2001-04-01

The experience of joy. That I don't wanna leave you. I can't say goodbye. Don't know no way to say goodbye to you kinda joy is far too often immediately followed the blues. Is it because there has to be some sort of cosmic balancing out of the ego? "Yes, let's give you this happiness, and now let's give you this pain." Or is it because you need some leavening in your life? In order to rise and ferment properly, there has to be consistency. There has been no consistency.

And that's when things fall apart.

When things fall apart, I sit on my bed for an hour, staring into the necklaces hanging from the rafters of my bunk bed, gazing at them, and the incense smoke trailing in and around them. Wondering when the incense smoke will stop. Wondering if I can handle all of this. There is a song. The song says something like, "God gives you as much as you can handle." Why does it feel like a lie? A big fat fucking lie. I don't think I've ever had the ability or the strength to hold onto everything simultaneously. The moment that everything feels like it's coming together, it's simultaneously unraveling, and I'm too busy noticing the joy to notice everything else crumbling.

I'd rather stay here with you on this streetcorner. I'd rather stay here smoking my cigarette. I'd rather stay here ignoring reality, smoking this joint with you and talking about the meaning of life. I'd rather stay here and cut open my hands and watch them bleed. I'd rather not think about all the things I should be doing and rather I'd like to dream of all the songs I'd like to be making.

The blues began last night in a crowded concert hall, standing room only, bored and sinking away from being stoned. The men standing outside the concert hall have the blues too. That's why they ask for change and bang on plastic barrel drums for pennies. But us girls and boys who ain't never got our shit together got the blues too. And there were 200 of us standing around in this concert hall on a saturday night in Detroit. The smoke was gettin heavier. The indie kids, the punk rockers, the poets and the artists all co-mingled with the adults, beers in hands around the billiards tables. They were there to tell their bosses the next day who the next great singer was gonna be. They said it was gonna be Jack White. We were all standing around waiting to see if what they said was true.

And then some loud, annoying music started. It lasted for 50 minutes and we all waited impatiently for it to be over with. And then more loud music followed, and we all waited until Jack White and his sister Meg would ascend the stage. I walked around and around. I had hopped in the car with ex-man-love and my roommate, and I was bored the entire time, barely spoke a word. What was there to say? "Oh yeah, and the music is too loud and it's not that musically interesting. Oh yeah, and I don't like the people here. Oh yeah, and I don't have any money on me. I left it all at home so I wouldn't buy a beer."

Sometime past the moment my ears began bleeding and sometime before the moment I hit the sack, Jack White ascended the stage. Him and his sister, Meg, lept into their songs with a fierce excitement. But it left far too much to be desired. All I could think about were the blaring speakers next to my ears and the ringing in my head and how Jack uses the same chords over and over and over in his songs and how his sister does not know how to play the drums. They said he would bring the passion and excitement back to rock and roll. They said he would be the next Jim Morrison. They said he was fierce. I beg to differ.

Several nights prior, I experienced real music making with Markita. Our venue of choice was a short walk away from the public library, where we had listened to an old lady spin tunes out of an antique looking hammered dulcimer. The tunes were light, airy, melodic but not rhythmically interesting, all in major keys. She said to me as we left, "I need some coffee." I agreed, and we headed towards a coffeehouse where we talked about funking up my hammered dulcimer: putting it in an alternate tuning, specifically a minor tuning, and using syncopated beats to create a low, dusty, bluesy sound. After we'd had our fill of coffee, we headed to the Bird of Paradise.

The Bird is a jazz club. We descended into the room, large, with spacious seating, people sitting, smoking and drinking, a quartet playing, and a particularly friendly transgendered waiter named Miko. We put our stuff down and I went out towards the bar to find an ashtray, at which point I met Miko. When I returned to Markita, she said to me, "Good drummers make me wanna come all over myself." I blurted out a bit of laughter and watched the drummer. He was smooth. He was everything a good drummer should be: passionate and inside the universal groove, and yet he also maintained a sense of control and steadiness. His glasses were small, his hair short and brown, his blue oxford shirt was loose, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He had a grin on his face, his eyes were closed and his drumsticks rolled and slapped the kit with precision. He did things with the drumkit that made me drool. "Oh god," I said as he did this, "Help me mother" as he did that. I began to share Markita's sense of ecstasy with the drummer.

The guitarist shared the groove the drummer was in. He was skilled and executed licks with ease, as though the guitar was just an extension of himself, as though he could fully express anything through that guitar. His head moved, his body swayed, and we stared, spellbound. This was just the beginning. This was the opening band.

As they exited the stage, the audience slowly filled the small club. Members of the headlining band took to the stage and began picking up their instruments. There was a tall, fair skinned black man with fat black sunglasses and a black leather jacket -- the bassist. There was a dark skinned man wearing a white Hanes tee shirt and black leather pants -- the drummer. There was a strange looking man with balding black hair and creases in his forehead, he wore a black sleeveless shirt and leather pants -- the percussionist. There was an aged Indian man from New Jersey who looked like a part-time guru -- the tabla player. There was a funny looking man whose ethnicity I dared not presume, his hair was curly and stood up all bushy-like and he too wore leather pants -- the saxophonist. Behind the piano sat the leader of this group, Michael Wolff, a white man with brown hair and a scratchy voice. They began playing.

