People Being Young

monk

Ben knocked on the door at 10:48 p.m. I know it because I happened to look at my watch. He and Miranda were brainstorming about some sort of project...I figured maybe a book, or a music event, or some edgy collaborative internet savvy hybrid happening that I cannot even conceptualize, but clearly there's been a lot of free-wheeling creative energy in the air. Monte and I were not quite tucked in, but we were sort of groggily sitting in the front room on the couch that opens out to be our bed when we stay here. Ben is tall, very tall. He affably leaned over to shake our hands as we sat there and we looked up at him, feeling small, very small. Also old.But believe it or not, I have vague memories of this sort of thing. Going out at night, I mean. Living in a city, walking over to a friend's house way after dinner and way after dark, not at all restrained by the disapproving faces of watches and clocks, or knowing how shitty I would feel the next morning. In those days, I just went with it, fueled by the desire to socialize, inspired by ideas and illusions in a period of life when anything still seemed possible, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, and energetic in that way one is when riding around in a body still only slightly used and crowned with a full quota of brain cells.

Anyway, Miranda and Ben left us in the front room to go into the kitchen where Xander joined them in their scheming, and Monte and I opened up the sofa bed and sleepily climbed inside, together in our dotage and irrelevance. But I like the fact that my daughter's world is peopled by interesting, creative folks...writers and musicians, a stand-up poet, entrepreneurs adept at using the new tools of technology in innovative ways...people who are charged up with ideas, and putting them into action, taking their turn at being young in a way that seems appropriately dream-sparked, imaginative, and even at times brave.

Right now one of the big ideas that the kids are excited about is a new approach to publishing called Unbound. Xander has been instrumental in putting the website together, among other things, and here is the link. Go ahead and check it out; you might find it interesting. (I'll tell you more another time, but I'm squeezing in some blogging on the run here.)

So it turns out that what Miranda and Ben were scheming about that night involves an idea for a project about...people being young! Apparently it has something to do with growing up, spinning high hopes, making it (or not) in the music world and the writing world and any other kind of world, and the grand adventures and misadventures of the process. If I find out more, I'll let you know.