Fall back

The J-school Halloween party and afterparty last night stole my Sunday. I always have a productivity hangover after a night of fun, even though I generally take care not to get sloshed.

My evening ended where it began: at Natasha del Toro's, where she'd cut a wig for me around 8 p.m. Nearly 10 hours later, half a dozen people sat around her place eating meat pockets and homemade pumpkin pie, which was a much yummier combination last night then than it looks right now, in sentence form. We listened to wonderful music by a Portuguese band whose name I can't remember. I got back to 10J so late that I brought in the newspaper.

It was fun to watch people I'd only seen around in all-class lectures get lusty with one another. The costumes were current-eventish and rad --- just what you'd expect from journalists. We were Abu Ghraib prisoners, Arabs and Bush-Cheney loyalists. My personal favorite was Victoria Schlesinger's Romenesko.

I spent some time in the library today, editing my immigration story and doing research for my master's project. (Speaking of the library at Columbia, the Library Musical is a must-see: http://www.prangstgrup.com/lm/lm.htm.)

If a pol were a sandwich, would he be a hero?

Francis X. Clines is a pearl within the Tiffany oyster of The New York Times. I was apparently wearing my reverence on my sleeve yesterday when I went to the Times building to interview him: as I was leaving, a grinning security guard in the lobby asked me if he should laminate my guest’s name-tag and mail it to me.

Ha ha ha, I responded.

I talked to Clines, a veteran political reporter who now covers national politics, Congress and campaign finance as a member of the editorial board, for 50 minutes in his office. During that time, Clines shared with me his opinion of Bush ("the worst president" in Clines’ lifetime), tips on editorial-writing (trust your instincts and don’t put initial reactions "through a shammy of profundity"), and an assessment of the pressures between the liberal ed board and a Times ownership that gave three quarters of a million bucks to the Republican National Convention (they don’t exist).

My favorite thing he said was this; pure inspiration in a column-inch:

"The funny thing is, I love politicians because they’re the best way to get at the ultimate story of humanity, which is what? It’s a mixture of idealism, audacity, opportunism, the inevitable survival of humanity, and someone has to step forward, and that sort of thing. So I admire them ultimately. And they reflect all of our flaws. They’re human. It’s a great story because they’re human."

He put it simply, and it sounds almost Homeric. For all the sound bites they dish, and all the bubble-wrap with which their staff separates them from probing media, politicians are human and their role is a noble one.

It must be awfully hard, in the first place, for them to step onto the chopping-block. For all the respect they earn, politicians are talked nastily about, publicly scrutinized, and often made to sit through boring meetings. I can’t imagine talking in press-release-speak and having to plan my outfit (or hairdo) around whatever color makes America feel the safest. (And you know advisers to both Kerry and Bush consulted the same website the night before the final debate. The candidates were wearing the same thing down to the polka-dot.)

Chat disenfranchisement

I attempted to join a live chat session today that I found on President Bush's website. My nicely worded, NYC-based question about first-time registrants was not chosen for airtime. The questions that were chosen poured in from the far reaches of America's swing states. They were answered by Bush Campaign worker Terry Nelson, whose writing had a distinct flavor (possibly envelope glue.)

You can read the transcript of the chat here: http://www.georgewbush.com/Chat/LiveChat.aspx?ID=47&refresh=man

Highlights of the chat include the questions posed from residents of Arkansas and Nevada, probably chosen because a slim Bill Clinton campaigned there for Kerry last weekend. Of the two token non-swing-state questions chosen, one came from Texas. The author said he feels that this time around, voting will result in a "solid win for someone (Bush I hope)." He later used a creative spelling of the word "polls."

The other, which came in from California, criticizes journalists for our liberal bias:

Miguel Raya from Los Angeles CA wrote: I read a newspaper article in the LA TIMES last weekend noting that the voter registration effort across the country may actually help democrats. Do you think this is true? I hope not and hope that people stop writing politically charged stories like this about the non-political monumental effort that everyone involved with the vote effort has accomplished the past few months.

