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Perhaps you may enjoy my Flickr page. |
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I'm struck by how different the commute is when I'm carrying the iPod. It somehow transforms the train station from a depressing, dirty waiting room to the set of a Wim Wenders film.
— August 8, 2005 |
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The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle. — Anais Nin
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. — Annie Dillard |
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I can be reached at romanlily ~at~gmail.com. Or you can join the notify list here. |
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July 25, 2006
Open space
Well, it's been a long time since I last wrote, dear diary.
I'm planning some changes to this website now that will make it easier for me to update in the coming months. Yes! I've had enough of this one-entry-every-other-month nonsense!
In the meantime, to the find time and space to update the journal, I came here to New York:
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There is no end to the interesting angles available in New York. |
New York. Today the weather was perfect. I walked across the park at 72nd Street. The boats were out on the Conservatory Water, and little children were crawling all over Alice in Wonderland, and a street musician smiled at me from his perch at the Bethesda Fountain as he played a miniature accordion.
In Brooklyn, I met up with Amy, and we ate the most fabulous Mexican corn in the entire state and probably the country, which is served at a restaurant in Williamsburg called Bonita. The corn is grilled, then smothered in cheese and dusted with red pepper. They serve it with a wedge of lime. One ear of this corn is basically a small meal. Lord, is it good.
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Beans and rice at Bonia. |
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Amy is in the Writers Workshop at University of Iowa, entering her second year of the program. I haven't seen her since December, so we have had some catching up to do here in NY.
Amy is no stranger to the artistic process, and at lunch I told her about some concerns I've been having lately around my photography. (We also talked about the process of eating an unruly ear of corn in public without resorting to barbarism.)
I'm not sure how to summarize the photography troubles. But the word restlessness is probably the best summary.
I've taken at least one annual trip to New York for several years now, and every time it's different. This trip is also different, but it's different in a kind of painful way. It feels more complicated. Years past, I could walk down the street in New York and happen upon a vendor's table of little toy ladybugs and take great delight in the photo that resulted. This time, that kind of photo is totally unsatisfying. I want different material. Better material. Or I want to see things differently, take a better photo of the ladybugs. Who wants to take the exact same picture every time she goes on vacation?
I don't know quite what to make of these feelings. Is this artistic progress? Is it a positive thing that I don't want to take the same shots that I already have? Or is it a dulling of the artistic eye? Isn't it important to find pleasure in those simple, spontaneous moments, wherever they happen?
What is the alternative approach? Do I just need to keep looking — looking harder?
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So much color in Brooklyn. |
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Last night Amy and I went to some embarrassingly swank bar in the East Village for a secret Cat Power show. (Ask me what a rock star I felt like, breezing past the great unwashed masses herded into a line behind velvet ropes, and breezing through the open door after waving my pre-purchased ticket at the bouncer. I felt like a very big rock star.)
At show time, the lights dimmed and she came out with her electric guitar. It was just Chan alone on a simple stage. She played a few chords by way of introduction, and then suggested that we all sit down so we could see better. There was a moment of skeptical discussion in the crowd. Then, miraculously, her suggestion was accepted, and two hundred well-heeled New Yorkers all sat down cross-legged on the floor of the bar like schoolchildren participating in some kind of very fancypants after-school special.
The music was so quiet that everyone in the audience stopped talking when she played. She played some of my favorites, and it was wonderful to hear them live.
The whole arrangement was so simple. Before, there was a room full of busy, chattersome people worrying the strength of their cell phone signal. Then she started to play and we all got quiet and the room filled up with her voice, which is soft and soulful and just plain lovely.
Was she worried about her artistic process? She took an open space, and wrote songs that were not there before, and found a few hundred people who agreed that they were special and good. She didn't seem worried at all.
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