A Late Night Selection — “Lullaby in Two Movements”
Accompanying Musical Selections:
A Tribe Called Quest — “Midnight Marauders Tour Guide,” Midnight Marauders (1993)
Sly and the Family Stone — “There’s A Riot Goin’ On,” There’s A Riot Goin’ On (1971)
Bobby “Blue” Bland — “Ain’t No Love In The Heart of the City,” Dreamer (1974)
Vulpeck — “Zz,” Sleepify (2014)
Gabriel Garzón-Montano — “Lullaby,” Jardin (2017)
John Lennon & Yoko Ono — “Two Minutes of Silence,” Unfinished Music №2: Life with the Lions (1969)
Black Star feat. Common — “Respiration,” Mos Def and Talib Kweli Are Black Star (1998)
I am sitting in a bedroom that I once called my own. Today, it is borrowed space. My weekend bag sits next to a printer that is positioned carefully against a bamboo bookshelf; a mixture of religious doctrines and self-help guides suggests its owner’s need for salvation.
My mother — the auteur of my natural-born life, the first person commissioned to reinforce my self-worth, the woman who chose to never bear another — has turned my childhood bedroom into a fucking office.
I have accepted this possible mark of betrayal because I love her as she is and not for who I want her to be. It is in this room that she finds purpose through her work, filling a personal void that my absence, in at least some part had a role in creating. However, this deconstruction of my first remembered residence is not what preoccupies my mind at this very moment. As I sit in a room I once called my own, I am overwhelmed by the presence of Silence.
In silence, I have lived a certain truth for as long as I can remember. My ability to exist amongst another sans auditory delight is nothing short of a revelation. People hate Silence. It is the awkward house guest, the strange bedfellow, the wedge by which an entire relationship can crumble. If it is delicacy and precision through which one might introduce the idea of a third into their relationship, it is through monotony and anguish that Silence nestles itself between a loving pair. And yet, I’ve continually found it to be an engaging companion on the road less traveled. I am comfortable in and with Silence. However, this is not that.
The suburban enclave in which I spent the majority of my principal upbringing has, for many years, produced an orchestral arrangement of nothingness. In this place, there is no grocery store, no mall. Main Street maintains every one of the town’s handful of traffic lights, a road that stretches itself out for one glorious mile. By day, the proverbial streets boom with the sounds of a neighbor’s dog or the occasional school bus. At night, this masterpiece of minimalism provides its most important Art yet. The nighttime is the right time and that time is right now. In the midnight hours, when the good folks of this small village are asleep, a song begins — Silence. Cascading crescendos and flights of vacuity formulate a concerto worthy of halls found only in Vienna or Berlin. It is breathtaking in every sense.
As life would have it, my sensibilities no longer belong to this place. I am now the bastard child of bustling sidewalks and midday traffic. My new tongue speaks of “what the city used to be” and “that new coffee shop on 3rd.” There is no glory in my status. I am a small fish in a very large pond, but goddamn do I love it.
A deeper look into our dynamic does not reinforce this peculiar relationship:
The City likes to take my money and almost never give it back.
The City maintains a steady roster of suitors, creating an expendable dynamic of emotional distance.
The City only wants me when it absolutely needs me and rarely does it need me.
The City is Nola Darling.
And yet, like Jamie or Mars or Greer, I stay. I stay because every night, no matter how late the hour or early the morning, as I lay me down to sleep, the City plays a lullaby that keeps my soul — a lush cacophony of police sirens and fire trucks, of drunken arguments and car alarms. It is warm and inviting — an auditory Ambien for the urban spirit.
“¡Escúchela! La ciudad respirando”
However, at this moment, I am sitting in a room that I once called my own and I am many miles away from the City. At this moment, there are no sirens, no salacious individuals loudly navigating the broken pavement.
It is silent here and I cannot sleep.
The silence has become so loud that I am compelled to write; not because I have something to say, but because the gentle strokes of fingertips to keyboard help occupy the void attacking my senses.
Fuck you, Silence. I thought we were cool.
Last night, it got to a point where I genuinely felt as if my mind was going to explode from the sheer awesomeness of Nothing. I do not mean that hyperbolically. I truly believed that my mind could not handle the magnitude of Suburbia’s deafening score. The irony, of course, is that when a sound does occur, there is no reprieve, but instead the enveloping of an anxiety-ridden chill, the likes of which only exist in campy horror flicks. A creak in the old foundation, the occasional passing car, central air reengaging after hours of doing God knows what — it is an unexpected and unsettling arrival, breaking the psychological stare down between my psyche and Silence. I am the unsuspecting newlyweds in a cabin somewhere in the middle of the woods.
And this is why I can never turn my back on the City. It has given me something that I never had growing up here as a child.
As a child, I rarely slept. Sleep meant that you might miss something. And for me, the only things in life worth not missing happened after the streetlights came on. It’s not that I hated the daytime or anything— I enjoyed riding bikes and playing ball like anyone else — it just never carried the allure of darkness. Like the lupine of myth, I found life in the twilight. I was my most vibrant and for once, fully engaged in a world that more often than not seemed like a blur. My insecurities were masked by darkness. In its glow, I was strong and able. I lived through the day to get to the night. However, in the hours of video games, Real World reruns, and, BET Uncut, I always felt guilty. In the silence of night, I was alone. Normalcy had long gone to bed and I was up with the freaks and the perverts. Sneaking into the kitchen at 3 a.m., hoping not to wake a soul, I [felt that I] was doing something wrong and I didn’t want anyone to know. It was Silence that made every step infinitely louder, scarier, revealing. Silence was the enemy that wouldn’t allow me to be myself.
I am a man now, a man who lives in the city. When my insomnia needs someone to talk to I am no longer met by Silence, but instead the gentle shattering of a glass bottle. When I want food, I put on a jacket and walk down to the bodega. And when I can’t sleep, I simply walk. There is always an adventure waiting for me in those streets. The City loves me because like me the City never sleeps.
I am much older than that boy who sat transfixed in a synthetic glow as credit card met ass crack. However, at this moment, I am sitting in a bedroom that I once called my own and I feel exactly the same. A little guilty, a tinge scared, and utterly betrayed by the Silence around me.
City, Je t’aime.