I don't remember how soon into the music I began to feel things, but I began to feel things. I began to feel as though the air were about to split in half. I began to feel my spirit boiling, my body becoming a restriction. I felt like I could jump out of my body and into the air, if only there was no body. I felt like dancing. I felt like singing. She was sitting next to me and said, "Could you do me a favor? Scoot yer chair over a little." I picked up my chair and moved an inch further away from her. She said, "No, towards me, so I can be next to you." I looked into her and smiled, she with a mischevious grin, and our bodies remained next to each other's for the entirity of the show.

The show produced such energy, such excitement, that it began to be difficult to hold back any impulses whatsoever. All during the show, I wanted to strip her down and make love to her. Our hands were in each other's, our arms were around each other's, we tapped the rhthym of the music onto each other's skin. We became the drum, the canvas, on which we would both express our art, and I could feel myself writing stories as everything happened. I would write a novel and I would write it on her. I went to the bathroom. Secretly, I'd hoped that she would follow me inside. When I came back to the seat, she told me that the percussionist, Frank, had told her his plans for the next week... "Minneapolis tomorrow, Rome in a couple of days, and next week they'll be in LA recording an album... Ahh, That's the life," she said. I looked at her and said, "What's wrong with the life in front of you? They have to shuttle from airport to airport, befriend strangers constantly, they probably don't even get to see the cities they are performing in. Life is life right now."

She thinks she's gonna be a star. She wants people to pay lots of money to her to play the guitar. She wants to live comfortably, set her parents up in a comfortable house, and she wants to jet-set around the country playing gig after gig... Ahh, that's the life. Secretly, I have beef with this. I said to her last week, "I'm going to become some obscure nun living in a convent, making my art when I can, and practicing reiki often. You're gonna go off and become famous and you'll go off and forget about me, and you'll be like, 'I wonder what ever happened to Kaite Hoover,'" She said, "I'll remember you." I think I would be lucky if I got to make a living simply by whoring my art though I know I won't ever make a lot of money off of it. If I can live off of it, that's all I ask. If I get to live out even a couple of my dreams in this lifetime, I will be fulfilled. And I want so much. There are so many things to do and such a short lifetime in which to do it all, and yet I'm looking forward to moving out of the physical body when I die. Between then and now, if I write a couple of novels, have some books of poetry published, sell some photographs, make some albums, give people reiki, garden, have a daughter, fall in and out of love, create a non-denominational monastic community for artists and mystics, have a house out in the countryside, see bits of the world, eat sushi regularly, and I don't end up a bitter old woman, I will be happy. If I live a happy life, that's more important than achieving fame. She said to me tonight, "I look for myself in everything as I pass it by... Store-windows, windows in cars, even your eyes.. I'm always looking for myself them. I'm looking for myself. And if you believe that you are made in the image of God, then you must believe that you are God, and that by worshipping (and understanding?) yourself, you are understanding God." I said to her, "But, you are nothing without God. You have to keep your mind on him, not on yourself. He gave you everything and can take everything away, and if you lose focus, he will." Markita and I are two completely self-absorbed, egotistical little bitches, caught somewhere between love and lust, and I'm treading water every time I'm with her, wondering if I will sink or swim. But I want her just the same.

During the show, we sat engrossed in the music and each other. Before the show ended, I somehow managed to become so overwhelmed in the music that I sang loudly enough that the neighbors several tables away were annoyed and after that I danced in order to deal with the overwhelming energy in the music. The band seemed to dig it that I was dancing. Miko, the FTM waiter, hugged us both before we left and gave us each two beers for free, she rolled her eyes as she said, "Oh, well, you know, I cashed out before I had a chance to get over here! You know, I see so many uptight old men in here, it's great to see some girls representin and dancing! If the boss were here, he would've had a cow! He's so old school, you know?" And as we walked out the doors, their manager shook our hands and was happy that we enjoyed the show and made some comment about me dancing. I made some lame comment about how I would buy the CD if I weren't so broke. He smiled and handed me a CD. I nodded my head and thanked him again before we split the joint.

We walked out into the cool night air, the music still in our heads, our hands in each other's hands. We walked to her car and kissed before we got in. I sang some funny song to her. We went back to her place where I spent the night. We were so turned on by the music, we stayed up till almost 4 in the morning licking up the rough corners of each other before falling asleep to the album he'd given us.

I woke up late and decided not to go to my classes. I decided it would be better to make some sense of the day and the weather. We walked around together, playing on swing-sets and kissing on streetcorners. When we parted I said, "We're no good at this good-bye thing," at which point she said, "Yeah, if I don't leave you now, I never will."

I laughed and we parted with our fingertips trailing each other.

