What’s The Buzz ?
Corner of W 39th Street and 10th Avenue, NYC, December 15, 2012
Posted on December 15, 2012
What’s a perfect day? A walk in the park after dawn; writing a few pages that I will, no doubt, find years later, in between the pages of a manual, a theatre program or a pair of odd socks as I read and wonder, what was that all about? A quick read of today’s papers before it’s time for a few weekly phone-calls. Saturday chores, a hunt for stamps to send bills and a few letters; a ballet class accompanied by a pianist worth moving mountains to move to New York for, Flora where sometimes Ballet Master Sasha just gets in the way and you just want to say, “Just let the lady play Sasha and no-one gets hurt…” I meet up with fellow Artist at Large William Catanzaro; we have been performing gigs in this city for a few years now; a glove to a hand, that’s how we sound. I give him a guitar for safe keeping. I walk past Lincoln Center, past the Alvin Ailey school – where I took my first Martha Graham class. A walk through the home from home of Hell’s Kitchen before going to see a performance by the the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) at the Baryshnikov Arts Center after which it is back to the drawing board. First, in a studio; then during the walk home, as the passers by fall into step with music I have just heard; a bus ride across the park. A glass of wine; it’s too cold to stand in the garden and smoke where the hurricane broke through the fence. Once, you might have waited for a civilized hour in European time so that you could draw a voice from sleep by saying, “You will never guess what I heard today.” And that voice would have said, “I’m listening.” Now, it goes without saying because it will be in everything that you create from now on, as you, like everyman, are a part of all that you have met.
Read more from Miriam Aziz – The Artist is at Large http://miriamaziz.wordpress.com/
On arrival, I leave Penn Station in search of shade at dusk as I sidestep a hot dog vendor and a couple, lost in space from Sweden, I turn to out stare an impatient cab driver as I sketch a bird that I flip with both hands anchored firmly in my pockets as in this heat, who knows who people are capable of impersonating when tempers fray like the welcome outworn by ropes that have hosted one too many definitely last appearance left hooks that outlived the promises of a best that has yet to no show.
One of us is on her way to meet Paolo for a mid morning coffee, as the other woman who stands to my right checks for messages as we both wait for the lights to change. I flag down Paolo’s short attention span as he stands at the far right corner talking to someone on the phone with a suitcase which bends over backwards to avoid the ash that scatters each time he adds punctuation marks to the sentences that flow excitedly as he counts down the hours until he may get out of Manhattan for a few days for good behaviour. 
I spend part of the afternoon at a booksellers called Crawford Doyle to stay out of the rain and to stay in touch with the need to browse in the flesh. I keep company with Irving, Márai, Montale, Homer, Stefan Zweig and others of that ilk who excel at speaking in tongues as I sit, cross legged to listen to, if not the whole story, at least to part of the journey before we go ways that are as separate as they may be related.
Someone has left a list of suggestions for titles that may or may not suit; much depends on who you choose as a tailor as the stand in for the souffleur who whispers in your ear, if not comme il faut, at least, sauve qui peut. For some, to write or not to write is as fundamental a question as to be or not to be may represent a sorry state of affairs that is rarely, if ever, safe.
palm of my hand into my chest to check for the beats per minute that make a pulse. “But you’re going the wrong way.” “No I’m not”, she says. “This way you get to see which squares are missing when you start to make, what the others told you not to make.” “And what’s that?”, I ask. “What?”, she asks. “What I must not make?” “Why, make a sound of course!” “What if I can’t help it?”, I ask. And she says, “Isn’t that why we’re here?” How could I forget? “Was hast du gesagt?” “Nothing, I was just thinking how easy it is to forget how when you…” And she’s gone. There’s a man coming down the stairs wearing a base-ball cap and holding a black plastic bag that brushes against my left knee as I hear a song of sweet nothings that I whistled in the dark as he staggered after me on crutches, speaking of the heart as a phantom limb. That, I decide, is what I will sing about today whilst we struggle to keep our heads above the water mark as I watch the tide come in over his shoulder.