This question-answer combo sort-of sums it all up. And it makes reference a magic book, which is something everyone can enjoy:

Alex Dominguez from Tallahassee FL wrote: Campaign management is an amazing thing; the management of ideas, actions, people, resources becomes bunched into one role or position. My activities as a volunteer have allowed me to see these factors in play (and I love it) but I have not been able to grasp how, or where, one picks up the knowledge. Is it experience, is it inate talent....is there a magic book somewhere in a secret library one can read?

Terry Nelson answered: Alex, you're learning it in the best possible way, by doing it. If you love being a volunteer, you should try to go work on a campaign. Most folks start out like you making phone calls, knocking on doors and sealing envelopes and go on to be field staffers, and political directos, and campaign managers. There are plenty of opportunities for people who are hard-working and dedicated to our candidates. Keep it up and thank you for your help.

Interventions

I go to bed late lately, but there are always a handful of lit-up windows in the neighboring apartments to keep me company. Occasionally I'll see the shadow of an arm, a pant leg, or an actual arm, a leg, a hand. More often I see the silhouettes of people sitting on their beds behind their curtains in my imagination.

I wonder what 10-U is doing. I wish he didn't live right across the hall from Bashed-in-the-Mouth Guy and his wife.

A little background: I met BITM Guy on the elevator after he'd recently fallen off a roof, broken some ribs and bashed his mouth in. He and his wife are South African and in their mid-20s.

BITM Guy told me I'd make an adorable couple with his friend, who works as an underwear model. I laughed when he told me, so BITM Guy invited me over to his apartment and showed me said friend's modeling portfolio. Pictures of an iconic blonde man were pressed beneath the plastic sleeves of a large photo album. BITM Guy's wife, a cordial and curly-haired girl, invited me to come swimming with them in Central Park the next day. BITM Guy told me to stop by later on that evening to meet said friend.

I said I'd come by after I took a nap, feeling like I'd need a shower and six makeovers to climb up to said friend's level of attractiveness. Luckily, I napped late and missed the meeting entirely.

I've seen BITM Guy and his wife only one time since. I think dating an underwear model would make me a wreck. I'd spend all my time wishing I were dating a scruffy, gawky guy with black plastic glasses.

Still, I can't very well borrow pasta sauce from 10-U with BITM Guy and his wife --- and possibly said friend --- right across the hall. The one time I knocked I kept peeking out of my shoulder, expecting the other door to open. (No one was home.)

From this weekend's New York Times:

FLORIDA: COURT WON'T REVISIT FEEDING TUBE CASE The State Supreme Court denied Gov. Jeb Bush's request to reconsider its ruling that struck down a state law intended to keep alive Terri Schiavo, who is severely brain damaged. Last month, the court unanimously ruled that the law letting Mr. Bush order Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted violated the separation of powers guaranteed by the Constitution. Ms. Schiavo's husband, Michael, saying he was following her wishes, does not want to keep Mrs. Schiavo alive artificially, and lower courts have ruled that he could have the tube removed. Ms. Schiavo, 40, left no written instructions before suffering brain damage 14 years ago.

Is there anyone left out there who thinks Republicanism is synonymous with small government?

Run on by

I had just started a morning jog through Riverside Park when I noticed an enormous group of people walking toward me. They were cheerful, wrapped in fleeces and scarves, and holding signs. I groaned: it was the Walk With Us to Cure Lupus Walkathon, and I was running in the other direction.

As I passed the hundreds of people who had donated their time and money this Saturday morning to help find a cure for Lupus, I smiled sheepishly. I quickened my pace, but it's impossible to outrun a Walkathon.

"Hey," I imagined one guy from the Lupus Asian Network saying to fellow walkers. "Who's that girl with the blue hoodie who doesn't give a damn about Lupus?"

Indefinite articles

Caitlin and I were published in the Bronx Times this week. The story is about the 1997 murder of a woman named Mercedes Rosario. Her whole family lived in the same apartment building when they first moved to the Bronx from the Dominican Republic, and now all of Mercedes' relatives have moved out except for her poor sister Margarita.

Margarita was a picture of struggle, painted into a corner. She wants to leave the building where her sister was murdered, but can't because of health problems and red tape. The article esta aqui: http://www.bxtimes.com/news/2004/1014/Boroughwide_News/063.html

I played at an open mike night last week in the East Village. I know I can do better, but I'm glad I proved I can sing better than I bawk-bawk-bugawk. I'll do it again when I've amassed more, and better, songs.

