Baby love

Baby love at Jazz Fest. What more can you say?

I had a great time at a party for "A Public Space" tonight. A random classically trained Italian pianist hit on my friend and me, we managed to avoid him after hanging out with him underneath the highline. The publicists were more than kind (and remembered T by the roses he brought me - awww, i love these girls. they share my love of joan didion and bret easton ellis), there was an open bar and more importantly RED VELVET CAKE, and I got to bitch about my total love-hate relationship with the city of Philadelphia, with whom I still feel an element of responsibility and citizenship despite my bitchiness and its provincial nature. The party felt like the best aspects of Philadelphia: low budget, scrappy and intimate. But without the utter ludicrous bad art that infiltrates most aspects of the art of the city of brotherly love. Good literature, people who care about translation and produce -- aka: my kind of people.

But baby love. It's kinda how I feel right now. I typically hate and when I say "hate" I mean HATE the month of May, but it's doing alright. And I have ridiculous songs in my head and the subway isn't delaying quite as much as it could be. This might just be the best May on record. I would add that 2003 was pretty good, but I was finishing a thesis which immediately kicks 2003 out of contention. 2006, hands down, is the winner. baby powder smell and clean sheets.

Everything's going alright. I'm excited for the weekend, but I love my workweeks. Really, even though it means getting up in the morning. I think I have to wear my galoshes tomorrow. What a hardship. Iced coffee, galoshes, the coolest coworkers a girl could ever know and meeting Brigid Hughes? What a week! I'm as happy as a newborn babe. I have a weekend of parties to look forward to, mounds of reading and spontaneous dancing and singing. It's all here for me. I don't even have to try. Is this why I worked so hard for the first 26 years of my life?

Paris is hovering on the horizon like a north star. I need to get in touch with Damien, La Coquette, Aymeric, and others in Paris. I am so anxious to be back in my other hometown and piece together long forgotten conditional verb constructions. I also need to get together with Kwanza before going back. I borrowed "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill" from Helene and say what you want, Parisian radio loved this album when I lived there so that's my association (not jock girls like my brother thinks when he hears this album). I feel the Latin Quarter, red wine in Nutella jars, catching the last metro home, singing in Montparnasse with Kwanza, stumbling around the Marais with Suzanne, drenching myself in art and culture... all the while all too aware of being an American. And now it's all so much more. I am so grateful of all the chapters that make up my life and the way that music brings back memories. I should get some sleep, but I am just aching with happiness. I can't believe I'm going back! What will I do!? So many options, so little time. The past year as taught me to never live for the future. Nothing is worth it if you aren't vested and in love. And that isn't just what you think. I love my work, I love my varied hometowns (NOLA, Paris, NYC-Brooklyn), I love the people in my life, I love my family. I don't know what else I can do besides open my heart and mind. There's so much to learn. I am itching for the next turn in the road. Look at these kids. They don't know how good they have it. They are growing up in New Orleans. They are New Orleanians. They have no choice but to embrace life and every gritty, shiny thing that comes their way. I'm glad to be one of them. I miss and thank you, NOLA.