Is It Broken

I leave the doors unlocked. I don’t own a bicycle lock. My key code on my phone is disabled. If I had a cat I’d trust the baby alone in the crib with it. I don’t have a baby. It’s never made sense, these leaps of faith. My bike has been stolen so many times. One time both tires right there in broad daylight on 14th between 6th Avenue and 7th Avenue in front of the YMCA. On a crowded street! My naivete has been steamrollered again and again, I dated a man in Los Angeles for three years named John Rojo Sanchez who worked for LA Metro and the whole time we dated he was married. Unbeknownst to me, he kept it from me and took advantage of how dumb and kind I was. What does it say about me? I’m more than a dumb blonde.

I cut my finger very very deep this week. I was with CRICKETS up in Provincetown. JD and Michael and I drove up there with Michael’s four year old in tow. We’ve started work on a new record. If you’re not aware of the CRICKETS project, seek out CRICKETS 1, released on the eve of the pandemic. It’s a miracle. Both Corrina and Michael were getting over something on the drive, we all knew this going into the trip. When Corrina would cough JD and I would crack our windows then roll them back up real quck. We hoped for the best and it didn’t go well. JD is laid out with that cold, I still have a bandaid on my finger, it’s not healing well and it’s been a week.

I’d ordered the piano before I left, it took a lot of thinking. The cut on my finger was so deep, it hardly bled. Mixed messages. The fact that there wasn’t a lot of blood kept my hopes up. I sealed the serrated pieces of my finger together, a very fresh cut, cleaned it well and put a bandaid over it. I’ve been doing my best at keeping my finger straight but when I get up in the morning it’s bent and aches dully.

I’d been looking forward to the piano. I’ve only had clunkers. There have been keys on pianos all my life that don’t work. A low G on the one up in PTown and two others in the higher register. It’s a register I usually don’t go to but you get the point, there are places in my creativity I have to avoid. The piano that’s been here in NYC makes no sense. It was a Steinway and very very old. Joey and I traveled so far down Long Island to look at it. We’d seen it on Craigs List and the couple was sweet, their daughter had played it her whole life, it seemed right but it’s a useless lump of a piano that can’t even be tuned. A woman tried and cursed at it, breaking strings in her attempts.

The one in my childhood had a chip out of a key. It’s funny I don’t remember how that chip came to be. I remember walking on the keys with my sisters in our socks and pajamas. I remember balancing the dog on the keys and screaming as she walked up and down making impossibly chaotic chords. I remember setting the timer for an hour every morning for hundreds and hundreds of mornings and my mother shouting from upstairs when I hit wrong notes. I don’t remember how that key got fucked up though.

The new piano was here when I got back from Ptown. It’s perfect and my finger is fucked. I’ve reached a point where it’s not the piano that’s broken, it’s me. The box I’d been opening wasn’t even mine. It was addressed to someone else. Maybe that’s why I went at it so feverishly. Feverishly! I didn’t care. There was nothing in that little box that was even mine. I felt the scissor blade slip and knew right away I’d done bad.

The piano is the biggest investment I’ve made in my life. It’s apt and it’s fitting and feels right that I’m attacking it with this broken slain finger. I’m aiming for the best. Two of my favorite people got married two days ago. We all took a ferry to Staten Island to witness and on the ferry a new friend told me that Eyes of Tammy Faye is closing. After just one week. Elton John and the kid from Scissor Sisters wrote it, the music for the musical. How could that go wrong? And then… a flop. I read in the paper $22 million or $25 million. And it’s over.

There are better chances at becoming an actor, surviving and being picked in one of a million auditions, opening a restaurant in a sea of others, winning a lottery. If Elton John can’t make it work, what does this say about my musical? I’m scared but also I’m emboldened. I publicly can’t stand Elton John so at the end of the day, fuck off.

Bring it nature. I’ve got a maimed finger, split and I’m falling apart but I’ve got a new piano. Join me and godless us all in our endeavors, I love you,

RB