#19- EVENING BECKONS ME...

My life requires me to sleep more. It's terribly square and restricting. I can remember a similar feeling when I was too young to go out and do what grown up kids do. The difference now is the thing I wish I could do every night is perform. I want to roam the Lower East Side with my band of pulsing artists. I want to sit in awe at their work and then step up to the plate myself and perform as a gift...every..single..night....'til like 4am.

Tonight, it's Halloween in NYC. The tamest I've seen. We has 3 kids come to the door...all at once. Pathetic. Don't kids eat candy anymore??? What has this city come to? Pre-fab costumes for $50 and stop by New York Sports Club for a prune stapled to a free day pass. Happy Halloween!

When I was a kid my sisters and I thought about Halloween as soon as school started. Our mother always made our costumes and as we grew older we helped. So elaborate. All hand sewn. Just as her mother did for her. An important tradition. I can remember being so grateful and feeling how deeply my mother loved me when she stayed up sewing each night. Do kids feel that way when their mom's take them to the Halloween Store and buy them a Barney suit? It's weird...the 3 kids who showed up were so little. Adorable. But they were disillusioned. As if they woke up from a nap dressed as a dinosaur and suddenly had to knock on strangers doors. They were emotionally unprepared.My sisters and I were prepared enough to run our own Halloween parade if necessary.

Last night my show went up. It moved me deeply. I got to bring so many of these inspirational artists under my roof to expose them to a whole new audience. Penny Pollak, Alabaster Rhumb, The Bitter Poet, Melinda Hansen, Mr. Patrick, Goeff Kole, Liam McEneaney are just some of them. Look them up. Be reborn.

There are 3 shows tonight at Under St. Marks Theatre. Penny is doing a show at 12am she wanted me to do. The theme is "monologues before murder". Need I say more? Brilliant. Disarming. Provocative. I'm dying to go. But here i am in bed. Being a good doobie. I am texting Joe Yoga for regular updates so I can live vicariously through him. He's hard core. Cant NOT go for fear of missing something. I know how he feels.

#18-UNADULTERATED MAGIC IN THE MORNING

A man and a woman stand on the Brooklyn bridge at 6am having not yet slept. They watch and wait for the threatening sunrise as they marvel at the miraculous knowing of each other. Waiting for the ball to drop, when they will no longer be allowed to conspire. To plot their destruction of all that threatens to hold us back and instead infuse inspiration to the point of shock waves though man kind. A noble pursuit for two humans.

The man is overwhelmed at his sudden desire to see Ground Zero. Not for the death. Not for the tragedy. Simply to feel the vibration of what stops a city from building...or at least reaching a place where they feel "ok" to build. Even a place where they can come up with something to build that someone might want to look at and admire...instead of shiny glass crap...ola.

The woman takes the mans hand and leads him away from water through a park. A shortcut to their final destination. But rather than a green side thought, the woman is accosted by a sign of restrictions. Rules. A list of no's in a place her tax dollars contributed to. Rules she never agreed to:

No radios.
No dogs.
No picnic-ing.
No open fires.
No gatherings.
No breathing.
No listening.
No living...and the kicker..no performing.

The woman's sense of herself felt jangled and she thought she would cry. All that moved her and her people was banned in her city. A place where she danced and prayed in her incredible collection of argyle knee socks and biker boots. Freedom. This was not allowed.

She shook next to the man and the man stopped and turned, jangled by his own mission towards Ground Zero and uncertain of the woman's sudden silence.

With a gentle letting go, the woman released the man's hand and walked to a nearby fountain. The water still flowed but the moss was dead from the subtle arrival of autumn that had slid into New York. She slid off her boots and socks and without hesitation stepped into the fountain. She dipped her pretty toes into the water. The same toes which had been photographed only a week prior by a renegade photographer with a fetish...for her. The bottom was slimy and cold and tin and the woman suddenly felt alive. Even with a sign of laws staring her down, they suddenly slipped into the same importance as graffiti on a bathroom stall. No performing? Give us a break.

The man stood and looked at the woman in awe. A renegade himself, he was suddenly faced with a "love it or leave it" moment as a stuffy woman walked by and pointed in horrified silence towards his brave, dear friend. For whose benefit is she pointing, he wondered. Her dog, perhaps. He decided to love it and suddenly Ground Zero wasn't so important.

These are the people who live in this city. The people who keep the heartbeat alive. They keep me up late, but never late enough. They make me want to stop everything normal and just create and write and live.

Seek the people who are doing something outside of their own boxes. The people who don't sleep much but manage to function. Ask what they do at night. Ask what matters to them. They are here and they are gathering. They are the ones who will lead us when it's time to rumble.