The rest of the day was a lost day: I wasted time smoking cigarettes and eating food and walking very slowly. I went to an international music festival and wasted time listening to Javanese music, watched a Bollywood movie and saw other people make fools of themselves. The place was packed. Nothing found me gripped until the Congolese dancers. I had just stepped out of the sexist, racist, elitist and generally boring Bollywood movie and had descended a stairwell when I opened a door. When I opened the door, I found 200 people staring at me, all waiting for something to begin. I looked around me. There were large African drums, instruments of all kinds, and a space cleared for the dancers. I sat down and waited for it to begin.

I've always been a fan of African dancing. It makes me wish I was African so that I wouldn't look like a white fool trying to cut it with a bunch of other dancers. My skin is erroneously light skinned, my hair as flat and limp as you can imagine, my ass is skinny and bony. I would not look right with these African dancers, though I wish I could. I want to learn the way they move, perfectly synchronized with each other, their arms going everywhere, their breasts extended and retracted, their hips and butts gyrating. The audience, of at least 200 people crammed together, most standing, loved it and applauded enthusiastically. Then it came time for anyone in the audience to dance. Suddenly a small girl jumped up, her body taken entirely with the music, not even caring about the way she looked, caring only about wanting to dance with the music that was infused inside of her. I wanted to dance, but I hesitated. I watched her. I admired her. She was so young, maybe 8 years old. The old man who lead the music group with his singing, his shouting, his wailing, loved her. He took to her and began dancing. It was her strength that inspired me to dance. Once she and I were up there dancing, we pulled more people in the audience to dance. Many were shy and did not want to. But there were those that danced, and I think it was because of her and I. Her name was Julia. We shook hands. I said to her, "Don't you ever lose your spirit. Always dance, even when you're an adult! Don't ever be afraid!" She didn't understand what I was saying. She didn't understand that people grow self-conscious and that their bodies begin to deteriorate.

And I danced with my usual abandon, the sweat dripping down my face, my legs swinging and kicking, my arms stretched into the air. When a song ended, I sat down and a girl next to me said, "You're gutsy." I looked at her, then my eyes shifted towards Julia and I said, "No, she's gutsy." Julia had the biggest smile and the happiest energy. At one point, I was dancing with my eyes closed, and just focused entirely on the feeling, and then there was a tap on my head. I turned around and it was her. She grinned at me enormously and stretched her hands out towards mine. We danced together for a bit, but neither of us quite knew how to dance with one another, we both had a different style. But I hugged her and shook her hand before heading out into the cold night air. My legs ached, my eyes stung with salt encrusted in the interior cracks of my eye lids. I called Jeff on a pay phone. He said, "I'm pretty wasted, but you can come over."

So, I went over to Jeff's house just in time to say hello and goodbye to Jerry, who said, "Hello beautiful," to me as he hugged and kissed me upon entrance. I hugged Jeff and we all sat down. When Jerry left, Jeff and I lit a roach and began catching up on news. We hadn't seen each other for days. We swapped stories. I tried to tell him about what had been happening between Markita and I, and he said, "What's wrong with you? You're sleeping with some guy's girlfriend and it's not your business?" I told him that I respected Markita's relationship with George and that I just wanted to have a bit of her as well, which she seems happy to give. But I knew that I could not talk to Jeff about this, important as this was to me, because I knew he would be jealous and upset and that he would react from this point of view.

Eventually, I left and went to bed. Saturday began and the joy from Thursday, falling into Friday, was dissipating by Saturday. I woke up feeling ashamed at not being able to keep things together, though I knew what I had to do. I had to do a photo shoot on the public busses, chatting up strangers and taking their photographs for class. I had some interesting experiences with that, but afterwards I wanted to talk to Jeff and clear my mind. I went to his house, though I left with my mind less clear than when I entered. I felt as though the hours had been lost. I ran home to catch up with Beth, so that we could head towards Detroit, where the show was. Conversation with Matt and Beth in the car ride there was interesting but no one talked on the way back. I left the concert hall more bewildered, upset and unclarified than ever. There was ringing in my ears. There was an emptiness in my heart and an urgency to accomplish all the things I'd been putting off.

I woke up Sunday morning with smoke still on my skin and the ringing, stinging noise from the loud speakers in my ears. An hour had been lost due to the time change. I felt as though everything was slipping away. I had assignments to do, I had a life to record, I had so many things on my mind, and no time to take care of it. It all began to spiral around and around in my head. I had to make dinner at Vail. While making dinner, I cut 3 of my fingers 3 times with the same knife. After the last finger had been cut, I simply gave up. I began to cry. Everything came to a head and I gave up. I sat down on the couch and tried to think of things to be grateful for. After dinner, I smoked a cigarette with Beth and continued that thought. I know the difficult moments are transient and mean nothing in the grand scheme of things, other than they kick you in the rear so that when you have good moments, you really are able to appreciate what you've got, and they give you the momentum to move through all the shit.

<< // >>
archives // site info // gratitude