Sitting in a park in Paris, France
Reading the news and it sure looks bad
They won’t give peace a chance
That was just a dream some of us had...
- Joni Mitchell

​

It’s 3:00 pm on an April Wednesday and I’m sitting in a park: not in Paris, France, but in New

York City, where the news is just as bad as it was when Joni wrote the song “California” fifty-
five years ago. I’m tempted to pretend I’m still in Paris, where I just spent a transformative week

at a writers’ retreat. But the scene around me is so very New York, it would be impossible.

 

The flimsy metal table in front of me is painted a shocking shade of yellow, as is the chair I’m
perched on. I’m snacking on my favorite cookie, a gingersnap from a stall at the nearby farmers’
market. Why they call it a “snap” is a mystery: it’s really a soft molasses cookie, nearly the size
of my face, brimming with spices and coated with sugar. Perfection. I take a sip from the pretty
water bottle I bought in Paris as I scribble in the notebook I was gifted in Paris. (Okay, so maybe
I am sort of pretending I’m still in Paris.)

​

But what could be more American: a dozen yards away is a towering statue of Abraham Lincoln.
(I’ve never noticed him before. How many times have I sat in this park and not noticed Lincoln?)
Close by is a sign that reads PASSIVE LAWN. I briefly wonder what that means—are plants not
allowed to grow here?—then note the subtitle: NO PETS OR ACTIVE SPORTS. Fortunately, I
am pet-less and content to sit here quietly. I am, however, actively listening.

​

“The book of love is long and boring...”

​

A guitarist is playing and singing nearby. I can hear him, but I can’t see him. I’m in the center
section of the park’s north end, a patch of grass dotted with these neon table-and-chair sets; he’s

on the other side of a hedge, beside Lincoln’s pedestal. His languid voice is amplified, as is his
instrument.

​

“We didn’t know how to love, so we fell out of love...”

​

Between verses there’s a lot of pitchy oohing. Then I hear the words “my friend Eric” and I start
to laugh. I wonder if friend Eric knows he’s being sung about. I wonder who the fallen-out-of
lover is. I wonder what made this guy think it would be a good idea to take a mic and a guitar to
Union Square and entertain the crowd with lousy love songs.

​

I shouldn’t judge. I should applaud him, really, for having the nerve. I should give him grace.
I heard that phrase a while back and it gave me pause. I couldn’t think whether I’d ever heard it
before. I’d certainly never used it. I think of grace as a Christian concept, perhaps because its
most famous incarnation is the “amazing” kind. I also think of it as a verb, as in to grace us with
your presence, or an adjective, as in she’s very graceful. But the idea of gifting it, as a noun
meaning something like mercy or forgiveness or lovingkindness, struck me as uniquely lovely. A
sense of allowing—of making allowances. Of acknowledging our shared humanity.

​

I should probably give myself more grace most days. I do try with others.

I can be imperious at times. I’m not proud of it, but it happens. Usually when someone isn’t
doing their job well and it’s affecting my ability to do mine. And sometimes when a mediocre
musician is intruding on my otherwise delightful afternoon in Union Square.

​

But who’s to say he’s mediocre? Who made me the music police? After all, I share his
compulsion to perform, to take microphone in hand and sing, for applause if not for my supper.
It’s an insane impulse, really, but one I seem to have been born with. Performing in front of an
audience is one of the scariest things a person can do, yet some of us attempt to make a living at
it, no matter what the cost. There’s nothing as electric as the energy exchanged between actor
and audience. We put up with a lot of drudgery for the sake of that transcendence.

​

In 2015, from April through December, I procrastinated in this park several times a week,
preferring the beauty of the darkening sky to the darkness of the Union Square Theatre, where I
was working as an understudy in an Off-Broadway show. I had to sit through every single
performance backstage just in case anything happened to the leading lady and I had to go on. I
ended up going on thirty-seven times during our nine-month run, though never at the eleventh
hour. The transcendence of being on was spectacular. The drudgery of being not on—of knitting
ceaselessly in a dusty dressing room while listening to someone else play the role I coveted—
was soul-crushing.

​

Most evenings, I waited in this park until the last possible moment before dragging my feet to the
theatre.

​

For every incident of imperiousness—in which my tone sharpens and my spine straightens and I
feel I could bulldoze the person in front of me with my very aura if I chose to—there is an equal
and opposite incident when I feel like an utter peasant. It’s all to do with who I’m talking to and
how I feel about myself in relation to them. Funny how power dynamics can shift us into new
identities. It’s even possible to feel all-powerful and utterly powerless in the course of a single
conversation. The dime-turn: a word or a glance, and soaring joy becomes devastating doubt.
Emotions: faster than the speed of light.

