May 20

I am growing more fond of gold. Yellow overall, really. It often feels garish, over the top, overly enthusiastic for no good reason. Any darker and it feels dirty, sulfurous. But tonight the stage was appropriately warm and Chicago distantly lively.

Everything I try to write nowadays starts with an end, dark-winged like a barn swallow, fragrant and ripe, ready to burst, like a peach. I sit the balcony, listening to the sound of the flute drift up, the KA-CHUNK of her father’s camera and the hasty not-whisper, “WAS THAT TOO LOUD?” drift over. I hold my breath when tapping the screen of my phone, trying to recalibrate the light, but not the horizon line. Every performance feels like the last, and as she burbles her way through Quantz and William Grant Still I am recalling all the nights we ran home from Symphony Center in our dresses and coats, glowing fluorescent in the shop lights, our laughter fogging up the skyline.

look: Sattar Bahlulzade, The Shamakhi Vineyards 
listen: Eve Beglarian, I will not be sad in this world
read: Alfred Corn, All It Is