Airmail, page 18
I suppose it seems unlikely for me to love you the way I do. We aren’t a usual pair, no. Girls my age prefer others that are more polished and primed. You’re not the sexiest piece of work, and I’m pretty sexy. But I never imagined such polarity would bring me such understanding. The gravelly sound of your poetry put to chords lifted me out of these back roads of Greensboro, North Carolina, and placed me gracefully down in Greenwich Village, in New York City, circa 1964. It’s like I belonged there all along. It’s like a young white guy growing up in the mid 1900s was a mirror image of me, a young black girl growing up in the digital age.
I search for sonic allies at dusty record stores instead of friends at the lunch table at school. The kids at school want to talk about the same things every day: How so-and-so did such-and-such at whoever else’s party. But I want to talk about how the times are a-changin’. About the William Zantzingers of the world, and the Hattie Carrolls too. About the ways that we are all pawns in a larger game and how maybe, if we want to badly enough, we can start to play our own hands instead of the ones given to us. Nobody’s trying to hear that shit, though. Not here, not now.
Alas, the life of a young rolling stone is bittersweet. The world is much bigger than this small town my parents brought me to as the fourth stop on the scattered childhood train. I couldn’t blame my classmates for not knowing. So instead, I put a towel under my bedroom door, light a joint I bought from the kind of sketchy dude in fifth period and hang out with you.
I wonder if you thought this far ahead? As you were being released to the world, my mother was getting ready to enter high school herself. She preferred Motown, though. She related to The Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye. To you? She was a bit more sceptical – rightfully so. Your messenger was the same shade as those who shamed her father in front of his kids, the same hue as those who told her that dreams any bigger than her block in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, were laughable. You were the same colour as the oppressor. My mother was not ready to receive you the way her daughter would someday be. Little did she know then you’d be her daughter’s best friend. But you probably knew. Because as you said best back in 1964, ‘The times, they are a-changin . . .’
Love always,
To Leonard Cohen’s ‘Tower of Song’, by Pony Boy
Dear Mr Cohen,
I hope this letter finds you in good company, standing by a window where the wind is free and the light is strong, not just another dweller in the tower of forgotten songs. How are the other tenants treating you? Don’t be jealous of Hank, even if he’s got the better view.
Do the days beget days and the nights beget nights, where you hunt down your mistress to make it all feel right? Who could ever win an argument with you, with your knowledge of Buddha to the heights of Camus? Always looking for a lost woman with nothing to do. Who will feed you tea and oranges so you may paint her forever in blue?
And just like those who came before, you know it’s only rock ’n’ roll. Did the angels give you no other way? Chained to a table to toil away. Ever in search of that perfect song, something to leave that will always live on. Something no woman could take from you, for the word is the king and executioner too.
Are you ribbing those who said to you, ‘I have seen the future and it is not you’? Not all believe there is gold where you’ve sung, but there is no doubting your 24-carat tongue. With wicked irony you show them all, the old man’s got some tricks left after all.
To have art be more than artifact, the rarefied poet with a lover’s knack. Into the edifice where you belong, let me know if you ever need help with a song. I know I’m a hundred floors below, pining for you like a modern Rimbaud.
And after the tower is destroyed to make way for a corporate hotel or a supermarket chain, yes, long after that tower is gone, someone somewhere will be humming your song.
Yours truly,
Marchelle Bradanini
Dear Moment When the Lights Came On,
I think it’s time we break up.
It’s not you, it’s more like,
an idea I have of you,
that I’ve just become really co-dependent on.
Like, whenever I’m down, I expect that you’ll fix all my problems.
Plant in my head the right thing to tell my friend who’s mad at me,
or what I should do when I graduate,
or some great idea that’ll snap me out of my writer’s block.
Like, as if you’ll just suddenly show up,
and everything will just be better for all of time.
But that’s just not how it works, you know?
That’s actually, like, a really toxic relationship.
Because I put all this faith in you, and then you just repeatedly stand me up.
And it’s really rude!
And it’s not just me; it’s like you have no interest in hanging out with my friends, either.
Like, for example, my friend Gabby? Doesn’t feel like a real writer, even though she totally is.
She’s, like, insecure that her words aren’t important because she’s not some abusive middle-aged white man who lives by the sea and gets visits from you all the time.
As if a person’s ideas are only valid if they come in a moment’s epiphany,
instead of taking days or weeks or years to sit on and hash out and breathe with.
Or, like, I’ll be hanging out with a bunch of words,
and I won’t know what to write with them.
And they’ll be like, ‘Hey, when is Moment When the Lights Came On gonna show up? That guy’s awesome!’
And then they start reminiscing like, ‘Oh, remember that famous story about Moment When the Lights Came On and Robert Altman? 3 Women would not have been a movie if not for your guy!’
And they say you’re a ‘keeper’.
And I’m like,
I know!
It’s really great!
But inside I’m thinking, like, it’d be cool if every once in a while, you could come to me the way you came to Altman while he was dreaming or whatever,
and I would know what to do with my words,
and my thoughts,
and could create a masterpiece of my own.
