At times I think of myself living in a world that is black and white in rooms filled with too much smoke, perched atop a piano singing the blues. The audience is filled with people who are dressed to the nines in a way that was just everyday clothing if you lived in my film noir world. I hear the clinking of the ice in their drinks. I am this enigmatic figure, the singer.
I am blue because that is what I am. I probably drink too much and maybe I have a problem with insidious substances. The counter culture of the grainy black and white world welcomes me yet I look down on them and I don't quite fit in the audience with their neatly pressed suits and flower-pinned lapels.
After my weekly engagement singing my songs of heartbreak and longing, I step off of the stage and ask the bartender to give me my regular, a scotch on the rocks. His name is Jimmy, because it just seems appropriate. He's heard it all. His face is stone. His heart is velvet. I know nothing about Jimmy. He's all ears, but doesn't get involved. I probably once had a crush on him but realized that like the Berlin wall, he's too tough to crack and too tall to climb.
After my third scotch, Jimmy asks if he can call me a car. I refuse and walk down the empty streets alone. I quite possibly should have used the bathroom before leaving the bar and have to duck into a dark alley to pee. There's a blind man playing the saxophone and I throw him a nickel. For some reason I envy him. A black cat crosses my path. I think nothing of it.
I reach my small apartment in a bad part of town, climb the stairs sloppily running my fingers against the cracked paint, intentionally making pieces crumble and fall onto the rotten wooden steps that creak with every step. I collapse into bed, alone, so alone. A part of me needs this loneliness. Another part of me so desperately craves love. I have resigned myself to be alone, a tragic enigmatic blues singer who smells of smoke and scotch and of dark alleys.
They will find my body two days after I die and wonder if it was suicide or murder or an accident. The papers will write about it. People will claim to know the answer. Big flash bulbs will pop and newsies will yell "read all about it".
So, I have taken my baby and given it to others to twist and mold and paint as they please. I now have two remixes in my hands which will be part of something soon to come. It's exciting and scary and different. I'm a protective mother who doesn't like to let others hold her baby. I'm learning that she can walk on her own and I have to let her play with other children for her to really be a part of the world. It's so hard watching them grow up.
Maybe I am not fit to raise my baby, but I pushed her out and I feel her with me, still inside me moving. She will always be there. When I'm up on stage, singing the blues with a flower in my hair, she is sitting there up past her bedtime, smiling up at me. I have probably corrupted her, but someone had to do it.
