I: Train
Before we even boarded the train to New York City I was bleeding all over the place. I’d sliced one of my fingers on a straight razor in my toiletry bag while trying to locate the deodorant, and now I was frantically trying to gather luggage from my car, staining everything I touched dark red. I wrapped the finger in a thick paper towel, but the red blood seeped through regardless of how much I dammed it up. It was a startling amount of blood for such a small cut.
This was how our trip to New York City began. We were going for a family wedding, and we left our toddler back home (not by himself, with a family friend!). This would be our longest trip yet without a child in tow. After boarding the train, we walked from the front to the back at least three times in a futile attempt to locate two seats next to one another. We marched up and down the aisle like maniacs, indignant at our bad luck, like we were the only people who’d ever known bad luck. The cabin shifted significantly from side to side as the train rumbled down the tracks, causing me to stumble into seated passengers. “You may not be able to find two seats together,” an attendant told us condescendingly, seconds before finding a couple of seats across the aisle from one another. By that point, so early in the trip, I was writing off train travel for good. These people, I swear to God, they just throw you on board and tell you to find a seat. Fend for yourselves, ye plebian coach travelers. Sit down, shut up and get over it.
As the train rolled north toward the Large Apple, Caitlin and I settled into the experience. It was pretty darn pleasant, even if my finger was still bleeding through the paper towel. The smooth hum of the wheels on the tracks and the Great American Landscape through the window put me at ease. It didn’t take long for me to believe that train travel was the only way to travel. The opinion I’d held just five minutes prior, that it was an unmitigated hellscape, was clearly misguided. Train travel was downright great. You don’t have to deal with the microstresses of driving, like crazy road ragers. And unlike flying, legroom is ample. Plus we could get up and buy food, tea and coffee whenever we wanted. The trip would take 6.5 hours instead of 1.5, sure, but we didn’t have to deal with airport security or the dread of potentially dropping out of the sky at any given moment.
Soon enough, I believed train travel was the only way to travel. The opinion I’d held just five minutes prior, that train travel was an unmitigated hellscape, was clearly misguided and objectively false.
Caitlin agreed. She would never fly again.
“So we’ll take a train to Europe?”
“Yup.”
The best part of the train ride was the mini-nap. I can’t sleep on a plane. The air is stale and the hideous roar of the engine puts me on edge. Plus someone nearby always smells like eggs. But not long after Caitlin placed her head in my lap and fell asleep, I was out, too. The sweet sounds of Gillian Welch’s “Time (The Revelator)” in my headphones and the gentle tit-tat of the train moving down the tracks wooed me into dreamland.
When I awoke my finger was no longer bleeding. The next stop was Moynihan Train Hall. New York City. I could see the skyline across the water.
II: New York Things
I’ve been to New York City four times in my life.
The first time, I was like 12. Too young to appreciate the experience.
The second time I was in my early 20s. I spent all day and night walking around the city. I didn’t book a hotel and caught a late-night showing of “Nebraska” at a second-run theatre in Manhattan. I fell asleep at a diner at four in the morning with Lana Del Rey playing on my headphones.
The third time I came with a girl I barely knew. We spent the night awkwardly cuddling in a small room then left the next morning. I haven’t talked to that girl in years. I think she’s a substitute teacher in Florida now. She always posts pictures of brunch on Facebook.
The fourth time, Caitlin and I visited during Christmas. It was early in our relationship. We saw The Grinch at the Madison Square Garden theatre. Walked around Central Park. Got lost on the subway and yelled at each other like ingrates. Apparently I almost broke up with her afterward because we’d had such a terrible time. I don’t remember it that way, but this is what she tells me, and her memory is usually better than mine. I do remember taking the Chinatown bus back to Richmond. The heat was cranked up to 85 degrees and the driver spent the whole trip shouting into his cell phone in a language I assume was Chinese. I vowed never to take a Chinatown bus again. That vow was moot because the Chinatown busline shut down soon thereafter. I’m shocked it lasted as long as it did, though I have to admit a $20 roundtrip ticket from Richmond to New York was a steal.
