love in a real city/love for a real city
I used to walk through the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston
And I would go to the room where they would keep the paintings by
Cézanne
And I thought, if I had by my side a girlfriend
Then I could look through these very paintings, that I could somehow see right through them
Because it would be something that I understand
Understand the idea–at 17, I understood a girlfriend
Someone to walk through the paintings with and understand them
Jonathan Richman originally recorded it back in 1972 when he was not much more than a teenager, and it is definitely a song from a teenage heart, but here he is just last month performing the Modern Lovers classic “Girlfriend.” (You do not need to be a teenager to have a teenage heart.) And what he’s singing about here–how sharing a place with another person lets us see it differently, and can bring it to life for us–is no less urgently true for me now than it was for him then.
The other day a friend was telling me about one of her favorite neighborhoods in San Francisco, and it was nice to hear about it, to sort of see it through her eyes and vicariously experience its charms.
I love San Francisco in my own way but it’s different. It’s a longing unfulfilled. I feel like I’m observing it at a bit of a remove. Like Jonathan in that room in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston where they keep the Cézannes, I go to the Castro Theatre to catch a movie, or I go to a favorite cafe in North Beach, or to a bar in Bernal Heights, but there’s something missing.
What’s missing is a sense of potential, of life, of past and future. Ghosts that already exist and memories yet to be made. Shared experiences that can make a place vibrate with meaning.
But where do you find real connection in a city like San Francisco? I go out there and I find nothing at all, or I find alienation, or I find obnoxious, shallow people who aren’t interested in me specifically but instead shower everyone with words like “babe” and aggressive, insincere flirtation, people who mistake ostentatious displays of loving everyone for real connection when to me it feels like the exact opposite. These people start trying to pull me in and I run. I’d much rather be alone.
And I know that finding real connection can be hard for anyone. I have friends whose lives are full of chance meetings and dance floor desire, flirting and fumbling and failure, and they’re as lonely as I am in the morning.
Heartbreak hurts but you can dance it off
Sure, some nights she’ll curse these clubs
She’s two years off some prairie town
She goes out most every night
She dresses up and she spins around
You gotta get back out there
It’s a big city, there’s a lot of love
Of course, the thing is that there’s not a lot of love at all. If you find it, you’re lucky.
You have one relationship with time, you want another.

(from the book Love Dog by Masha Tupitsyn)
You have one relationship with the city, you want another.

My therapist asked me today, “So, how are you gonna meet someone?” I said something about still being on OKCupid (where so many of the profiles are all polish and competence and confidence, like they’re applying for a job, not trying to find someone to be human with. If there isn’t a hint of vulnerability in your profile, there’s nothing for me to get interested in), about looking for Meetup groups, that sort of thing, but the truth is that, connection being as rare as it is for me, I’m really skeptical about the potential of any of these things, and as failures and disappointments mount and time slips away, it’s increasingly hard to find the hope necessary to give these things another try.
Maybe dancing is my best bet.
Earlier today Masha posted the great video for the great track “Real” by Years & Years and wrote, “The power of the solo spaz dance, which heals/cures everything.” I said, “My #1 survival/hope maintenance/urgent-reminder-to-self-that-I-still-have-a-living-soul technique, alone in my apartment.”
But maybe I gotta get back out there.

I’m a lousy dancer but a very sincere one. That’s what I found, when my heart woke up a few years back. I’ve still got that teenage heart. Put me on a dance floor and I’ll show it to you.
Jonathan is older now but he hasn’t stopped writing and singing about how a connection with another person can bring a place to life and make you see the world in ways that you never could when it was just you on your own.
She loves them faded colors of the late night like I do
Faded colors, she loves them too
Subtle ones
I like the louder ones in the family
I’m more likely to like the louder ones
The turquoises
She’s more likely to like a faded red
A faded red
I walk around with my heart aching for this city, loving it but wanting to know it better, wanting to bring it to life for myself, and feeling like there are so many colors in it I can’t quite see. Not just yet, anyway.
Notes
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