sounds from the street

well children…..at last i have stepped out of my crypt into the night and walked among you. yes – after more than five years, nearly a decade, i have gone out to see what’s happening on the streets of this city after dark…and to tell you the truth, it feels like a lot longer. things have changed for me since then. with age, a great circle both within and without me has closed, and i look on you all with far older eyes than the ones you see, staggering by in your skinny jeans and chuck taylors, high on whatever. i look on you with the eyes of 25 years ago, and something in me laughs, and something in me aches.

i remember the streets being alive with danger – now all that’s left, it seems, are packs of young hyenas who only feed on the weak and wounded. there are no lions on the streets any more – no tigers burning bright – only scavengers. so many young, clean faces – so few scars. i walk past your cute little clubs, with your cute little bands, and feel as if i’ve wandered into an amusement park, with nothing more frightening than a ferris wheel.

there aren’t any young rebels, pioneers, angels, demons, assassins – everyone is in costume, with nothing real to change into afterwards. there is no subculture – there aren’t even any weekend warriors, because there isn’t a weekend. instead it’s casual fridays at the corporate theme park. except even that’s meaningless, because nobody has a clue about anything that couldn’t be described as casual.

no renegades of style – just young clerics in their hoodied hair shirts, with their long beards, their sandals. young ascetics dressed up like japanese cartoons, their eyes unnaturally large from too much gaming, too much twittering, too much fondling their handhelds. i saw no one dressed to kill – only dressed to blend in. only camouflage. there was no foreground music. only soothing background noises.

sitting here in my friend’s apartment writing, i can hear the upstairs neighbors with their windows open fucking, crying weakly out into the night, as if begging for an audience. nobody is out on their stoop here. off the avenue, everything closes at 8 or 9. there aren’t even any losers hanging out in the 7-11 parking lot – they’ve all found someplace to sleep.

the cafe called “insomniacs” is closed, the lights dimmed. false advertising, i think to myself.

the air is gentle, like italian air can be at the right time of year. the trees cluster shyly somewhat like they do in greenwich village – they don’t explode like they do in philly or in rome or in cambridge. this place wants so bad to be so many places – it wants to be the little european burg with cafes and canals, with just the right edge of seaminess and red light around the edges; but instead it’s just a pedestrian mall.

i just got off the phone with an old, old, old friend even more battered and scarred inside and out than i am, and we agreed that for want of a scene, it’s time we did like we did back then, and create one. because did i forget to mention? we did. from scratch.  i’m not going to name any names or places – i’m sure your imagination can fill in the blanks and paint a picture familiar to you.

we are the ones who started the scenes that people talked about long after. it’s time to get back to work, i told him; it’s time to get out of this goddamned clark kent phone booth and put our superman capes back on.

see you on the street.