So this was my fifth trip to the Large Apple. My first as an actual adult. I remember being so incredibly overwhelmed by the size and the busyness of the city the first four times I visited. But as we carried our bags out of Moynihan Train Hall, at least one of which had blood stains on it, the city felt, if not familiar, at least manageable. I felt like an adult in an adult world instead of a helpless child trying not to drown. Life experience is an amazing thing. You live a little, see a little, then before you know it, experiences that once seemed overwhelming feel routine.
There’s plenty I still find cofounding about New York, about life. Like why the Kardashians are famous. Or how the Cubs missed the playoffs this year. Or why people have to die far before their time. But venturing into a big city is no longer something that baffles me.
As we carried our bags out of Moynihan Train Hall, at least one of which had blood stains on it, the city felt, if not familiar, at least manageable. I felt like an adult in an adult world instead of a helpless child trying not to drown.
We were smart enough to lie in our hotel beds and do absolutely nothing for the first hour after arriving at the Hampton Inn in Flatiron-Gramercy. Being a parent is exhausting (I bet no one has told you that before!). With this being our first-ever child-free trip, we contemplated falling asleep at 4:30 and sleeping through the night. We wouldn’t have regretted it. Nevertheless, we pulled ourselves out of bed and did New York things. Because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re in this city. New. York. Things.
What were the New York Things we did? We went to a Spanish restaurant where I ate cow stomach stew. We walked the Highline in Chelsea. We bought fat slices of New York pizza (it was OK) and ate it folded in half while watching a youth flag football game at a nearby park. We had ridiculously overpriced cocktails at a hipstery rooftop bar covered in ivy and talked about Caitlin’s obsession with having a run-in with a celebrity. Any ol’ famous person would do. The only celebrity we’d ever seen was James Franco (pre-scandal) square-dancing in Santa Fe. It was during a road trip in 2017. Neither of us mustered the nerve to speak to him, though we did come within a foot of his left elbow while dancing.
“What would you do if you saw, I don’t know, T. Swift walking down Broadway?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Probably point and say ‘Look, it’s Taylor.’”
“That’d be the end of it?”
“Yeah.”
We didn’t see a famous person. We did, however, see a few people who may one day become famous. They were performing at the PIT Comedy Club, where we’d bought two tickets to a night of stand-up for $30 total. Upon entry, we noticed a poster featuring PIT alumni. Lin Manuel Miranda. Hannibal Burress. Nicole Bryer. Ellie Kemper. Kristen Schall. It was fascinating to be at a place where quite a few well-known folks had gotten their starts, especially coming from a part of the country (the Shenandoah Valley) where fame is rarely attained. Or even sought after, for that matter.
It was a small venue. Maybe 30 seats. At least one of the comics had legitimate breakthrough potential. Michael Oluokon, an NYU grad who looked like he could’ve been a founding member of Run DMC (he described his look as a “warehouse worker and failed saxophonist”). Caitlin and I were wiping tears of laughter from our eyes throughout his entire set. I’ll spare you the awkwardness of trying to convey his jokes on paper and instead describe his style as a guy who takes a joke to its logical extreme and then completely abandons it with a non-sequitur. He had the demeanor of a seasoned comic despite only being in his 20s. I fully expect to see him become, if not famous, at least well-respected within comedy circles.
He finished his set and sat down next to me (that’s how small the venue was: the comics were also sitting in the crowd). I fist-bumped him and told him how much I enjoyed his work. He said that meant a lot. I genuinely felt he meant it. He’s now obligated to become famous so we can say we saw him BEFORE HE WAS COOL.
Michael Oluokon. Remember the name.
We stayed out way too late after the comedy show. That’s what happens when you meet up with family that likes to drink, in a city like New York (it doesn’t sleep!). We hung out at Jake’s Saloon, right next to the Chelsea Hotel, where the bride and groom were staying. It was a fairly low-key night, despite the alcohol consumption. The highlight was singing along to “Piano Man.” We were in New York City, we were alive, and our vocal chords still worked. Life was, if not good, at least all right. Even though all of us were going through troubles back in Virginia, we were here now and that was enough. So what if a tropical storm was rolling in? So what if we were no longer young? For a few nights we could act like we were. We could forget about cut fingers, about alcoholic mothers, about family members dying down south.
