I'm headed to the east coast for a couple of weeks to visit grand-parental units, moms, dads, brother in-laws, sister in-laws, aunts, uncles, old friends and strangers. I'll more than likely avoid the ol' blog and instead concentrate on the sounds of the voices spouting from the beloved humans before me.
Until then.
FF
Dear Lou,
I was returning a pair of jeans and trying on a red Kate Spade hat when I glanced down at my phone and read a text message from a friend that said you died. I wish I had been doing something else at the time, something less trivial, but, death, like birth, can never be timed in the ways in which we’d like them to be.
I was first introduced to you when I was 13. My father had a copy of Magic and Loss and I was drawn to your gruff melodic voice and raw lyrics. I pondered the man wearing black on the album cover while attempting to sing along. Life's like a mayonnaise soda. And life's like space without room. And life's like bacon and ice cream. That's what life's like without you…
And then I put you down and didn’t pick you back up until a few years later. The Velvet Underground came with a bang into my life along with a smorgasbord of other wonders. I was part of group of artists living in the ghetto of Denver. Here I claimed what type of human I wanted to be. Your music was the soundtrack in this process. It played in every room of the house. It inspired me to pick up the guitar and play despite how rough it may have sounded. It moved me to write. It drove me to create. It was my teacher.
The soundtrack followed me from Colorado to NYC, through mostly broken earphones, on subways and on long meanderings across the Williamsburg bridge. It played while I painted on kitchen walls and in frigid studios. It was with me during courtships and breakups, on long flights to other countries and more often than not there with me in the shower, warbling from my own throat.
I met you outside of headphones and speakers when I was 27 at the St. Ambroeus Cafe in the West Village. You were with your dog Lola and your long-term publicist Annie O. You looked frantic. Annie looked frantic. Lola the dog looked frantic. I sat down and introduced myself. While Annie checked what seemed to be a long list of email on her Blackberry, you and I discussed whether or not I would be up to the task of working for you. You asked me all kinds of inappropriate questions employers should never ask potential employees, but I assumed you were being funny, so instead of answering the questions, I laughed. I guess I expected you to laugh as well and when you didn’t, I realized I was in for a turbulent time.
The soundtrack paused after our first real life meet-up. The sounds that once comforted me were now warped. You were everywhere, buzzing on the table, beeping in my inbox, summoning me to your apartment. I was to do this and that and this again. And that. You didn’t believe me. You didn’t believe them. Get this. Get that. Find out! It wasn’t a job. It was a tortured relationship. I had to wash my clothes to get your smell off of me every day.
Then, that version of our relationship ended. I was sitting in a meeting with you. You had your usual, a skim cappuccino and an egg white omelet without toast. You had recently lost your publicist of 15 years and struck out at me to cope with your loss. I focused in on your quivering mouth and watched as the words split into my chest like bullets. My heart thumped and the breath in my lungs deflated. I blacked out for a second, stood up, walked out of the door and stood on the sidewalk, trembling.
You ran after me, screaming, demanding, then noticed my shaking limbs. I did this to you. You said, pouting. I know I did this to you. You pulled me into your chest. Breathe Felicity, breathe. You’re fine. You’re just having an anxiety attack. I have them all of the time. They are hell. I looked at you and burst into tears.
You took me back to your apartment and suggested I lay down on your electromagnetic bed with a cup of herbal tea. You said I didn’t have to work the rest of the day, that I should just relax. It was at this point, I knew that I had to quit and I know you knew I would.
I gave you three months notice and found a trusty replacement. You no longer yelled. You no longer said wildly abusive things to me. You began to ask how I was doing. You told me I looked better, less tired, beautiful even. You made me laugh. You laughed too. I pressed play. The soundtrack came back.
And it’s still here... Like the wind. Here come the waves, Here come the waves, Here come the waves
Xoxox Lou.
There is a man wearing the top part of a flesh-toned mask, making him look eyeless with a large forehead. He has a rotund nose and pointy chin. He wears a target uniform (a red shirt and khaki pants). I follow him around. He begins to sing and we weave in and out of toy aisles and climb giant piles of new objects still in their acetone packaging. I'm captivated by the man's voice. He climbs onto a large stage under a red dome. The stage looks like a gym from my high school. The man unveils his face. His eyes are bloodshot, his cheeks are peppered in stubble and he has a few pimples on his forehead. I'm relieved to see he is human. Set designers and production managers are cleaning up behind me. What's all of this? I ask one of them. It's all part of the performance. They tell me. The man in the Target uniform walks across the stage onto another directly next to it. The other stage is empty. He begins to sing louder and walks out of the back stage door into a parking garage. I follow him closely. His voice is in my throat. It spins off the walls in the garage. I can hear nothing else.
I leave work for a couple of hours to get drunk with a co-worker. Later I call in and say I'm not feeling well (which is true enough, I have a major drunken headache) but they ask me to come in anyway. So I do, and wearing only my underwear, I begin to clean out the insides of dirty vacuums. I'm covered in dust and hair and I feel filthy on the inside and out.
I am in a giant pool. It's larger than a small town. People hang out in the pool as though they live there on a day-to-day business. They pay their taxes in the pool, wash their cars in the pool, eat in the pool, do their grocery shopping, etc.. Helicopters fly above my head and send some kind of warning signal. A friend approaches. She tells me that my friend Sam is upset with me, that I've broken his heart. In the dream I remember kissing him quickly on the lips, but years ago. I summon Sam over to me from the far end of the pool with a futuristic light device. I try to appease him and apologize for hurting him. I want to kiss him again, but know it would only cause more turmoil.
