art + opportunity

work in process//30.

The other night I went to see Cat Power sing Bob Dylan live in concert at our downtown theater. I didn’t have a ticket because I was supposed to be elsewhere that night, so at the last minute I posted to Facebook to see if anyone had extras they’d be willing to sell. 

Within ten minutes, I had three leads. Within 20 minutes, I was on the phone with a close friend. She had one, it turned out. Did I want to go with her? I did. Almost as perfect as going to see Cat Power live at the last minute on a gorgeous September evening in Santa Fe was going to see Cat Power with a friend I hadn’t seen in months.  

I love it when this happens, I told Steve as we walked around the neighborhood before the show. It was one of those deliciously warm fall nights that still felt like summer; the dogs were roaming free, and I found a book my friends had been recommending about in the little free library along the way. We admired a perfect plump yucca in a garden that Steve had planted, its sword-like spines radiating outward like a starburst. 

Everything felt just right. There was an ease and naturalness to the day that didn’t spring from extreme good fortune but simple pleasures. Flow. 

Earlier this year, I’d heard Cat Power’s version of “Visions of Johanna” playing on the local radio station (yes, we still have one), and I’d been transfixed, not just by her voice of course, but by the way she interpreted Dylan’s song. She somehow made this legendary piece of art her own, without detracting from Dylan’s version or copying it in a cheap, sad way. Probably I’d heard Cat Power sometime in my life, but I didn’t really remember. This, however, I wouldn’t forget. 

Also, the song is eight minutes long. 

That night at the Lensic, Cat Power stepped out onto the darkened stage, with a harmonica player and a guitarist. Her live show, like her album of the same name, is an exact rendition of Bob Dylan’s 1966 show at Royal Albert Hall. She sings the same songs in the same order as Dylan did. Her short hair was black and she wore all black, nearly disappearing into the back of the stage, on purpose, I suspect. The audience sat rapt, and then she began to sing, low and slow, “She Belongs to Me.”

She’s an artist, she’s got everything she needs/ She’s an artist, she don’t look back….

Instantly, I was a puddle. I scrunched down into my seat, melting. The lyrics were Bob’s but somehow the song was hers, and also she was the song. I watched, mesmerized. She kept doing a funny thing with one hand, cupping it beside her mouth like she was trying to make her voice echo, or imitating a bird call. I couldn’t tell if it was purposeful or instinctive, an involuntary response to the music moving through her. Sometimes she stepped even farther back into the shadows while the harmonica player played. 

If I were a music critic, I’d have probably known what this was about. (Also I could Google it right now.) But I didn’t need to understand it. I could feel her feel the music, sending it outward and into the crowd, all the way back in my seat in row K.  Like riding my bike or running up a mountain, the music carried me out of my thoughts and into my body and imagination. I was making a story in my mind as I listened to Cat Power sing. Suddenly I could see a scene in the screenplay I’ve been mulling for months. I was watching her but also watching my mind. Around me, my friend and the rest of the crowd sat upright at attention. If I had to guess, they were making stories, too.

After four or five songs, the stage lights came up, like round fog lights illuminating Cat Power in an orange glow. Half a dozen musicians strode out and, in a whirlwind, took their places. The rocking chords of “Tell Me Momma” filled the theater. It was a completely different energy, wilder now, collective, but just as consuming. Soon the audience was on its feet. Cat Power was telling us to keep our chin up, that it was our time. I knew what she meant, even if it meant something different to each of us. She was playing “Like a Rolling Stone.” I could tell that this was the last song, the way the energy builds until there’s nowhere left for it to go but out, everyone chin’s up, dancing on their own together in the dark. 

The next morning I woke up still swooning, half in a daydream. Oh, to be an artist in that way, on a stage, putting her whole self into her music every night! I poured myself a cup of coffee and, as I do most mornings, walked down to our slackline in the arroyo. For the past two months, I’ve been teaching myself how to walk along 30-foot strip of narrow webbing, strung between two small trees, balancing a foot off the ground while my whole body wobbles. My progress is slow, but measurable. I’m up to five steps without falling. 

I teetered along, making something with my body: form in motion. It was different from Cat Power’s art, quieter and more private, but it was art nonetheless. Art has so many expressions. It doesn’t have to be beautiful or perfect. It just has to be your own. 

Balancing is harder first thing in the morning, before I’m all the way awake. My art was jerky and erratic and I felt like quitting, but then I remembered what Cat Power had told us. It’s your time. And I kept going. 

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Brief Flashings Book Tour News! I’ll be in the homeland aka New Jersey next weekend for my high school reunion (#forever17) and will be doing two readings and signings:

• Sunday October 6, 6 pm at Fleet Feet Montclair, in conjunction with Watchung Books. This reading is free and open to all. Registering in advance helps let the bookseller and our friends at Fleet Feet know how many people to expect and how many books to order.

• Monday, October 7 at 7 pm at River Road Books in Fair Haven. I’ve been invited by the wonderful community nonprofit Project Write Now to give a reading and craft talk on Brief Flashings. Tickets are $25 and include a personalized signed copy of Flashings! All addtional proceeds go toward supporting PWN’s stellar efforts to provide free creative writing workshops to students and community members in south Jersey. I did an event with PWN for Running Home and I promise this will be an inspiring evening of books, craft, and creativity!

It’s our time. Hope to see you in NJ!

be the flashings,

xo katie