​

Did mediocre musicians play in this park back when Joni Mitchell was playing The Bitter End? I
played The Bitter End in 2019 and nearly bowed to the painting of Joni on the wall. I saw Betty
Buckley perform recently and she confessed that she wants to be Joni Mitchell. “Don’t we all,” I
murmured. I want to be both of them.

​

Here’s an odd thing: performers don’t retire. That same compulsion that propelled the languid
guitarist into the park today propels actors and musicians back to the stage as long as their
instruments—that is to say, their bodies—will allow. Amorous words are used to describe this
dedication to the performing arts: passion, devotion, love. What else but the wildest affection for
our craft could impel us to endure the in-between times, the weeks and months spent wandering
in the desert, starving for sustenance, longing to be thrown a bone?

​

Being a performer is a bit like being a passive lawn.

​

The guitarist goes silent for a few minutes, then starts up again. “But then they buried her
alive...” (What the fuck is this guy singing about?) “I didn’t mean to make you cry...” (That’s
what they all say.)

​

My tongue stumbles over a surprising sensation: there’s a chocolate chip in my cookie. How did
that happen? The market stall sells a few different flavors—they must be baked in close
proximity. The fact that an errant chip sneaked into my gingersnap sets me laughing again.
Fleetingly, I wonder if anyone has noticed the denim-jacketed woman sitting at a table in a field
alone, laughing to herself. The thought makes me laugh harder.

​

The guitarist’s voice reminds me a bit of Chris Carrabba, lead singer of the emo band Dashboard
Confessional. A memory: sitting in a car in frozen Massachusetts during what was supposed to
be a romantic getaway, singing along to a whiny refrain. “Your hair is everywhere...”
Encroaching anxiety assuaged by a flash of connection. It would be a while yet before I
understood what my churning gut was telling me. Who was that woman? I don’t mean the
woman I was with, I mean the woman I was. More shifting power dynamics, more changing
identities. In retrospect, I hardly recognize myself.

​

This has been an ideal afternoon. With two hours to kill between an audiobook recording session
and a self-care appointment, I’ve done the killing in bookshops and this park. On the flimsy
yellow metal chair beside me are my bags—a backpack stuffed with my working life (an iPad, a
hot cup, herbal tea, earbuds, lozenges) and a tote bag containing what I’ve treated myself to this
afternoon: three new (used) novels from the Strand, purchased with the remains of a gift card I’d
forgotten I possessed, and a notebook carefully selected at Barnes & Noble, to feed the
journaling habit I’ve kept up since I was eight. Sometimes I think I enjoy shopping for books
more than reading them, selecting paper goods more than utilizing them. Retail therapy at its
best.

​

The Union Square Theatre is now a PetCo. The PetCo that used to occupy the corner of
Broadway and 17th is now a UNIQLO. The space next to UNIQLO is currently being used for
some sort of Devil Wears Prada 2 event, for which dozens of people have lined up in a queue
that stretches all the way around the block. I can’t fathom what could be worth it. But then, I
don’t find many things worth queuing for.

​

(There I go being imperious again.)

​

A chill breeze blows across the lawn, reminding me that it’s still April, not yet May. I look up
from my notebook to see that the sun has disappeared and the sky, which had been a mottled
blue, is now a hazy sheet of white. Bits of leaf matter have begun to blow off the trees. (The
other day I walked under a canopy of cherry blossoms and when I got home and took my clothes
off a tiny pink petal floated out of nowhere to the floor. I saved it.) A toddler starts to cry—a cry
of protest, not of pain. I can see him, there are no tears. I empathize.

​

The guitarist is still at it. I gather my things, get up, and walk past Lincoln, suddenly eager to put
a face to the voice. There he is, thirtyish perhaps, seated in a chair, an amp by his left foot, a
microphone in a stand in front of him. He wears a forest green sweatshirt and khaki pants. His
hair hangs in a curtain to his chin. His cheeks are stubbled, his glasses thick. He looks like a
Brooklyn hipster from ten years ago.

​

I find myself disappointed. I wanted him to be a scruffy twenty-something in bellbottoms and a
leather vest, a striver more obviously seeking transcendence—someone who might have been
playing here while Joni played downtown.

​

Still: he is brave.

​

Grace, I think to myself. Then I exit, unpursued.