Naturally, I summoned up the courage in a timely manner to fulfill an assignment for class. Here are the fruits of my labor, as yet unpitched and unpublished:

I tore through my room like a Tasmanian devil, looking for the perfect permutation of tops and bottoms. I thought to myself: I can go rockstar in a miniskirt and heels, but it’s cold outside and clammy hands hit wrong notes; I can go sweet, with something pink layered over a lacy underthing, but that won’t match my bad-ass number, Goddess at Your Feet; or I can go Avril Lavigne and wear a lot of torn, black stuff, but I’m not nearly angry enough to pull that off.

My bedroom, which had looked pristine a few hours earlier, was a mess.

In 20 minutes, I would be leaving to perform at my first-ever open mike night. After years of thinking about it, and months of talking about it, I was finally going to play and sing my own songs for an audience. It was necessary that I look good doing it.

It is impossible to count the number of singer-songwriters in New York at any given moment. There are 533 registered with a website that purports to be New York’s “Singer-Songwriter Directory,” but the real number can fluctuate due to musicians’ wanderlust and lack of money. Judged only by the public that intercepts their shows at open mike nights, undiscovered singer-songwriters come and go.

At open mike nights, singer-songwriters learn how to work a crowd, feel comfortable in front of strangers and make love to a microphone. They shamelessly promote their demo albums, mailing lists and web sites. They get a feel for what works and what doesn’t.

They come to this city of 8.5 million people to get noticed.

I had wanted to join New York’s singer-songwriter scene from the instant my mom’s green Subaru pulled up and parked outside of my new Upper West Side apartment in August. A few years earlier, I had quit the prestigious piano performance program in which I had been enrolled at the Eastman School of Music, vowing to rediscover music someday. I had needed space from an instrument I had begun to loathe.

I worked at City Newspaper in Rochester before moving downstate to start graduate school at Columbia University’s school of journalism. One of my many tasks at City was to write CD reviews, and I became inspired by the music I heard from indie-girl poets like Erin McKeown, Marly Hornik and Jen Foster. I interviewed G. Love of G. Love and Special Sauce and swooned. I watched lyrical lovelies like Grammy-nominee Abra Moore on stage and wanted to be them.

Performance anxiety bit me harder than the bug to perform did, and after I moved to New York I saved my vocal stylings for the privacy of my apartment. My roommate, fellow Columbia student Mara Altman, was the only person to hear my rambling jazz renditions of Amazing Grace, Someday My Prince Will Come and ’Deed I Do. She heard me try to cover Alicia Keys, Norah Jones and Sarah Maclachlan tunes, and listened to me play the handful of songs I had written.

She claimed to like all of it.

So I decided to have more people over to the apartment. I played a few tunes for my friend Cartic, who has been writing and performing songs for the past six years. My friend Tom came over one evening and I sang his ear off.

I’m going to play at an open mike night soon, I would say. When they asked when, I would make excuses and talk about how incredibly busy I was.

Last Sunday, I decided I had had enough of being a poseur.

The C Note, on 10th Street and Avenue C in the East Village, became my club of choice. I had heard that a friend played there, bombed, and lived to tell about it. I had looked up the bar’s open mike night schedule on http://www.openmikes.org/, which lists information for open mike venues across the country.

I was not in the market for anything fancy, and was pleasantly surprised with the dive bar I found when I arrived. I put my coat and purse down on a chair beside a Mrs. Pac-Man arcade game that seemed to be doubling as a table. Around the bar, half a dozen people my mom’s age were standing around and talking to each other. A man in a driver’s cap walked up to me and suggested I add my name to the sign-up sheet. He knows why I’m here, I thought, and I walked like a nervous zombie to the piece of paper that already listed 16 names. I became number 17.

See, I told myself: that was easy.

To say I was nervous would be an understatement. During high school, I had performed at numerous piano competitions and recitals. I competed at an international event once in Ohio, and represented New York State at a concerto competition with contestants from all of the states along the Eastern seaboard. Adding my name to this list of singer-songwriters in the East Village brought back the dizzying fear I used to feel waiting for my turn to play at those events.

