Two Songs For a Friday

Festival // Sigur Ros

I was going to write a whole blog post about 127 Hours, which hit with me with the intensity that Into the Wild did, but I thought I would just pay homage to this incredible film with a song that marks it's conclusion. For some, it may be slow for the first 4 minutes and 40 seconds, so I implore you, use that little mouse clicker to fast forward to 4:39, and go from there. In my opinion, the song, and the movie, are synonymous to the human experience. Adventure, struggle, and an ultimate victory.

Barbara Streisand // Duck Sauce

This one is compliments of my good friend and soul sister, Miss Lauren Buckowsky. She lured me into a loft-like dance club in Williamsburg not long ago, and somehow we all came alive in a way we hadn't before. This song, among many others, got us excited about the night, about the dance floor, about New York, and about being young. This video is incredible, portraying the craziness of young and vibrant New Yorkers, while leaving you thinking... "Is this amazing or is this amazing?"

It Happens

Quick, like summer. Quick, like burning your tongue or falling in love. It happens in an instant. The lights go up across the street and the music on the radio changes and the pigeons fly up in masses, their wings fluttering the wind through your hair; you're unaware. Things become soft and quiet, the soft quiet feeling of a store full of colored yarn, or another comforter on your bed. Windows close and shades are drawn, air becomes quiet, our cheeks become red, we feel softer. Evidence of breath without sound. The city braces itself for it, knows how hard it will be, how slow the trains will become, how school might be let out on days when it wouldn't be in, say, April. We put up an enormous tree near a skating rink so that tourists and children can flock there and say, oh yes, it's that time of year. Yes, we're here. We tuck in around each other, quiet and soft, whispering words and hugging hugs we wouldn't have in, say, April. It happens when we least expect it, the cold entering our bloodstream just as the warmth has settled in.

I Beg You

Two Songs for a Friday

Cripple Crow // Devendra Banhart

I remember when I first heard Devendra Banhart, in a tiny Madison bunk bed bedroom which I shared with the very roommate I have now, 6 years later, in Brooklyn. She showed me some of the most eclectic and beautiful music I'd ever heard. This album came out a few years ago, and it's oddities and nonconformities are what draw me to it, again and again. It's tribal, organic, it tells a story, like all songs should.

If It's the Beaches // The Avett Brothers

This song has affected me for about a year and a half now, since I first heard it on my living room floor on Butler Street. A friend was in town, a loud-mouthed Dutchman who offended me just as much as he warmed my heart. The last time we had seen each other was somewhere 30 miles east of Bangkok, probably over Singha Beer and cards. He played this song for me on his guitar, which he was bringing on a road trip down the east coast, following the Avett Brothers and trying to find cute Southern chicks. He played and we sang on my living room floor far into the night. Today is his birthday, so this one's for him.

Housing Works

I started volunteering on Monday afternoons at the Housing Works Bookstore. It's a non-profit, donation-run cafe & bookstore that benefits the housing and research for those who suffer from AIDS and HIV in New York. I like it there. It's warm, a bit dusty, and has that musty book smell, all the books have flattened dog-eared page and coffee stains on the covers. The people who work there are cuddly characters from childrens' books.

Catherine likes to be by herself, sorting books in the basement and humming Miles Davis tunes into the dank air. She's got round glasses and a small nose. She's what I would imagine I'll be like when I'm sixty years old. Gray, wrinkly, but still agile and quick with a joke, and desperately in need of alone time with stacks of books. She took to me immediately, and I to her - it was like she was looking at a mirror of her past, and I into one of my future.

Then there's Eddie, a squat and round man who has earrings that line his lobes and I think he might be from the Philippines or Hawaii but I haven't asked him yet. He's got this lovely sentiment to him that screams "I want to get things done, and now!" Always doing something, checking the store and making sure the displays are in order. I think he and I will become friends, but I think he will take a bit longer to crack.

Then there's Theresa, who I won't normally work with but who I worked on a shift with that they needed extra volunteers - apparently the weekend after Thanksgiving, people love to clean out their bookshelves and donate them in heavy, breaking boxes. Theresa and I are quite similar - unemployed, sarcastic, rather unfashionable and happy for it. She is a writer too. We established a joshing rapport right away.

How easily these friends were made is baffling to me. Or maybe it's not, because we're all book people, and we book people get along - in our awkwardness, in our senseless knowledge in senseless things, in our boredom with reality.

Yesterday was a particularly impactful day when Eddie asked me to do a task I hadn't done before. Usually I shelve books, or price books, or set up the mat and chairs for the children's story time. Yesterday, Eddie gave me a white window pen and a list of names. He told me he had noticed I had nice handwriting and asked me to "sign" these people's names on the two big front windows. I liked the idea of the project at first, and while I buttoned up my coat I smiled at the difference in my life between the sterile desk and keyboard at Scholastic only two weeks ago and projects like this. I'm happy to be standing outside, seeing my breath as I press a white pen to a window, reminding passersby of how many people a year we lose due to HIV/Aids. As I was writing the names, people would stop and watch. We have a sign up in the window announcing that Today is World AIDS Day - a day to remember the loved ones we've lost - a day when all the names of the people who have died from AIDS are read aloud, echoing from 5 podiums in City Hall Park in Manhattan. I was writing these names, and each of them, as they came out of my fingers and onto the glass, started to tell me stories of their families and of their dreams. It became harder and harder to do as I wrote more and more names. So many stories, so many loves and losses.