Playing Uno

Each month on my transit news website I do a thing where I curate Portland's best public-transit-related missed connections of the month. It's one of the better ideas I've had and always one of the best parts of my month.

This one isn't quite a public transit connection, but I wanted to share it somewhere. It's from 3:03 a.m. on Saturday, Feb. 11.

Dear JP. - w4m
from craigslist portland
JP,

It's been years since you decided that my words weren't worth yours. Unfortunately, your music still haunts me from time to time, so I can't help but remember you.

It's been some time since you pulled your stunt. Words, links to youtube videos, tea. Holding doors. Charm, and sly comments about how the waitstaff likes you if they act rude to you.

In that time, I've nearly completed two worthless degrees. I traveled and fell in love with the world. I tried to love romantically more than once before realizing that maybe artists are no good for me. I get sick of feeding egos and scheduling my world around theirs. This new years day, I woke up in the bed of one of my best friends. He can't write a song, but he has a strong mind and sharp tongue. He makes me laugh. We play UNO together in airports and bus and ferry terminals.

Sometimes I think of running off, despite all the beautiful things Portland has given me. I am happy most of the time, but sometimes I feel a longing to get to know the grit of the earth intimately. I want to bike over mountains and international boundaries until I am not sure my body can hold itself together any longer. I want unruly matted hair to be a testament to my time on the road. I want to conquer fear of being alone, of being vulnerable, of being a woman where I'm not supposed to be one. I want nothing left to lose by having nothing at all.

Tonight I listened to your music while I walked home. There was a ring around the moon and scattered bits of valentines weekend litter. I felt a pang of the aforementioned longing. That, and the music, brought me to write this. Why else would I? You don't ever want to hear it. But if I could ask one thing, it would be for your lyrics. You see, sometimes you sing too fast for me to understand. And they are some of my favorite songs, if for nothing else than the words.

After all, it's always been about words.

Three short stories about Bumbershoot

Bumbershoot is Seattle.

The music side of the festival is a huge arching wood structure. It went up with a vision, and it's been rotting in the rain ever since. It's the weird kid after 35 years of socialization. Isn't socialization just another word for rot?

Then there's the art side. The artists have been there the whole time, nibbling. They're the termites beneath the structure. Not part of the rot; they don't care about what's happening up in the sky. They're just building a home in the dirt. This is how they do it, and someday the whole thing is going to fall and whoever's still there afterward will get to put up a new one. Maybe it'll be them.

But termites are social insects.

*

When I tell people outside the Northwest that I live in Portland, they say, "Oh, that must be an interesting place. It's so close to Seattle." For people squinting over from the East, we're a twin star system, one blurry dot in the telescope and 20 light-years away.

Seattle people feel British. You can see it in the limp faces beneath their knit hoods. They refer constantly to "the Pacific Northwest." They're just patronizing enough about Portland to hide their fascination. It's an old empire.

Portlanders do not talk about Seattle.

I think the Easterners have it right. One blue, one red. Both in orbit, and a plume of hydrogen pouring across the gap. The blue one doesn't notice, or need to.

*

When people talk about "experimental" art, it seems like they usually mean that it doesn't have a narrative. Most modern experimental art is lyric art. Concrete art. You understand a Jackson Pollack painting because your eyes are moving.

I love lyric art. But one of the things about narrative is that you remember it. You can abstract it. You can keep it. Lyric art doesn't keep well -- it's great, and a few weeks later you can't remember anything else about it. That's why commercial art is almost always narrative art. And great narratives are great, too.

Experimental art is like the sex. Narrative art is like the relationship.

Hollywood isn't selling sex after all -- it just wants to move in.