I put my arm around the groom-to-be, a guy I’ve known for 30 years, a guy I used to make ridiculous home movies with, a guy who introduced me to my wife (his first cousin). The two of us belted out “Piano Man.” The words we knew. When the sweeping chorus penned by that Long Island boy came around we sang in full-throated enthusiasm. It was novocaine for the soul.
III: A Pile of Trash
It’s not like the world is any better in New York City. In a lot of ways it’s worse. Everything is expensive. Trash litters the street. The streets themselves smell like piss, grime and marijuana. The unhoused population is visible and struggling (in what American city isn’t this the case?). You may have to wait in a 30-minute line for a bagel or a slice of pizza. I can’t remember which comedian said this line, but the gist of it was that New York City isn’t “the environment,” just an enormous pile of trash.
That may be true, yet it’s a glimmering pile of trash, one with incredible restaurants on every corner and more art than you can shake Aaron Judge’s bat at and lights lights lights and the prospect of something exciting happening at any moment and talented people and interesting people and nice people and mean people and clubs on the 38th story with huge windows overlooking the endless city and speakeasies and weirdos and something to do, always something to do. New York is everything. There’s no such thing as being weird here. The city that never sleeps. That’s what I called it earlier in the night, when we walked out of the overpriced cocktail bar and headed toward the comedy club.
“It’s 7:45,” Caitlin said.
“And still bustling. Can you believe it?”
IV: The Wedding
On the day of the wedding, we ate ramen for lunch at a place without a 30-minute line. I felt like I was going to die. Not because the ramen was bad (it was *chef’s kiss*), because a sickness had flared up thanks in part to sleep deprivation. After lunch, I tried to nap but ended up lying in bed and cycling through stressful thoughts. Family dying back in Virginia. An alcoholic mother. For a moment I thought I was going to doze off. Then I sprang awake feeling slightly rested yet still sludgy from the icky sick.
What a drag. Our first trip away from the kid and here we were, stuffy as hell, with a tropical storm raging outside. The wind bending umbrellas, rain soaking the trash. No sightseeing. No energy for it. I could’ve laid in bed all day if it wasn’t for the wedding. I got up and dressed myself and popped DayQuil knowing full well the bride and groom would want to party all night long. That’s just the kind of people they are. Party people. She’s a lawyer and he manages a restaurant. Do the math.
I worked out that morning at a nearby Planet Fitness. Tried to shake off the sludge. On the way there, I nearly bumped into an unhoused man pissing onto several bags of trash. “Jesus mister!” I shouted. Then I thought: “That’s a true New York thing! Almost getting pissed on in the street!”
Unfortunately, the penis-wielding man didn’t shake once, shake twice, and heal my sickness with a magical phallus. The workout didn’t help me either. There was no choice but to power through the rain and the icky sick. A New York City wedding. An experience I’ll never have again. Make the most of it, congestion be damned.
It was an unconventional wedding. Held at Al Coro, a Michelin-rated restaurant that was shutting down at the end of the year because it was too pretentious or something. This is what Caitlin had read online, or some other place, I can’t keep up with these things. It was a fancy place, to be sure, but so damn dark. Like would it have killed them to turn on a couple of lights? The bathroom felt like a back alley in the Bronx. I half-expected a drunk Yankees fan to bludgeon me in the back of the head with a tire iron.
The food, though, was undoubtedly Michelin-level. I didn’t always know what I was eating off the little plates the waiters kept bringing around, but it was all pleasing to my palate. I kept tossing little balls of food into my mouth and gnashing them with my teeth. I could’ve been eating duck’s feet for all I knew.
“How was it?” The waiter asked.
“Best duck’s feet I’ve ever had.” I didn’t say.
The ceremony was short and beautiful. The way all ceremonies should be, so the real party can begin. It was officiated by the groom’s brother, who read a beautiful poem about love being a river yada yada yada. It made every woman sitting at my table break out their tissues in unison. I came close to crying myself, but quickly repressed that emotion, as all hardened men should. The bride and groom kissed, and everyone cheered hip hip hoorah! An ocean of love and good fortune flooded the room like, you know, an ocean. An ocean that floods a coastal town like New York, which by the way is sinking something like 2mm per year because of the skyscrapers, thus making it more prone to extreme weather induced by climate change.
