While doing my day job a couple of months ago in The Annex, I knocked upon a door, and met this charming man, who later turned out to be someone pivotal in my life, who I had only known in rumour, from the girl you see in the photograph. When I was signing him up to a donation, and asked him for his name, I said to him 'The _______ ______?' in reference to his name. We had a good laugh when we found out who each other was, and he would later tell me to forgive myself for what had happened, and it was one of the few times I've ever been soothed by another man (I'm sitting here with an MP3 Cd of Jazz/Funk that is a gift for him, which we will listen to next week together, while having a drink, my new friend and I) The beautiful girl that you see in the photograph is Laura, ex of The National Ballet of Canada. Laura is like Sam - a subject of my touring narrative - a stanza that is quite different than Sam. Sam is an act of pure pleasure, and a wink and a laugh, and a caress and a sigh. 'Laura' is a piece of longing, and a piece of wanting, and a piece of torture. It is a narrative pulled from the unpublished book I was working on three years ago (was it even longer than that?) 'Laura' is the surviving piece from that narrative, sitting in a box somewhere, unpublished (even though I had one publisher willing to do so) I will, in all likelihood, never pull it out of that box (some things are simply not meant) 'Laura' is a wild piece, and I wouldn't have been able to perform it even a year ago, because the wound felt fresh. It still felt fresh until the day I went to a certain cafe and met a beautiful girl who would serve me coffee (who I would dance with later) and it still felt fresh until I knocked on a door after meeting the girl, and met the aforementioned charming man, who again, gave me the gift of forgiveness. I still miss this girl so much, you know. I only think of the day standing in the old Tequila Bookworm, where it was only myself, and Owen, and a couple of random irregulars sitting at the back couches in the cafe, where she walked in, in her red boots and blue coat, and said to me, very early in our friendship 'I was hoping I would find you here...' The possibility exists that word will get out (I am not doing this show so it'll be small and forgotten, so trust, the word will get out) and she will hear of what exactly it is that I perform. I don't know how she'll take it, but I really don't care, because I have to do it - at the heart of this narrative, I know it all started with her. Longing may pass after years, as will regret, but all great jazz has a tinge of melancholy, and this girl, is mine, my own, my wistful, my lament.
But god I'm grateful for her.
