"The Tide Pulls from the Moon" William Fitzsimmons

            In a warehouse in downtown LA (location undisclosed to protect the innocent, and those who don’t wish their equipment to be stolen), a girl from Kuwait with perfect skin, and that fine articulation of our language that is relegated only to foreigners, paints large swathes of pinks and blues onto my willing cheeks, while a photographer named David Kafer preps his camera for the next leg of this shoot.  The set, two 8x4ft boards of foam core flanking a plethora of lights that grace a small stool in soft yellow, is one of three workstations on this top floor of the warehouse.  The walls are white and dirty, the bathroom sparse but clean, the desks are freshly-cut slabs of wood that have been thrown together without ever being sanded or varnished, but in each corner, magic is happening.  An immensely elegant Vietnamese gentleman lovingly steams long strings of silk roses of such fine craftsmanship that, although they are of wildly unrealistic colors and patterned cloths, I am tempted to smell them and must hold myself back from touching them.  On the other side of a black velvet curtain that hangs on wire from the high ceiling is a mannequin dressed in a finely-structured, high-collared dress right out of “The Jetsons,” but when I move closer, I see that what I had thought was thickly-layered crinoline, is in fact coffee-filters cut and strung together to form big beautiful frothy loops and bows that make up the bustle. 

            When I had first arrived here, after wading through smog and bustling as quickly as possible past the hordes of strange-looking women in tired heels with tired hair and brightly-painted eyes, I thought I must have the wrong address.  I stepped up to a modest doorstep where two men haggled over the price of silver coins, but that bore the address David had told me,  and warily pulled out my shiny phone in its’ bitty turquoise case, and, hiding the device in my hair as much as possible while it rested against my ear, I asked David in the high voice that I have been working on eliminating from my arsenal of speech, if perhaps I was not in quite the right place. 
           “Coming to get you,” was his response.  And then he appeared, and led me up the stairs into wonderland.  You cannot hear the street below; and even the simplicity – rusticity? - of the building itself cannot mar the elegance that the designers who surround David have leant the place.  Two separate – parlors, is I think the only term appropriate - on either side of the room, boast rich oriental rugs and ever so many sweet Victorian chairs upholstered in white brocade and in dire need of a tea-drinking matron or two.

            In stark contrast to this was the first warehouse that I visited, a few days ago.  The fourth floor full of the same untz untz beat for four hours straight, and everyone there in black leather, pleather, or lace, with maroon lipsticks and slashed tops and a hardness in nearly every eye until I escaped to the roof and found three other model-younglings taking clumsy photos of rather well-formed poses with the grey-orange lights of LA in the background.  I had loved the experience of we four on the fire escape ladder climbing back down to the loft-space where the party proper was taking place, surrounded by confusion as the cigarette-smoke encircled vixens below us were forced finally, to look rather than only to be assured of being looked upon. 

            “She’s ready,” Hya says, dragging me gently from my memory, and stepping back from my face to admire her handiwork.  She brushes the back of her hand under my chin as a cue to look up. 

David, our photographer, nods, waves his hand towards the stool.  “I’m changing the music, too, now.  I think it is time for the really depressing stuff,” he says as he pulls a light back a few inches.  “You know William Fitzsimmons?”

I don’t, but soon enough come to appreciate the breathy, raspy male vocals and gentle guitar remixed with some modern beeps and boops.  It’s like Postal Service unplugged.  It’s like a Conor Oberst for adults: no whining, lyrics straight to the point, truly poignant rather than grating.

“Close your eyes,” he says.  “Chin down, down, right— yes.  But then, to the left, not your body, just the— yes.  Ok, hold. Great [click], great.  Ok, now put your hands up, like this.  Good – don’t look mad! Youuu’re not mad.  Haha, yes.  Ohh, awesome.  You are awesome.  Look at you, that one, good. Ok, hair down.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, go for it.”

I pull out pins and drop them to the floor.  I toss the hair-tie and shake out the hair we have hitherto been fighting to keep neat.

“Ok, pull it to one side.  All of it, yeah.  And then under your chin – will it stay? Hmm.  I’m going to do something.  You don’t mind? To your hair, I mean.”

“Go for it.”
            He carefully sculpts the hair around my face, then jumps behind the camera again.  “And then let it go, just let – yes.  Go for it.  You can just feel out the music.  It’s pretty bad right?  Sad, I mean.”

“Pretty depressing.” I smile--

“No, don't laugh.  I love the laugh, but this is sad.”

“It is.”

“Ok,” he says, and looks through the camera expectantly as I close my eyes and begin to slowly move, almost to dance, bringing hands in to my face, tilting to one side, but all in slow motion, like a softer form of Butoh, like feathers, if they were to be dropped and thereby to float from this immaculately lit and melody-filled 6^th floor towards the dirty street below where a man with a yellowed sleeping pad curls into the alcove of the storefront.  I am still seated, just moving hands and chin and forehead and cheeks and lips into lightly varied poses and expressions – and every click is like an epiphany I’ve bestowed upon us, and every click is a reason to stay, and every click erases another vulgarity some idiot or other has punished me with for the crime of being female and walking alone in a city, and every click mercifully destroys yet another fear, and every click is 

--  my phone buzzes in the corner.  The band, the Birds, they’re coming to LA, too.  They’re bringing me to Malibu.  I make a mental note to research Malibu hookah bars.  I make a physical note to let Tina know that I can’t come to the audition on Thursday.  I make a second mental note to paint my toenails and purchase red wine before the boys get here.

Two days later, he will tell me that we only very nearly reached that magical space, where some human truth pokes through the artifices we've erected in the name of a human soul.  He says it was his phone call.  I think it was my phone call.
And on that same day, two days later, I will hold his floppy-puppy drunk roommate on my lap during a game of pretending that he is my puppet and I merely the ventriloquist, and in a moment of sly retribution, read from my journal instead of the comedic play I had originally intended for this game.
"Human life is a dredge along an uncertain path, through a hurricane; the good, noble, brave and steadfast folk keep their heads down and shoulders to the wind.  They collect windfallen debris, and build - with great patience and difficulty - shelter for their battered pates.  They move forward from thence like snails, their makeshift barriers allowing them to trudge on with longer strides and sometimes, to go so far as to help others find some shelter from the storm.  But we the curious, we the hungry, we who hold space for that void who looks back into us, we the drinkers of darkness - well, we look up.  We collect rain in our mouths, we celebrate the massive, amorphous clouds that send down all those tortures of the storm, we smile through the drowning downpour.  In consequence, we lose the path, we may forget that there is a path, are blown left and right by great swells, we lose our others, and are ultimately left wet, cold, and lost.  But we've eyed the sky, and that sight has made all the difference."