A New York City wedding. The razor gash on my finger no longer actively bleeding. Stuffy and a bit sick, yes, but the power of LOVE, adrenaline and DayQuil keeping symptoms mild. All that trash outside littering the non-environment, but not in here, not in dark Al Coro. No exposed penises here, either. Only exposed hearts.
I won’t go down the climate doom rabbit hole, though. Christ, can’t we just enjoy a wedding without having to worry about the end of the planet as we know it? Enjoy this ocean of love while it’s here? The razor gash on my finger no longer actively bleeding. Stuffy and a bit sick, yes, but the power of LOVE, adrenaline and DayQuil keeping symptoms mild. All that trash outside littering the non-environment, but not in here, not in dark Al Coro. No exposed penises here, either. Only exposed hearts.
The groom got rapidly drunk. It was 9:30. The bus that was taking us to the club wasn’t arriving until 11. Already the groom was jokingly flicking off the camera and play-humping his sister-in-law in the wedding photos. I’d seen this story before, having known him for three decades. It starts with playful gestures, like the humping of the sister-in-law, but devolves into a strange amorphous anger that makes him unpredictable. It can also lead to strange quotes. He once told my wife (again, his first cousin) that she was like his “left arm” and that “it’s the 21st century, we don’t have to marry our cousins anymore.” These are the types of things he says during a blackout.
The bride was equally intoxicated. Eleven o’clock came and went and there was no bus in sight. Without the bus, there would be no afterparty, since the entire wedding party had to arrive at the same time to enter the club. My wife, ever the problem solver (even when slightly drunk) got to work. She had to find the bride’s phone to see if the bus driver had called. Where was the phone? Buried somewhere in the groom’s jacket pocket. He was too plastered to find his own feet, much less a phone in his jacket. My wife patted him down like was passing through a TSA checkpoint. There were three missed calls from someone named “Rosa.” The bus driver.
The bride was equally intoxicated. Eleven o’clock came and went and there was no bus in sight. Without the bus, there would be no dancing, since the entire wedding party had to arrive at the same time to enter the club.
Caitlin called Rosa back and got everything straight. Soon thereafter the bus arrived and 30 mostly hammered people climbed aboard. We made our way across the city that never sleeps, to a a club named Somewhere, Nowhere. It was 11:30. I laid my head against the cold window. Sober, tired, and sick.
“I need to take something,” I said to Caitlin. “I can’t put up with these drunk assholes for much longer.”
Enter certain special chocolates. I’d been saving them for the perfect moment. A sober person can only handle drunkards for so long without going batshit insane. When this breaking point is reached, there are two options: go home or join the party. I chose to do the latter. Just enough of the stuff to make me feel mildly euphoric. I didn’t want to kneel before the infinite and impossible universe like a pious speck of dust. That happened to me during college, when I spent five hours curled up in my dorm room careening through the outer realms of the universe. My ego evaporated like mist in late morning. It wasn’t an enjoyable experience, per se, but a meaningful one, though not one I wished to relive at a packed dance club on the 38th floor of a New York City high-rise.
I managed to walk the line between pleasantly inebriated and too messed up for the rest of the night. Not once did it feel like things were getting too heavy. The trick was to keep moving. Kinetic energy was my friend. I either had to dance or, failing that, drum, using two empty Fiji water bottles we’d been provided by the staff because we were part of the VIP wedding party. I drank a lot of water. That also helped me from tipping into the realm of the overwhelmed. The music was pulsing and the lights were flashing and through the ceiling-length windows there was New York City, in all its glory, from 38 stories up, fog from the tropical storm rolling between the skyscrapers like ghosts. It was the cover of “Modern Vampires of the City,” Ezra Koenig’s masterwork. That view will stick with me forever. It was a reminder of “Here you are in NYC. Drumming your heart out with empty water bottles. What a life!”
The special chocolates saved not only myself, who by this point was attempting to dance like David Byrne but looking more like David Cross, but also the groom, whose harsh drunk was mellowed by what he’d just taken. He became positively lovely. At one point, we gave each other those weird British cheek kisses. His beard was rough on my freshly shaved cheek. I’ve known him for all these years but have never kissed him. Imagine that: two dudes never kissing.
