Amelia

Amelia. You've seen her around, on the bus maybe, just a glimpse, then turning the corner. She's the one that kept looking at you, at you, even as the man she was with carried her away from the bodega. The middle school temptress you couldn't quite ask to dance. The second wife, the one you miss, that asked you to dance, and you shook your head… yes. When you think of that moment, there's music. There must be.Crushed-velvet tones that linger and soar above malleable, distinct fretwork, whispering the most hummable flourishes of pop towards Latin rhythms and rawhide textures. Bittersweet serenades familiar and transcendent. Everything you've ever heard before, everything sweet and scabbed and soulful remembered through a dreamscape of battered bar-room melancholia, sun swept vistas and the next season's flamenco.Her exquisite sense of rhythm, plus a joyful presence, at turns thrilling and plaintive, but always gorgeous and dramatic in the best fashion,  she is a distantly familiar beauty.She might wink at you while you kick through leaves in the park, brush by you while you sip drinks under the restaurant parasol. With a little luck you may meet Amelia one day. Written October 2002