What’s to say, people? We are experiencing a grief hangover. Misery fatigue. The destruction in Japan touches us of course on a basic human level, but I have special selfish concerns as well. Licketysplit has been to Japan, but I have not. And it would have been better to see the place when it was not in so many pieces. Also in news of how the news affects *me*, I left a message for my (amazing!) tattoo artist, who had to return to Japan (most unwillingly) because of a visa issue, and I have not heard back. I hope he is safe. He owes me $200.

I timed it. I am capable of seriousness for 23 seconds. It is the grief talking.

Some other terrible things have happened, but I can’t talk about it, because the stories don’t belong to me. Suffice it to say, none of us are going to live forever, and some of us longer than others. It’s a leaky boat we are sitting in, might as well give it some gas. I was having morbid, sorrowful thoughts when I walked into Lu Magnus gallery on the Lower East Side last Friday, just in time to hear the Brooklyn Ladies Choir practicing to perform that evening:

In the middle of a dream
In the middle of a dream I call your name

And I felt simultaneously crushed and liberated by the beauty of their sound. As I fought back tears, my friend in the choir noticed I had come in. She turned, smiled and waved to me, still singing. In the warmth of her smile and their voices, it was so good to be alive, I will never forget it.