So anyway, now you know my origin story. I think about my mother a lot. I think about her idea of going where I need to go. I think about how much courage it took for her to change her life so dramatically. I think about what that means in my own life. I think about her influence on me and why I love Nina Simone. Especially Nina Simone playing live. Especially live at Carnegie Hall Nina Simone.
Now that you know more about me maybe I should introduce myself? I guess I’m a pretty ordinary guy. Maybe even more ordinary than Joe Bataan might suggest, cause I’m like, garden variety white boy. I’m 31. I was born in New York. I grew up in Florida and I have lived in San Francisco for the last five years. I work on product in a big software company, blah, blah, hate that shit. All that stuff describes what I do or what I’ve done. I don’t believe there is anything more descriptive to who I am than my name. My name is Ian Francis. Sometimes I’m a hapless cuck. Sometimes I’m a furious instigator. All the time I’m the oldest son of a wonderfully loving mother who has failed at finding love as magnificent as hers.
I guess I’m telling you this because last night I was sitting on a couch with a woman I’ve been in love with for somewhere between 2 years and forever. I know that sounds like a very pure kind of cheesy shit. But I mean it. My insides turn into primordial goo when I see her and I over-analyze everything I’ve ever said to her. I guess something happened last night that sent her overboard too. I was walking out the door, standing on the threshold and she ran right into me for a kiss. I swear to god I almost died. The fact I am alive right now to tell you this is a miracle. I don't know if what happened is what I needed, per se, but it is undoubtedly what I wanted.
I think it’s helpful to know my origin story, now that you know my current love story. My mom was my everything growing up. The way she thought, the way she felt. The way she moved through the world. When she died, it forced me to spend a lot of time thinking about what love is. About what it’s like for a parent to love their child. About what it’s like to love a life partner. I read Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking” after my mom died. The book is such a deeply thorough analysis of grief. It helped me see that inside every story of grief is a story of love. They're inseparable. Loving is itself an acknowledgment of grief. That we know this whole thing will end. It will fade to black. And that all we can do is hold it for a moment. Every love, no matter how long it lasts, is only an opportunity to kiss the joy as it flies. Yet, somehow, someway, I’ve convinced myself this love story won’t eventually fade to black.
For no reason other than fuck it, I decided to keep going on this “origin story” for the character from last week. Who has now been named. A character we got to know from the last short story, which this one is now referencing, so the storyline is continuing. Ian has a last name now – Francis. Maybe just a fun play on his current hometown of San Francisco.
I suppose there are a number of influences into this weeks story. I’ve really just been combining ideas until they feel like they shake up the right way. Dropping in pieces of things I personally enjoy. I am definitely adding pieces of myself into Ian. Poor guy.
Influences this week.
Nina Simone live at Carnegie Hall in 1964 – I’ve listened to this album a bunch this week, so called it out as as the cassette we were introduced to last week.
The Audio Clip – I’ve started recording way too much shit in my life. I recorded putting my youngest son to bed this week. The 3 minutes and 26 seconds attached to this post are that experience. There is so much inside it. I feel a little weird sharing it because it feels so intimate. His baby talk. His breathing. His crying when I didn’t lay his blanket on him just right. Inside it all, what it made me think about inside this story is how we learn how to differentiate self from other. And on top of that, learn to differentiate wants from needs. I don’t have any more thoughts on the matter than that. Loving your child is a strange entanglement of self, other, want and need.
The Year of Magical Thinking – I’ve been slowly reading Joan Didion on death and grief. Slowly because I can’t make it a few pages without crying and reading something so heavy I just need to take a break. The phrase they used to describe the distance of love was “more than one more day”. It’s a beautiful play on our depence on time. It got me thinking about ending and how love and grief work together to acknowledge ending. Every day ends. Every story ends. They both just fade to black.
Also, I suppose this short story is called Smoldering Fire. Going to start trying to keep better track of how these stories are developing. Maybe this is the last installment of this short. Maybe it’s chapter two of the book Holy Ghost. I don’t know.
What I do know is the phrase is taken from a song I found a couple weeks ago as I was finishing Lovely Kiss, Kiss, Kiss. It describes a kiss on a threshold. Which fits really well with the story.
Keep the fire smoldering to fight the fade to black friends,
Robb
Fade to Black