Everyone was having a good time. We weren’t thinking of anything except being with each other in an overcrowded club high above the streets. Even the groom’s brother’s wife, who rarely gets crazy, vowed to take a special chocolate the next day and go to the Met. That didn’t happen for various reasons, but in the moment she was fully committed. These are the types of emotions that weddings, that New York, can conjure. The feeling of why not, it’s one night, here we are in the middle of everything, our routines left behind down south, our responsibilities forgotten for a few hours. Drowned out by love and harmony and the constant bustle of the city.
I once dreamed of living here. Not for the long term. Just for a year or two. To see what it would be like. To see if it would change me in any way. How could it not? Surrounded by so many people all of the time. It’s a completely different mode of existence than basically anywhere else in the United States. Extreme adaptation would have to occur. What would it have been like?
I never made the move. I instead went to Austin in my 20s, blinked my eyes and now I’m a 34-year-old dad living in the sleepy (but wonderful) town of Staunton. I don’t know how it happened. As Gillian Welch put it, “Time’s a revelator.” That is, time reveals the will of the universe. Methodically, unsympathetically, and organically. That whole album is beautiful, by the way, reflecting as it does so organically about death, about how no one – not Elvis, nor Abe Lincoln, nor the Titanic – can stop time. Yet Welch sings as though she’s discovered the secret to bending time to her will. Nowhere to go, nowhere to be. Just the music and the moment. This wedding, this city, tonight. Plastic bottle drumming our hearts out.
I don’t know what I’ll think about this trip a decade from now. If I even think about it at all. Many of the details will be forgotten, or at least warped, by time (the revelator). Writing all of this down is an attempt to stall time, to freeze the moment, so I can thaw it at a later date. The images will return in brief flashes. No grand narrative, just a series of hazy moments. Non-sequiturs. The foggy skyline. The British kiss. The groom humping his soon-to-be sister-in-law in the wedding pictures. And don’t forget Sean, the manager of the groom’s mother’s restaurant since it opened in 2013, pouring a bottle of expensive tequila into the empty water bottles I’d been using as drumsticks. His shirt untucked. His forehead soaked in perspiration. Rambling like a distressed used car salesman. Caitlin and I sitting there and listening intently, laughing, like we were in our 20s and at a music festival again.
I’ll also think about how we ended up in a limo for a three-minute ride back to the hotel. The ride was supposed to cost $150, but Sean the distressed car salesman worked out a deal with the driver. I don’t know who paid, if anyone, but when we arrived at the hotel we all exited the limo without incident. Sean disappeared. I didn’t see him for the rest of the trip. An apparition funneling expensive liquor in water bottles and conning limo drivers into (possibly) free rides. I was unsure of what was even real anymore.
The final image of the night was the bride showing off the beautiful Chelsea Hotel, which was built in the late 1800s. It is almost certainly frequented by ghosts. There was netting in the stairwell to catch falling phones. I presume. The bride assured me it wasn’t strong enough to hold a human body. If a person wanted to commit suicide by throwing themselves down the center of the stairwell, there was nothing to stop them. They would splat on the concrete below and become another ghost of the Chelsea Hotel. Another apparition of this marvelous, dirty, strange, sleepless city.
If a person wanted to commit suicide by throwing themselves down the center of the stairwell, there was nothing to stop them. They would splat on the concrete below and become another ghost of the Chelsea Hotel. Another apparition of this marvelous, dirty, strange, sleepless city.
V: Hamilton, Burr, Lincoln, Elvis and Gillian Welch
I watched Hamilton on Hulu a couple of years after it debuted on Broadway. Back when the Orange Man was still in office, before anyone could call me a father, before a virus took the world by storm. It was by far the most popular thing going for a while, and I’d be lying if I said I understood the hype. I thought it was all right. A rap musical about one of the lesser-known Founding Fathers? Cool, I guess. But like, so what? It seemed too cheesy to fully embrace.
My opinion of “Hamilton” changed after seeing it live on Broadway during the final night of our trip. We were in the third row, close enough to see the spit misting out of the actors’ mouths as they rapped (and sang), and the individual beads of sweat on their foreheads. I was, from the moment it started, transported to Shakespearian times. I sat there in the historic Rodgers Theatre considering how thespianism has been an integral part of human society for centuries. No television cameras, no second takes, just a cast of talented creatives hoping to rouse something within souls of the audience. The actors’ blood laid bare for our enjoyment. This is how it was done in Shakespeare’s time. It’s how it’s done now. Links in the chain stretching back hundreds of years, hardly broken, or even altered in any meaningful way.
