no pare, sigue, sigue
January 15, 2009
I'm standing outside the backstage door in the sharp cold, dressed in sweater upon sweater. It is cold you-can't-feel-your-fingers-beneath-your-mittens cold. Pinpoints of white fall from the sky, and vanish, changing their collective minds: it is too cold even for snow.
I'm not sure why I'm standing here. A throng of people, flashing cell phones and digital cameras, outstretched hands grasping pens and playbills. I don't need an autograph or a photo opportunity. I don't need an extra piece of the limelight to put in my pocket; not this time.
But I am standing here just the same. The cold is whittling away the crowd to less and less, lost to the more sensible warmth of coffee shops and restaurants and home. But the writer hasn't come out yet. And he's who we're waiting for.
Who I'm waiting for.
After the final bows I lingered among the rows of red cushioned seats, watching the people start to dress the set for the next performance. I didn't want to leave. The shimmer that clings to the air after a show wouldn't be out in the streets. The speedball of intensity born of tears and laughter in quick succession only stays in your veins so long.
Doesn't it?
So my feet led me to the backstage door. I am behind someone from Puerto Rico, beside a couple speaking in Spanish. There are only twelve of us, fifteen maybe now, when the door finally opens. He is in a hurry, but he signs quickly for the people gathered in the makeshift line, poses for snapshots, hugs a regular visitor. I am at the tail of the crowd and he nearly passes me by, obviously on his way somewhere. "I just wanted to say--" the words leave my mouth as his back is to me, stride purposeful. He turns.
"I just wanted to say thank you. That was beautiful." He holds out his hand to mine, and shakes it, and thanks me for coming, before disappearing into the streets of New York.
Posted by Olga at 10:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Two Thousand And Nine
January 8, 2009
I'm getting better at twittering than I am at keeping up this blog.But I'm trying! I am!
Random highlights of the last eleven days:
- touched ground in four countries in two days
- went to Holland and Belgium for the first time
- knowing I'm in Amsterdam because the airport is filled with clouds of beautiful smoke
- eating my only meal in Belgium at Buffalo Bill's, a faux American restaurant with tacky totem poles adorning the entrance out by the Brussels airport
- nearly got deported in Ireland by the friendly immigration officers
- arrived in New York City to brilliant snow
- opened up the new year surrounded by beautiful artists in a beautiful apartment full of art
- followed by, a few hours later, standing on a stage with Beth Hommel and Amanda Palmer and the Danger Ensemble, due to the sheer hubris of Miss Beth. (She took me by the hand, with no backstage passes of any kind, and hurried us past the bouncers with such a fierce look of intensity that of COURSE we belonged there.)
- am crashing with said Beth and her mom, happily surrounded by keys of all kinds, and art, and the streets of Brooklyn, and bodegas, and the J train, and, and, and
- happiness.
I think I don't say much here because how much to say? My mood swings overcome me, I don't want to get too personal, I wait, and I wait, and then weeks and months pass. And that's okay. It's a New Year. I spent New Year's Day, my birthday, bundled and scarved and gloved wandering the freezing pavement through Central park alone, past the ice skaters in Rockefeller Center, the giant Christmas tree, the sheer glowing warmth of the people on the street, the tourists, the fifteen vendors selling the same five winter hats, the hot dog sellers, the tourists, the families... being lost in the crowd of strangers and feeling so happy just to be next to these people in the middle of winter, wherever they were from, wherever they were going.
It was a good birthday. I'm thirty.
Really? Thirty? You look so young.
Yes. Thirty.
Kind of amazing.
I think I'm living my life backwards. At twenty my life was much more sort of "together" than it is now-- and now I am a vagabond gypsy, flitting about the world and making music and art and, and, and...
I think my twenty year old self would admire me. I think my ten year old self would cling to me in equal parts infatuation and amazement.
I think these are good signs.
Onwards. Upwards.
Posted by Olga at 6:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
