening to him, running down South with a hazy plan and a gargantuan moving truck that he doesn't know how to drive. I'm thinking about how safely I live my life. I get the inspirations. I get that feeling. That have to move, have to start something fresh, that cusp of madness of spinning forward, and out of fear I plant my feet right back where they are. I've decided to jump next time. Next time I get the crazy idea to go someplace just because it feels right, I'm going to do it.

New Orleans is that crazy place for me. I have never spent an unmagical hour in that mad city. I want to be painted, covered in feathers, have bells in my hair, beaded lashes, dancing barefoot in the humid night. The music is everywhere, old in your bones music, the words rise up and grow out of my head. I run with them, down to the muddy Mississippi, down to the lap steel guitars, the banjo man with silver fingernails plucking by the riverside, the sidewalk jazz. When I was in New Orleans last, I was kidnapped by an amazing musician named Paul Christian, who held me hostage at this gallery for a few days; I wrote for him, he played piano, and I shot rolls and rolls of film. I stayed with my oldest friend in the world who just bought a house in the ghetto, which looked a whole lot like the Paper St. Soap Company. It was an obliterated mansion with floor to ceiling stained glass windows. There was no heat so we turned on the burners and opened the oven door. My feet were black from the decrepit hallway. But I could hear the music of the night through the broken windows. And it sounded like home.

I've been falling madly in and out of love with Boston this year, one minute wanting to kiss it to death, the next minute feeling like the image-conscious conservative bullshit is too much to take. Like life would be so much easier somewhere where I could be myself. I want to go to the place where nobody who fits in, fits in. My own private Island of Misfit Toys.

I was talking to my departing friend about the Universe pushing back. How if you open yourself up, you make a decision and you toss yourself out there, arms extended with every intention of following your dreams, the world opens up for you. I've seen it happen, and watching that in amazement as it changes the lives of those around me is mindblowing. He decides one day, I'm going to fucking Austin to make music for a living. And he does.

So I decide today, I'm going to write my own words for a living. So I will. And I don't mean the crap I used to write for a living. Today in the churning of hellos and goodbyes, swept up and inspired by the artists in my life, I realized that I need to finish that novel. I came to this conclusion this morning on my way to work, and when I got to work, I found that March is NaNoEdMo: National Novel Editing Month. I think that's hysterical. It's the next stage of NaNoWriMo, and it's based on the same concept. I needed a break from my fiction after November, and returning to it after the four weeks has given me new perspective. It's called Euphobia, by the way. Euphobia is the fear of hearing good things. And I'm in deep with my characters. They make me smile, and make me scream and throw things, take me back to places I've been and those I want to travel to. I'm jealous of one in particular. And in love with another. They infuriate me, make me proud, and give me a reason to show up on the page every day.

So this laptop screen is too small for my story, I feel cramped and contained, and suddenly I'm swept up and printing out this behemoth document, hurriedly cutting and pasting the old fashioned way with scissors and pins, crazily covering my cubicle walls with passages, paragraphs, whole chapters… I am smiling, I am elated. I am no longer afraid.

And so many people want to read this book. For all the words in my vocabulary, there are none to describe what that feels like. I'm living in Wishville.

I hand my friend a CD for the road, to listen to on his way to Texas, driving the enormous rig he won't be able to back up his tiny crooked street. I hand it to him and tell him, "I wrote my book to this CD." Art begets art. It's one of the most beautiful concepts in the world. Someone else was inspired and created this music, and just by listening to it my story was born. I sat, fingers hovering over the keys, and the goddam novel wrote itself. Sometimes I lose my way -- I get discouraged, distracted. Someone admires my work and I question their ulterior motives. I spend months on a project and just before it's finished I decide it's crap. I "realize" I was foolish, mistaken, obviously not being level with myself. But I'm working on it. I'm taking a leap of faith. You go, I go.He played a track for me from another friend's demo -- and as I asked the question in disbelief, "This is brilliant -- why isn't he putting his stuff out there?!" I already knew the answer. I had said it myself a million times. Too busy, too frightened, too tired. Gotta have a real job, gotta visit the boyfriend, gotta gotta gotta. A thousands words for "Just Not Doin It." I'm doin it. I was just thinking how I could tell that I was getting away from my creativity. That over the past few weeks I was moving toward inertia in a weird way, becoming obsessed with appearance, with television, with upward mobility at work. Being estranged from creativity in any form. I realized this and simultaneously realized I hadn't been to a show recently.The last show I've been to was weeks ago, which is inexcusable. I don't even remember who I saw. I know that I've been in such pain with my back that I've missed a slew of amazing rock and roll. But that is the answer. Whenever my head is too full, or I get lost, or I become convinced that proper shoes are more important than my freedom -- I go to a show and my priorities are snapped back. My head is blown open, my mind quieted. I am immediately reflected and I see the pale and dead version of myself that I've become because I stopped staring at the stars and began staring at the pavement. Those neat little lines drawn by other people. Sidewalks with rails so you don't stray -- so you don't even have to think about where you're going. So you will always be safe. But even the black sheep is still a sheep.

I received words of wisdom today from an artist I admire deeply. He reminded me of something important, a truth I'd forgotten. You pour immeasurable energy into creating something, and most of the time nobody gets it. But that doesn't matter.You do it for you.