and she was

when i was 11 or 12, my musical tastes began to change rapidly – from the monkees and hermans hermits to the who, led zeppelin, hendrix and the mothers of invention. at the same time i shifted my allegiance from 16 magazine and hit parader to a monthly rock publication called ‘circus’. my mother must have snuck into my room and thumbed through it, because before long i was forbidden to buy it anymore. i don’t remember what her reasons were – i guess it was all the drug and sex references, which fascinated me to no end. we struck a deal that i could keep the issues i already had, but i could not have any more. it wasn’t long before i figured out i could buy it and rip the cover off, then stack the neutered issues in amongst the old ones. i have no idea if she ever figured this out. probably. sometime later i was holed up in my room, thumbing through the latest issue, when i came across an ad for a new album by the singer laura nyro. i recognized her name as a songwriter from my blood, sweat & tears and three dog night albums. i had danced around the basement with the fifth dimension singing ‘wedding bell blues’ and ‘blowin away’ at top volume. i had seen an earlier ad for one of her records that said “at a time when most teenage girls were pouring their hearts into their diaries, laura nyro was changing the course of pop music”. that had intrigued me, but not like this: a full page black and white photo, shot down a long alley between gritty new york tenements. there was laundry hanging on clotheslines between the buildings, suspended over the empty street. there were four simple lines of poetry: “clothespins on washropes/window to window tie/socks and bells and nightgowns/tassels in the morning sky”. beautiful in their simplicity, vivid in imagery, incredibly evocative of a world so different than mine in rural colorado. i hung the ad on my bulletin board where i could see it from the desk and the bed. the album was called ‘christmas and the beads of sweat’ and from the moment i saw the ad i couldn’t wait to save up my money and get my parents to drive me to the record store to buy it. i was captivated with the first listen. in her voice there was soul, gospel, old r&b, the feel of the brill building to tin pan alley to duane allman. the lyrics conjured a place exotic, mysterious and beautiful, and they talked of hope, pain, despair, redemption and peace – all set among the bright streets and dark tenements of new york city. as soon as i could, i bought her earlier album, “eli and the 13th confession”. it was completely mind-blowing. a psychedelic pastiche of music that swung and stomped, whispered, wailed and sighed. it cooed and moaned and changed tempos without warning – sometimes all this in a single song. above it all were the lyrics, poetry more wild and innovative than anything i’d heard in pop, set aflame by the blazing passion in her voice. to this day, each time i listen i hear something new, some small musical touch or turn of phrase that awes me all over again. even young, i began to understand how a song written by this teenage girl could be interpreted and recorded by a grown man. she was ageless and genderless and wise beyond reason. and then i heard “new york tendaberry”. at first i couldn’t believe it wasn’t her first effort. it is raw, naked and angular with brilliant flashes of sweetness – songs without conventional structure, fragmented and almost operatic in scope. it seemed impossible she would knowingly and conciously rip apart her singular style, a style that had brought her acclaim, for this. the lyrics are dense streams of words and images written in a language all her own – yet with one listen you understand. this is when i first began to learn the true meaning of art, of following your muse wherever it leads, of creating from so deep within that it can confound and overwhelm and still drown you in beauty. surrounding this, on all 3 albums, stood new york city: as a sentinel, a beacon, a backdrop and a character. it was her guardian angel and a refuge, it could be an adversary and a lover. where i once thought of it as a movie set, laura nyro showed me a city, her home, where real life played out. she taught me that music and words and art can go anywhere, without limit. she gave me dreams and daydreams and a love of new york city that persists to this day. when i am there, i always imagine that i see her. dressed in long, flowing black – a distant figure moving across the park, in a crowd on the other side of the street, looking down from an apartment window. and sometimes i think i hear her voice, drifting up out of the subway station and echoing across the night sky.

orange bike, reappearing

it was a chilly and damp friday night, and i was back in new york city. a friend and i went to dinner at our favorite spot in the east village. we chose a table near the wide front windows, with me facing out to the street. as soon as we were seated, i spotted it: across the street, chained to a parking meter near the entrance to tompkins square park. a flourescent orange bicycle. the seat, the wheels, the handlebars – it looked as though it had been dipped in a huge vat of day-glo paint. something about it felt so right to me – the unexpected sight i always expect to see in new york. every orange inch distracted me through the entire meal, and i couldn’t wait to see who was going to walk up, unlock it, and ride away. the night went on. we laughed our way through dinner and eventually strolled down avenue a, the bike still locked in place and waiting for its owner. saturday evening i was invited to dinner at a friends apartment on hudson street. i arrived a few minutes early and decided to kill time wandering down the block. i turned a corner on west 10th, and there it was again: the orange bike. i couldn’t believe the coincidence, the odd serendipity that it would show up twice in such different neighborhoods. i pulled out my camera to photograph it, half-dreading and half-hoping the owner would appear out of nowhere and confront me for doing…i don’t know what. who knows what to expect from someone who pedals around on a flourescent orange bike? as i moved around to the opposite side, i noticed the paint on the tires wasn’t worn off. and then, on the crossbar, i saw the blocky black letters: dkny.com. oh. oh. it was just a very clever marketing tool – i’ve since learned that the entire concept was ‘borrowed’ from a legitimate art project. still, you can’t fault the cleverness – and i love donna karan, even more for her cool apartment than her fashion. and anyone who insists that only white clothing be worn at her beach compound…well, you have to admire the attention to detail in that. over the next few days, i saw the orange bike everywhere i went: outside barneys, on the edge of soho, in front of the ralph lauren store on madison avenue, along columbus on the upper west side. it was always the same: dripping in day-glo, chained to a parking meter, waiting. back home, i thought about it and realized that i never, ever saw 2 bikes on the same day, at the same time, or in the same neighborhood. was it really advertising? was there more than one, or only one? was it waiting there for me, hoping i had the key to unlock the chain, climb on, and disappear down lexington avenue?