Timing

A friend asked what I seek. Such a question is usually an opportunity to make something of that moment in the conversation, with a few words you can spin it to wild place, veer towards an adventure when the bar closes and the music turns to the Blues or simply subdue the moment, get the check and take taxis home. My answer is this: I have always wanted to live in the moment, not bear the burden of the past or the future, just be. That is difficult.

I was reminded of us when I read this NY Times piece on a Tajik storeroom worker who finds fame singing Bollywood songs with uncanny precision. "Mr. Allaberiyev’s family understood that he had a gift; by the age of 7 or 8, he could commit songs to memory and repeat them with eerie accuracy, after watching a movie twice. But he was born at the wrong time, or in the wrong place. By his early teens, he was picking cotton for a pittance in pay." Having all your belongings in a satchel, asking the reporters for replacement teeth and carrying around the red backstage pass with the words "artist" like people who leave ski passes on their jackets long after their brush with the snow, reminded me of what I seek.