LOVE, ACTUALLY

FROM April 24, 2007

In my dance class today, against the clang and din of Panjabi MC (instrumental), I fixated on the concepts behind Jona's new album, you are magic because magic is magic is hot (and so are you). This fixation was a violation of "LIVE IN THE MOMENT," tenet five of Russell Simmons' motivational tome Do You!, but I have a problem with daydreamy other-elsewhereness - that is just my thing - and it is but one of many reasons why I will never be Russell Simmons. So I was half concentrating on the choreography and half concentrating on the open-ended idea of Jona's magic, or Jona's magic thesis: that magic is everywhere and everyone is making it -simplistic enough but something I generally believe to be true, that is when i am not losing sight of it somewhere between "reckoning with massive lifelong trauma" and "downloading R&B mixtapes from the internet." (whee!) But shit, let me try to problematize this without being too trite:

SEEING THE MAGIC FIRES BURN INSIDE YOUR HEART. ENACTING ARTISTIC IDEAS. I presume Jona can do this (as an artist) more than your average 10-8er because he is surrounded by a supportive ensemble of people whose every idea does not necessarily have to be monetized from a basic survival perspective - c.f. "New York City" - which I think is why i found some of the lyrics / sentiment on the Yacht album luxurious - his ideas about art and choice, with no subtext or motivation other than "INTEGRITY" and "IDEATION" I think, are a sociological luxury. Not everyone in Portland can afford it, but I think it's more easily borne in an inexpensive city. BUT. It is admirable. And not impossible elsewhere. In New York its speed and its motion just change. c.f. Graffiti (before "graffiti" became a shitty t-shirt line). c.f. Making people gifts out of supplies from your kitchen pantry. [shoebox diorama / photoshopped digital JSHEP onslaught TK]

GETTING BUSY WITH YOUR OWN BAD MAGIC. I'm so just feeling more wide-eyed than I have in a minute. It's partly the sun, I know, the warmth heating up my wings, glistening along the Brooklyn promenade among the stacks of red bricks, empty buildings and cement. Not yet humid or too hot. Sunday, so happy, looking across the East River onto Manhattan's mirrored sheen, some lovely small party having a wedding on the boardwalk among the casual sunning throngs from Brooklyn Heights - the bride clad in sheer leopard print and stunting as the photographer snaps, heads in the ice cream line streaming into the aperture. Or maybe it's reading Cormac McCarthy The Road, approved by Oprah and Pulitzer, a spare cold and terrifying apocalypse novel but one that's having an opposite effect on me - nudging me into true and profound appreciation of "right fucking now" cause that's all we get is right now. You know that but sometimes it needs to be said. I am cradling it all in my two hands, curled up like a cup so I don't crush it.