Yo I’ll have to save this memory/moment for a music video or maybe a French Film: it was a totally French Film moment.

Last night, still in NYC and I put aside my differences with Cameron Crowe and saw Pearl Jam 20. (I actually have beef with the band so this was a real growth moment in terms of maturity. Another story for another day).

Anyways I came out of the cinema, it was like 11:30 or midnight…the evening had this strange energy, Sunday night of a long weekend coupled with a full moon.

It gets harder and harder to leave New York, it’s all there and I didn’t want to go back to an empty apartment and being packing so I put on my headphones and headed off into the night. I ended up walking for like hours…just walking block after block. I passed everything…Empire State Building, Radio City, Madison Square, Letterman’s theatre saw lots but never heard anything as I had music going the whole time: R.E.M.’s sublime album Collapse into Now.

Here’s the French Film part.

Shortly after coming out of the IFC cinema I “caught up” to this blonde, dressed completely in black holding 1 white rose. Kinda strange but whatever…I’m walking she’s walking. Once I passed her but then I stopped to snap some photos of some cool graffiti and then she passed me. That’s how our dance unfolded.

As we’re walking, both lost in our worlds she was up ahead and she turned back and smiled at me. I froze…what the? There was nobody else on the sidewalk it was just for me. Oh. I hadn’t realized she’d even noticed me.

She’s walking, I’m walking.

By now I’ve moved onto a song off the latest (and last R.E.M.) album called Uberlin and as I get to these lines:
“I don’t mind repeating I am not complete
I have never been the gifted type
hey man tell me something are you off to somewhere?
do you want to go with me tonight?

I know I know I know that this is changing
we’ll walk the street to feel the ground I’m chasing”

She does it again, just turns her head back to me, cocks it to one side and flashes me a smile. I smile back, her smile responds and she faces forward. And she’s walking. And I’m walking.

I ducked into a store to buy a glass bottle Coke and when I come out she’s up ahead huddled against a building trying to light a cigarette….so it’s kinda like she waited for me.

I’m walking. She’s walking…block after block.

And as we approach Times Square she looks back…I can’t read the look it’s not a smile and then…she’s gone. I lost her in the throngs of people in Times Square. I stood there at 42nd and 7th spinning around in a circle trying to find her and…I couldn’t do it. She was gone.

Yo! I was devastated. How could she leave me like that? Maybe I should’ve looked for her better or something…I dunno.

I emerged out of Times Square but she was gone. I waited a bit, hoping she’d show but she never did. I shrugged, cue The Incredible Hulk piano music and kept on walking.

But it wasn’t the same after that. Sigh.

I have no clue what that was, if had something of hers I’d totally put it in the shoebox there was a genuine connection there. Like I said this is a music video or the opening scene to a French Film or something.

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Also published on Medium.