I wrote one of the songs, Over You, after a nice line popped into my head during a 10-mile run in Rochester. A two-year relationship of mine had started to sour, and I had taken up distance running to clear my head. My ex had always teased me for being too girly for serious athletics, and running was my way to prove to him, and myself, that he was wrong.

I ran until I thought I’d die, then I turned around/ I’ve never felt so alive, without you now. The chord changes were simple, and I plunked them out on my keyboard as soon as I got back to my apartment that evening. I wrote the words down in a steno pad, and then left them there to rot.

Months later, after the relationship ended, I came upon the words again. I’d been missing the guy, and expressed that with an addendum to my original thought: But if I tried to get what we had back/ would you try to put this train back on track? Nothing brilliant, but a good summary of the ambivalence I felt.

The thought of singing this song in front of people made my hands freeze. I sat at the Mrs. Pac-Man table with my friend Josh, alternately sipping from a bottle of Original Sin Hard Cider and a glass of water with lemon. The wavy-haired bartender, who became wistful whenever a ballad was played, had taken the ice cubes out of my waterglass with a spoon after she learned I was going to sing that evening. (“Singers usually don’t want ice,” she had explained. “It can close your throat.”)

I got up from my chair and started up a conversation with a blonde woman who looked like 1980s-era Madonna: an obvious regular.

Her name was Anne Biondich. “This is just my hobby,” she said, explaining that one of her more serious jobs is acting. She said her comedy bit, where she plays a woman named Dr. Powernozzle and vacuums up her friend Eugene Calamari (“like the squid,” Biondich said) had been featured in both The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Biondich, like the other people at the bar, was warm and genuine. Talking with her calmed my nerves. When she made a general announcement to the group — “She’s new here, so be nice to her!” — I began to think that performing at an open mike night wouldn’t kill me after all.

I was mesmerized by the first few acts of the evening: an auburn-haired, finger-picking guitarist who looked close to my age of 22; a guy in a yellow button-down and sunglasses who looked like your standard hit-man but sang exquisite love songs; a much older man whose songs the regulars knew by heart (“Kisses in the Snow!” Biondich had shouted several times.)

They sound pretty good, I thought to myself. I was more than a little disappointed.

The man who had welcomed me when I first arrived was Rick Johnson. He told me that he was an actor with a steady gig on Law and Order: SVU and had been a body double in the past for both Christopher Walken and Pierce Brosnan. Johnson opened and closed the open mike night with a few songs of his own, strumming tunes on his guitar that were steeped in Americana.

His voice had something I knew mine would be lacking: confidence.

A guy named Chris approached me and asked if I would play him in Pac-Man. I said I would. Cartic and Tom showed up, with Tom’s girlfriend Rachel. Josh offered to buy us an appetizer, but the thought of eating turned my stomach.

Somebody suggested I imagine everyone in the audience naked. I used to try that during classical piano competitions. It never works. And I had to pee.

Why was I playing at an open mike night if the very thought made me want to run away screaming? I remembered how I had been stuck for a few minutes on the subway and hoped that it would get shut down. During the long walk from Astor Place to the bar, I had been too ornery to look at people so I had smiled at their dogs instead. Was it worth it to make myself sick over this one thing I felt I somehow needed to do?

I stood in the dimly lit bar beside the Mrs. Pac-Man table, staring at the cream-and-black printed tapestry on the wall behind the stage, still unconvinced. At least, I thought, it isn’t my turn to play yet.

But then Rick Johnson came over to me and asked if I was ready. I was appalled to learn that the order of the sign-up sheet wasn’t absolute. I was not ready, but I figured that I probably never would be. Sure, I said, with the kind of giggly confidence that comes from nerves or too much Pepsi. Sure I’m ready.

My handful of fans in the bar cheered when Johnson announced me. It felt pretty good. I sat down at the keyboard wearing the outfit I had eventually chosen: a dark, low-cut shirt layered over a wispy tank, tight jeans and my favorite pair of flats. I smiled as I adjusted the microphone and delivered a pre-rehearsed five-second soundbyte. “Thanks for staying to listen, I hope you’re having fun, this is my first-ever open mike night, please bear with me,” I said.