But I know now that that’s a very rare occurrence.
So, you know,
it’ll definitely be a challenge for me to get used to not having you around.
I’ll have a bit of adjusting to do, for sure . . .
But I think this will be really good for me, too.
Like, I’ll actually get stuff done,
instead of just waiting for you.
I’ll have to learn to love all the unsexy parts of writing and emotional maturity.
I’ll have to stop expecting miracles and actually put in the groundwork.
So that’s cool.
It’ll be like when people talk about how they spent all this time doing research for their thesis.
And no one is super interested,
but you’re all, like, really happy for them.
Anyways.
We had a good run,
even though I still feel like I never really knew you.
But thanks,
for all the great art and good decision-making and successful start-ups and religious awakenings you’ve put into the world.
See you around?
Probably not.
Sincerely,
Me
Dear moment the lights came on,
I’d like to thank you for occurring, because I’ve found you useful in the last couple of years. I didn’t know I needed you, but, well, I guess, thanks to you, I did.
To put it simply, thanks to you, I’ve been able to achieve one of my biggest goals in life, which is to say ‘Fuck the bullshit’ and mean it. I’ve tried saying ‘Fuck the bullshit’ in the past, but the fact is I just couldn’t. The bullshit still clung to me. But thanks to you, lighty moment, it’s getting easier. You know what I’m talking about. It’s fuck struggling to relate to friends who just drive me crazy, because life is too short to maintain exhausting relationships, and by the way, if they drive me crazy I probably drive them crazy too, so if our friendship is meant to withstand a timeout, then that’s great, and if not, well – fuck it.
It’s fuck worrying about wearing my dorky purple gym shoes with my work clothes to go the half-block from my office to my gym because somebody might see me. And it’s fuck washing out a pan I used at breakfast just to use it again at lunch. Fuck yelling at other drivers while I’m behind the wheel, because people are scary out there and I want to live. And fuck saying or tweeting the first thing semi-funny that pops into my head, because other people have feelings and nobody so far has been handing out cash awards for cleverness.
Oh, and fuck answering all the emails any more. This is a big one. If I am no longer known for responding to every single email and only going with the ones I’m either interested in or have time to or are really necessary (I am trying not to write any more emails that just say ‘Thanks!’) then I’m all right with that.
The lights coming on maybe means being a little okay with uncertainty, too. I want to say fuck going out to things I don’t want to any more just because I’m worried about being irrelevant, but that one is still taking practice. Similarly, I’m working on fuck saying yes to all the work that comes my way, because I don’t have the energy or desire to work all the time any more, yet I’m still cognisant of the fact that this is an ongoing seismic shift in my life and maybe it’s just fine to feel weird about the fact that I’m not as young and hungry and agreeable as I used to be.
In some ways I’d appreciate it if you were a faster process, you light-coming-on moment. Like, I’m very glad that I don’t hold on to grudges the way I used to, either long term or briefly. Life’s too short not to talk to my former best friend if I miss her or to let some turd with a computer who is too much of a pussy to write behind his own name tell me something mean about myself ruin my whole day, you know? But on the other hand, if that light came on faster I would also know what I was supposed to do with my life without those old grudges and little slights. Uh, who am I supposed to prove myself to, exactly? Is the answer just me? I find that very tedious, if that’s the case.
Also, I’m glad to finally get it that nobody is paying as close attention to what I look like or do as I am. But how am I supposed to know what’s motivating me if I’m not driven by the sense that I’m making my enemies jealous of my successes? What am I supposed to be doing things for – just my own enjoyment and fulfilment? That’s a lot of pressure.
But I may just find out eventually, because I’m pretty sure that light is getting a bit brighter with each passing year. Because one more thing I’m also grasping is that nothing is permanent. I’d like it if certain things were permanent: if the day a stranger reaches out to compliment me could repeat all the time, if the routine I’ve found effective will never be derailed by change, if my son will always be happy and healthy and love me and nobody I love will ever get sick or die. Things will change. That light will show me how to deal when that happens, although probably not as soon as I’d like it to. But also, change doesn’t have to be bad – maybe I’ll figure out that I want to write for different reasons, or I’ll decide different things start making me happy and I don’t have to hold on to irrelevant values or routines or people just for the good old days of it all.
Oh, and one more thing: fuck coming up with a good ending to this piece. You’re not a person; you’re a moment – and I know you don’t give a shit about how a letter ends.
Love ya, bye,
Dear moment the lights came on,
I know it’s not truly your fault, but still, I will never forgive you.
It was New Year’s Eve, and I was young enough that a night of dancing in heels, fuelled by $7-a-bottle champagne, still sounded like a good time to me. Today, it sounds more like invoking a demon who will wake me with debilitating hip pain, then spend the rest of the day perched atop my right ear, bludgeoning my temple with a $7 champagne bottle. But back then, I could afford to be cavalier about things like my joints, my cerebral blood vessels and my fucking a married man.
