My Toy Drum
Hot Chip is a British band that sounds like the rhythmic clicking of sneakers acccompanied by a monkey hitting a toy drum. Which is why I like them. There is a YouTube video of their single "Over and Over," in which the musicians bump around a yellow room while singing about the "smell of repetition." Sometimes, songs just mirror life.
In some ways, life in San Francisco can never be the same thing two days in a row, or even two hours in a row. I feel the tugs of social activism (the persistent tablers at the end of BART stations), the draw of underground music (flyers snuck under business doors or stapled on telephone poles between bus stops), and the incessant chirp of my own persistent search for a meaningful career.
A list of random things in the world:
Fidel Castro has resigned
Kosovo is now an independent country
The Grateful Dead are rocking (and campaigning) for Obama
Persepolis, a film by Marjane Sartrapi (one of my personal heroes), has been nominated for an Academy Award
Somewhere, right now, someone might be falling in love. Or out.
Me? I've had three job interviews this week (one "call-back" tomorrow!), and will be interviewing Sean Busby for Diabetes Health Magazine tomorrow. Sean is my age, a type 1 diabetic since age 19, professional snowboarder and the creator of Riding on Insulin, a snowboarding camp for diabetics.
My life has become the motion between a monkey and its cymbals. I am drawn to many places, to many ideas, to many people, to many conclusions. The roots that ground me down are my family, my housemates, the view from Dolores Park, the promise of something more intellectually stimulating, the blank slate that is my future. I daydream about traveling, about direction handed to me on a silver platter, about the day I no longer have to wear an insulin pump. I make dinners for my housemates (tonight it was grilled portobello mushrooms baked with cheese and spinach), run when I can, bike down Market and scribble imaginary thoughts and cursory dreams onto little notes that spread throughout my room. What I want what I want what I want what I dream what I dream what I dream, the rhythm of other languages I've heard or spoken, the way boys purse their lips on public transportation, what it takes to be taken seriously, whatever that even means.
Writing has been and always be the one creative constant in my life. There is a release I get from touching finger to key that it is nearly impossible to replicate. Sometimes I can't even anticipate what it will be about. Maybe it's not even about anything; maybe it's about that gauzy moment between thoughts just as they form. Maybe it's a meditative practice, the repetitve sound of nail against keyboard. Does it really matter if people pay me to repeat the pattern?
One of my coworkers is a stage manager. Last week (Valentine's Day, actually), I went to see her production of "Gone" by Charles Mee. The theatre space was small, and populated with an eclectic assortment of doors and lamps. The entire play (I later learned) is a series of found articles, monologues, blogs, and essays, all exploring the theme of loss, transience. It reminded me of Robert Altman's "Shortcuts," and the choppy transition between Raymond Carver stories that was later revealed as so precious. I will always love the questions that good writing brings. It brings me images of holding something intangible in the air between me and someone else; a character, a director, an audience. What happens when an idea goes beyond being just that--something you can actually hold?
I write what I write when I can, when I have an evening off (rare these days). My dream now is to keep my mind open, available, interested. There's something inside I still need to kindle, and I'm not even sure what to call it yet. These days of being an adult fascinate me because they are so unpredictable--I find myself wondering, just what am I capable of? What is inside me? A novel? A poem? A teacher? A busines woman?
I write now, and yet on many nights I just find myself crashing into sleep, dreaming of Hot Chip monkeys and all the little stories I found on the bike ride home. Ah, the smell of repetition.
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