stranded

The other night, on my way into the city, the train stopped between stations, underground. Some other train was stalled, the signals were busted, we were held for what felt like a very long time. I was going to do a stand up show, one of two that night. By now I know to give myself a buffer if I want to get anywhere on time. I hadn’t left with any buffer. (“....the speaker knows better—which is different from doing better—I’m told.”¹)

The conductor periodically come on the loudspeaker to apologize for the inconvenience. I considered striking up a conversation with the people around me, then didn’t. I wondered what would happen if I started singing, would people join in? I didn’t do that either. What if we were held there all night? Did anyone have food? I thought about Jesus and the loaves and fishes; there wasn’t much but five thousand people ate. I don’t know this story too well, but someone once told me that it was less that the food multiplied itself and more that Jesus moved people to share what they had with each other, it was a matter of provoking generosity. I wondered what the people in the car had with them, what they would offer if given the chance. I didn’t have shit.

I looked around. Time stretched, the way it does when you don’t know how long you’ll be somewhere, how long you have. Some people were palpably exasperated, others seemed calm. One guy had flowers. As the minutes inched by, I started to feel we were being reminded that we do not have the upper hand. Trip after trip we had made, across this vast and indifferent city, feeling so in charge, and here we were, ground to a halt despite our elaborate plans. We were, for the moment, stranded.

We are at the mercy of forces we do not understand, they shape our lives. These forces, they are older, fiercer. They are more generous, more astute. Some people have been known to align with them. On my best days I want to yield to these forces and I want to be able to wield them. Alignment with these forces results in an unshakeable, borderline unnerving authority and spirit the greatest artists exude. These artists’ work makes me suck my teeth, leaves me speechless. Encountering what they’ve made (what they’ve brought forth, what they’ve offered) feels like a punch to the gut, a real lurch. It’s forceful.

Carvell Wallace (one such artist) writes of the work of Thelonious Monk (another such artist), “Music that’s insane and gorgeous, droll and dire, ardently crafted to be so perfectly wrong that it robs you of your predictions and replaces them with ever unfolding arms of unexpected rapture. The harder you fight it, the more frustrating it is.”² These two beings, there are so many, who have been provoked to give what they have, and the giving sure does feed.

In total we were probably only stranded for thirty or forty minutes. Eventually, the train pulled partially into the station, and all of us had to file through to the frontmost car and exit through a single door. I dashed across the platform to the opposite train, feeling like I was tempting fate, but the next ride was completely smooth. I emerged from the subway system, took a cab to the bar where the show was, and wouldn’t you know, it was cancelled. I descended again, headed back to Brooklyn, feeling not unlike a chicken running around with its head cut off, I made it to the other show in time, told my sorry little jokes, and went home.

“Hey!” I heard someone shout, faintly, from a distance, “What is all this for?” Then the train roared into the station as if to say, “Don’t answer that.”

1. Kemi Alabi on Jenny Xie’s “Ongoing”

2. “Thelonious Monk: So Plain Only the Deaf Can Hear” by Carvell Wallace, April 2016, The Pitchfork Review

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You are invited to the Breath Door Comedy Show on Friday, February 27th at 730 pm. Details here.

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