The tension, or one of the tensions, at the heart of “Hamilton” is whether one should wait for opportunity and subvert their true self (like Burr, sir) or take their shot and let their freak flag fly (like Hamilton). When I was younger, I would’ve told you Hamlton’s approach was best. We have one life to live, so live it to the fullest. This philosophy is attractive, and when you’re young, perhaps even achievable. But it’s unsustainable. Not every day can be the best day of your life. If you try to force such unwavering happiness into being, you’ll end up lying to yourself and/or burning out. It’s simply impossible for every day to be a 10 out of 10. Sometimes life’ll deal you a 3/10. Or God forbid, a 1/10. No amount of positive thinking or Instagram wisdom will keep that from happening.
Sometimes life flat-out sucks. Sometimes it is painful. That pain has to be accepted and processed. My mother, she’s an alcoholic. Has been for more than a decade. After trying for years to help her, I’ve kind of given up. I haven’t spoken to her much over the past year or so. This hurts me a lot. I’m sure it hurts her. Yet I don’t know how else to handle it.
That family dying back home I’ve been talking about? That’s my mother-in-law. In her mid-60s, yet bedridden and mostly unable to speak because of a degenerative illness called MSA. Witnessing her swift decline has been horrible. Five years ago, she could walk and talk like the rest of us. Now she’s on the verge of becoming a vegetable. My father-in-law, who has a pacemaker, has been running himself ragged to care for her. He’s overly optimistic, or even delusional, about her chances of living a good life. Or even living beyond the next year or two. My sister-in-law is struggling to keep my in-law’s finances in order. Caitlin’s brother and sister are drinking to cope with the stress. Caitlin’s niece broke down crying the other day at the sight of my mother-in-law and had to leave the house because she couldn’t bear the stress any longer. Then there’s poor Caitlin, the only one in her family who’s had therapy to work through these intense emotions, trying to be a rock, while also working a full-time job, raising a toddler, and putting up with me.
No perfect days in sight. Life simmering at a 2/10 for what has felt like months. What shot is there to take, Mr. Hamilton, given the circumstances? When life is unraveling and joy is calloused by layers of grief, what’s left to strive for? Life is not a Broadway play. There are few dualities in the real world. So much is unknown, unspoken, undefined. I suppose that’s why humanity has loved theatre for so long. It simplifies the world. Lays it out in easy-to-understand terms. Offers relief from the endless ambiguity of reality. We’re drawn to theatre because, unlike life, it is neatly organized.
Life is not a Broadway play. There are few dualities in the real world. So much is unknown, unspoken, undefined.
The show did its job. It made me forget about life for a while. It made me feel things. It was inspiring to see talented actors on stage taking their shots, though I’m sure all of them were dealing with personal problems as well. None of us are immune to the daggers of existence. We may escape unscathed for a while, but in the end, we will be slashed.
Maybe Burr and Hamilton were both right. Take your shot when there’s a shot to be taken. Lie low when life calls for it. Yin and yang. Both are necessary for a full and happy existence. Whatever happiness really means in the end, given our predicament.
The last song on “Time (The Revelator)” is “I Dream a Highway.” It’s a 14-minute Dylan-esque opus about everything and nothing. The chorus goes like this:
I dream a highway back to you
A winding ribbon with a band of gold
A silver vision come arrest my soul
I dream a highway back to you
Welch’s lyrics are excellent, of course, but her delivery makes the song (and the album) transcendent. Like the rest of the record, this winding ballad is in no hurry to get anywhere, preferring instead to draw out every ounce of meaning as the music drifts by like a lazy river. Welch herself seems to be summoning a grand force from the afterlife. Not entirely of this world yet somehow falling short of divinity. I genuinely don’t know how she does it. If you parse her songs into disparate parts, they’re not overtly spiritual. Yet her music makes me feel intense emotions I haven’t felt in years. For a brief moment, the Truth of existence is laid bare. Even as that Truth remains impossible to grasp.
