open mic

Dearest love, wondering where you've been all day, are you having a bonne aventure - in the sense of adventure? I'm missing you, perusing the web in desultory fashion, checking out the site for a club in town, that sounds quite exciting - Steve Earle will be there Sunday night. I won't go, but I've had it in the back of my mind for a while that if John Gorka ever comes to town I'd go see him (I Think of You). I'm perusing their menu - really nice, local farm produce and meats, done up via the memories & imaginings of a chef who hails from down South. I would love to spend an evening at that club with you sometime. I see too that they offer classes in various forms of dance - swing, belly, tango. Tango sounds appealing to me, though I don't have the outfit or shoes. There's also an "Open Mic" night, every Tuesday night, "a chance for writers and performers to hone your skills, meet other artists, and try out new material on the big stage at Helsinki."

I can't picture myself there, not really, but readily imagine E.D. - though reclusive, a performance artist all the way - taking the stage. Wearing her trim long white dress, hair pulled back in a bun, she slips from behind the velvet curtain. She stands at the mic, taps it (it reassuringly screeches & reverberates), adjusts the height. She places her hands behind her, and regards the audience. They applauded when she came out on stage - self-possessedly brisk & diminutive as a sparrow - and now, done with clapping and last throat-clearing coughs, they look up at the stage expectantly at her.

(If anyone's expecting, from E.D., a Barbra Streisand-type presence to warmly & sultrily greet the audience and purr into the mic, wow, I don't get out much, intoning each syllable and then launching into a gorgeously sung rendition of - well, to be cute I want to type, 'Yellow Rose of Texas,' - but to be honest - as much as a cliche goes that E.D.'s verses can each be sung to that tune - I don't actually know offhand how it goes...

I'll have to google it, and listen to a clip - and I know that I'll be able to - and that was a frustrating thought I had today, in all of my perambulations - that I can access so very very much on the web, simply by typing, going into a search engine....

but I can never find you
or 1.0
or if I stop by the supermarket at a random hour I cannot meet
again a handsome stranger
or even easily gain a half-dozen cans of black beans, which weren't out yet for the 'can-can' sale

all these impossible connections - yet you connect with me
that is - you hear me tap the mic
actually - my mic - mostly I imagine it's off
I mean, I know it isn't - that it's on -
but I'm certainly not actively standing on a stage at a club asking -
'can you hear me now?')

and she starts... "I'm nobody - who are you - are you nobody too"
and behind her Barbra Streisand creeps up, not upstaging her, but more showing her the way -- crooning "I'm in the Mood for Love."



***
sweetheart, this post needs work - it's just a sketch -
but I need to go -
oh I wish you were at the door to the woods
xoxo