It was only once, but that night was a long time in the making; I fully admit that, if I had been his wife, I would have been nearly as furious about the eighteen months of cyber-flirting and occasional handsy-but-technically-platonic meet-ups preceding it. (Of course, if I had been his wife, no one would have objected to my fucking him. Problem solved.)
I considered a lot of things during those eighteen months. Things like, ‘If he told her he wanted a divorce tomorrow, how quickly could it go through, and for how long after that would it still be unseemly for us to make out in public?’ Things like, ‘Could I get him to move here, or would I have to move to the far side of the country to be with him forever and have his fat, bald babies?’ And also things like, ‘What the fuck is wrong with you, Harding? Did you grow up without a television or something? They never leave their wives.’
But it wasn’t until you arrived, moment the lights came on, that I fully realised I might not, in fact, be the (ahem, deservedly fortunate) exception to the rule.
I blame my parents for this, obviously.
Like all parents of writers, they did everything wrong – but nothing quite so wrong as praising my writing profusely, starting before I was habitually drawing letters without the guidance of a dotted line. In concrete terms, this formative experience set me on the dismal path towards pursuing an MFA in fiction, during which I would sleep with a married man. But it also ruined me more abstractly, by convincing my tiny self that I was, in the words of my fellow tortured genius Thom Yorke, so fucking special.
The problem with believing you’re so fucking special is that it mucks up your answer to what should really be a simple yes-or-no question: does reality apply to me?
Take a dilemma like, ‘Will I be miserable tomorrow if I order another drink right now?’ Or ‘Will I fail this course if I only show up to class once every six weeks?’ Or ‘Will I probably gain back all the weight I just lost, plus 10 pounds, exactly like I did the last time I dieted?’ In all of these cases, the answer for your average person, your person bound by the dictates of reality, is yes. Yes, you will.
But I am not your average person! I am Kate Harding, and Kate Harding is so fucking special.
So, when I dug deep and fearlessly asked myself, ‘Kate Harding, do you honestly think this man is going to leave his wife?’ the answer, naturally, was yes. Yes, I do.
Then you showed up, moment the lights came on. He already had one leg back in his pants but decided he needed your help to finish the job, and there you were. All at once, you revealed a drunk, stumbling fool with tears on his cheeks, a sad, mortified man flush with regret and self-hatred, indulging the urge to flee as quickly as possible.
‘You aren’t even going to stay for a minute?’ I asked, and he looked conflicted. Not about whether he wanted to stay, but whether he owed me that much.
He didn’t want to hurt my feelings, I suppose. Or maybe he just didn’t want me to tell our mutual friends he was kind of a dick. You didn’t make his thought process totally clear to me, moment the lights came on. You just showed me how very, very much he did not want to stay.
I’ll never forgive you for breaking my heart like that – but still, I will always be grateful to you for illuminating a crucial truth: I, Kate Harding, am not so fucking special.
Only after I’d fully accepted that was I ready to acknowledge the even more important truth: neither was he.
Begrudgingly yours,
Kate
Dear Moment,
May I just call you ‘Moment’? I don’t mean to be overly familiar with you, but we have met on several occasions and you’ve always been so helpful to me. I wish that we could spend more quality time together, because I always feel like a better person when we do.
I hate to admit it, but I am bad person. Not a bad person in a deviant, psychotic kind of way, but a bad person in a disorganised, slovenly kind of way.
It’s the piles of papers to be filed, runaway shoes to capture, articles to read, junk mail to toss, drawers to sort through and emails to catch up on that simply overrun my sanity and desire for a pristine, well-ordered life. A life that boasts of cross-indexed recipes and beautiful leather photo albums containing neat rows of childhood pictures made complete with the notation of date and location.
I fantasise about the consummate closet with a wardrobe that makes me look ridiculously thin and is arranged according to season and colour on identical hangers all facing the same way. I swoon at the thought of a Gmail contact list that actually has current names and addresses, and I envision a pantry bursting with every imaginable canned good stacked, alphabetised and ready for the taking.
I dream about a bill-paying system so efficient that it would make an accountant’s heart flutter, and I revel in the notion of a tidy medicine cabinet where the Nyquil and Vicodin coexist peacefully with the deodorant and Q-tips. All of these thoughts delight and titillate me until I open my eyes and take a good look around.
My life is a demilitarised zone. Billows of dirty laundry cascade with the clean, unfolded laundry to mock me. Sections of the New York Times lie dismembered and silent in corners and underneath coffee cups. Pots and pans practise a sophisticated balancing act in cupboards too small to contain their girth. Coins and paper clips, raisins and antidepressants skitter and hide, oblivious to my incessant calling. Occasionally, the cat shimmies out from under the piles to snack on Kibbles ’n Bits only to disappear back into the lagoon of stuff. Occasionally, my husband does the same.
Like the kryptonite that renders Superman powerless, I am convinced that during my autopsy scientists will discover a genetic defect hidden deep in my DNA that leaves me defenceless against the forces of chaos.