“I Dream” is a perfect closer to Welch’s masterpiece. But the song that does it for me is “April 14” and its companion piece “Ruination Day.” Much of “April 14” is a line-by-line recounting of the narrator as she attends a rock show by an unknown band of burnouts from Idaho (“No one showed from the local press,” Welch sings). All of this is happening, presumably, on April 14th of an undisclosed year, which also happens to be the day the Titanic sank (in 1912) and Abe Lincoln was shot (in 1865). Welch presents all of these events as happening simultaneously, as if there’s no past and no future, just an endless string of happenings, mundane, glorious, and terrible. Everything occuring on the same plane at the same time.
Time is an illusion. Ruin will come for us all. Even for things and people that seem indestructible. Like the Titanic. Like Lincoln. Like Elvis. Like New York. The phenomenal achievement of “April 14” is that Welch can sing about so much sadness without sounding depressed, or eliciting a feeling of depression in the listener. Her music is poignant and cathartic. Ethereal and even hopeful, despite it all. A reminder to cherish the time we have in this world with the people we love.
I love it, and I think I love her.
VI: Dragon Lady
Not long after we returned from New York, we visited my dying mother-in-law. She’d just returned home from a rehab center and was immobile in a hospital bed in her living room. She was trying to eat a cup of yogurt, but much of it was dribbling down her chin. She could only communicate in moans, in single words barely heard. Her mind was still intact. A prisoner in her own body.
I recall a memory from several years ago of her raising a glass of champagne to cheers retirement, back when she and Papa lived on a farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains, back when she could still stand and speak. I see her raising three kids and managing restaurants in Florida, where she was known as the dragon lady because of her explosive temper. Lord, she could be mean back then. Fiery and scary. Unpredictable, yet full of life.
Just like my mother-in-law, New York will fall. It seems as permanent as she once did. A fixture in my existence that would never sway. It’s an illusion. The skyscrapers, the pavement, the subway. It all seems solid and real. But one day it’ll disappear.
Just like my mother-in-law, New York will fall. It seems as permanent as she once did. A fixture in my existence that would never sway. It’s an illusion. The skyscrapers, the pavement, the subway. It all seems solid and real. But one day it’ll disappear. It won’t happen in the future. It will not have happened in the past. It’ll happen in the here and now. Where everything has always happened and always will happen. Until time reveals our impermanence and continues without us, no worse for the wear.
VII: I Dream a Highway Back to NYC
I want to dream a highway back to New York City. All aglow with life and expectation. It’s a rainy night, but the lights from the giant screens are so bright that the water glimmers on the road. Uber drivers honk. A man speaking German stuffs his face with a 99-cent slice of pizza. Many languages are being spoken. It’s a gorgeous, incomprehensible swirl.
I close my eyes. I open them. The streets are empty. No cars, no people. The giant screens are frozen in time, yet still projecting light. Time is non-existent. I cannot move, a prisoner in my own body, yet I see an endless parade of people I know, people I have known, people I will one day know. They start as raindrops and solidify into bodies. Bodies I could touch if only I could move my body toward them.
I see my late grandfather, a WWII vet who died of congestive heart failure at the age of 95. I see my grandmother, too, who played guitar and passed when I was five. They appear before me as real as they once seemed.
I see my wife. I see Elvis. I see my great-great-grandfather, Andrew, who immigrated to Western Pennsylvania from Germany. I see my mother. She is smiling.
They are all gazing at the frozen lights, awestruck to be among the living. They lock arms and dance. As they dance, the rain falls and materializes into more people. People I recognize, people I’ve never met before. My brother. John Lennon. Freida, a girl with purple hair I worked with at a coffee shop 15 years ago. They all know each other and they’re dancing like no one is watching. In the center of it all are the bride and groom. Locked in an embrace, teetering from drunkenness. I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude to have been a small part of this.
I see my mother-in-law, on her feet, kicking her legs, drinking a vodka soda. Smiling. I try to move my legs. They won’t go. I panic. It’s too much. Too bright. I am flooded with warmth as the scene fades to black.
I am no longer here. I always will be here. New York City feels like a dream to me. Maybe it never existed at all. Or maybe it only existed in my imagination.
I board the train and go home. When I put on my headphones, Gillian Welch has stopped time once again. I look at my finger and there is a white flap of skin where the cut is now healing.
Ourland 
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