Sunday, October 11, 2009

art, art, art, art...

Then sings my soooooouuuuuul.....
Actually I have enjoyed singing that one.
I like very much the feeling of, when I'm reading something, that someone has tried to uncover a secret. Recentish examples:
1) A. Fulton's great grandmother
2) Spain's African history in Kinky Gazpacho.
3) Yosemite's Buffalo Soldiers.
Sooo sucked back into my own memories of going to two elementary schools in the Seattle area because of reading I'm Down.
Less intensely, but more gently, I remembered New York when I reread a poem called "Sympathetic Hexes" from Dance Script With Electric Ballerina. A memory of a museum in Albany. In a quiet corner, I felt the urge and started to dance, perhaps, and a woman saw me and smiled, (maybe she even laughed? but not meanly, I think.) Then I stopped and I wouldn't. I refused to come out of my shell. How sad. And poignant. But it's okay. One little moment of embarrassment is not forever.
I didn't grow up in "the city." I was from upstate NY, where grown ups worked in places like Macy's (not the big Thanksgiving parade one) and went to RPI. After I moved, when a new girl from NY came to Seattle, I was excited, but she was from the city and it became clear that this was not the same NY I knew, and also that hers was cooler. I was from the Albany area. However, upstate NY and reading books was enough to instill a sense of familiarity in me when I visited the city as an adult. And I'd already been to cities like Seattle and Amsterdam. Every amazing city also has an element of insularity.
I found out that a Bob Dylan show is in my friend's future.
This is a funny review of his new Christmas album.

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