This afternoon i watched the second half or so of Spike Lee's Malcolm X, and when the montage of everyone starting to travel to the Audobon Ballroom over "A Change Is Gonna Come" started, i began crying. I'm not sure why - maybe because whatever problems i have with Lee's film the song and the images were incredibly powerful. Maybe because i have been for the last month working thirty feet away from the shotgun bullets which were lodged in his body and have been surrounded by the courtroom skethches from the trial of his assassins. Maybe it's because i'm a sap and whenever you stick Nelson Mandela in front of a bunch of children and have him say something powerful, i clam up. Maybe it's because I've been a pretty big emotional wreck since like May 2004 and can no longer find rhyme or reason in any emotional responses i have to any work of art in the age of digital replication.
Later on this evening, after watching another annoying episode of six feet under, as i went for a walk, i almost thought i was going to start sobbing in the middle of the street, not because of the episode, which was frustratingly contrived enough to make me want to, but because i was feeling lonely and self-flagellatory. But i didn't. Apparently my cell phone sucks. Like, i just got a text message someone sent me two and a half hours ago, telling me they were getting a busy signal on my phone when they tried to call me. And god knows i wasn't talking to anyone. Damn you, Cingular.
On the up side, i may have found an apartment in Sunset Park. If we can get it, it's a great, cheap place with a lot of natural light and a fair amount of space, not too far from the N and/or D. And tomorrow, I'm seeing the Pixies. And despite inexplicable tear duct malfunctions, my life does generally seem to be coming together a bit and a return to something resembling adulthood seems imminent.
Hey Zac,
ReplyDeleteI came to visit you today. Sad that you're now feeling well. I been trough this period and I guest I am still trough it. This time of life when your childish illusions fall apart and you must fight trough life of give up. It is like if you know, you feel all the mess everywhere but you must close your eyes or never be simply happy. By doing so, you accept to shut down a side of your personality with eyes wide open. I when through a little book, talking about the power of the present moment and this is the way I finally succeed in enjoying life: a child angelic smile, the sound of rain on the window, the bliss of light trough the leaves of this big tree in front of my room’s window. The beauty of art, the sound of my saxophone and the way my fingers run on it. The ringing of the phone announcing a friend is calling. Well, I still have rage and frustration coming to the surface time to time, like a powerful and hidden wave. Keeping it inside until the right moment will come to use it. My little secret force.
Well, take care to you and treasure this chance you have to be alive, and to be a conscious human being of the way society goes on. This is your own force.
Avec tout mon respect et ma considération,
MS