My voice sounded loud. When I tested out the piano, I found that it sounded loud too. But I was past the point of no return, so I looked down at the keys and began to play Goddess at Your Feet.

I kinda like you/ I like the way you look/ I like the way you look at me like you just read your favorite book/ I like the way you steal/ into the night, into my arms, intuitively like the way you feel/ when you feel me up/ when you lift me up into the sky, I think that I’m in love/ but I’d like you to look into my eyes/ and say that even when I’m crabby you’ll still love me anyway/ and I’d like you to call me when you’re home/ and say how much you need me there whenever you’re alone/ and I’d like you to fall upon your knees/ and worship at the altar of this goddess at your feet.

I looked up when I was done. People were clapping and seemed generally pleased with what I had done. I felt like I was on another planet. “One more!” shouted someone, probably Anne Biondich.

So I played one more, slowly loosening up. While I never felt entirely comfortable, I felt a nice rush of I-did-it when I came upon the last chord.

It’s over, I thought.

Just like that.

I was not thrilled with how I had sounded, but Tom, Rachel, Cartic and Josh claimed to love the music I had made. A few other people in the crowd threw smiles and supportive words my way. I felt violated. (“I should have taped you to show you how well you did,” Tom said.)

Even so, I felt like I wanted to perform here again. Immediately.

As we walked toward the Astor Place subway station from The C Note a half hour later, I said to Cartic and Josh: “I’m exhausted. What time is it, 11?”

Cartic looked at his watch and began to laugh. “It’s only 8,” he said.

Rainy day

Three heart-shaped balloons just blew across the sky outside my window: silver, silver, red. They looked lost.

Brrr...

My feet are cold, my apartment is cold, and I have no idea which weekend I'm supposed to turn the clocks back.

I get the feeling winter is about to wind its arm up and pelt us with a snowball (or two, or three, or four.) I'm not ready yet. New York City will supposedly be nicer than Rochester was, but I'd still prefer the sun.

Hearing that the Red Sox won in the 15th inning tonight gave me hope that the Democrats will pull out a come-from-behind victory over the Yankees, err, Republicans. Ben McGrath of The New Yorker put this idea into my head. See article: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?040920ta_talk_mcgrath

Oddly an Atlanta Braves fan when I was young, thanks in part to the WGN station on my television and die-hard fan Lucy Dwyer down the road, I can remember a time when I hated the Yankees. I turned over a new leaf with the team after moving to their hometown. However, if the fates of Kerry and the Sox are somehow intertwined, I'm rooting for that team.

I saw 10-U yesterday as I was getting off of the elevator. He got on, holding a basket of laundry. We exchanged not phone numbers, but a smile.

Boo.

The brilliance of her delivery, from the childish care she took placing miniature pumpkins on the piano to the humor in her song about a 99-cent Jesus statue, faded to disappointment by the night's end. Regina Spektor, who had captured my heart just hours earlier, broke it when she said she wasn't interested in being the subject of my Master's project.

"I'm a private person," she said, looking like she felt genuinely sorry for me. "Good luck though."

A woman who worked at Warner Brothers, Jen Still, had warned me just minutes earlier that Spektor was swamped. Regina had signed with a major record label recently, which I knew, and was planning a European tour.

I expected a thick line of tape between myself and Regina's henchmen, but I had never considered the notion that Regina herself might not want my unsolicited attention.

What made it worse was how great I thought her playing and singing had been tonight. She'd played familiar songs from her recent release, "Soviet Kitsch" and new songs like the lilting "Blue Lips." She'd asked for something at the end of every song: water, more cello, more voice, a muffled snare. After each request, she'd smiled with the self-assurance of a girl who knows she's darling.

I wanted to lease her energy. I wanted to condense it like the oddly-textured conglomerate in fishball soup and eat it up.

But more than singing and writing about her songs, I wanted to sing and write songs of my own. Not just because I felt violated by the intense disinterest in my authorial voice that she had expressed. Mainly because watching her up on stage, with her luscious black curls and her littleboy grin, made me want to trade my journalist's hat for that of a musician.

After trading years of piano study in pursuit of a writing degree, I'm a bigger flip-flopper than Kerry.