It turns out that
Robert Smith can be just as
heart-stirringly depressing when
he’s just singing out the screen
door window down into the court-
yard. Somebody just had the precious
wherewithal to notice how his own (the
room from which he’s singing very live)
window is open just so (the window that,
I might more correctly relay, is the one window
that emanates from the room in which he’s crooning –
the one window that’s connected to the room in
which Mister Robert Smith is crooning! Never lose
sight!) that the room in which he is singing within these
5 stories of very small rooms (the courtyard, the unex-
pected acoustics – meaning horrible or fan-
tastic and everything in between – of the
courtyard [almost] smushed against the open
courtyard windows themselves – we are truly
neighbors in this, our transitional housing venue
where Robert Smith has taken to crooning from
within the very heart of our building.) floods the ears
of those of us within who have windows open to
the courtyard. There’s rain presently forecasted
for days on end; there is rain presently falling.
This happens in San Francisco. Is Mr. Smith chagrined?
That’s just a joke. I imagine that he’s immune to, if not in love with,
the rain, in general. As it builds upon or flavors his crooning.
Any nobody could stand anywhere in the vicinity and say that it
perhaps tomorrow, perhaps the next day, this luck we have with
being so personally crooned by such an illustrious star, here, in
this place, will end. At some point, Mister Smith will be gone,
but for now, and for a few days now, he seems not to
recognize that he’s the catalyst for such a unique event.
At a transitional housing facility. At MY transitional
housing facility. In San Francisco this week. But, no.
The final several weeks shall be more dramatic, I'd say.
(Note to self: is it time that I begin adding “if you like
that sort of thing?” -- no no no!! This is a magnificent
luxury. Of what kind I’ve no idea at the
moment. But we’ll get there. And we’ll all get there
together.) (Further notes to self: How many of the
tenants know who Robert Smith is? How many care?
I know there’s an 80s song fanatic that resides in
a room through a window directly across the court
yard from my own – or in that general vicinity.
Should I introduce the two of them? And is there a
link between Robert Smith, homelessness, harm re-
duction [and here I’m surely grasping] and/or
anything San Francisco that is relevant. Repeat,
is ANYTHING relevant here. Ooh, he’s still crooning this
afternoon. Good ones, Mister Smith. This is most
definitely relevant. And great ones indeed. Then
it hits me like a ton of reverb that I’ve been avoiding
you, my darling, for quite some time, even if you do yet
barely exist. But you do, oh you purple bear you. And YOU
remember that the theme at tonight’s disco-
teque is PURPLE ROOM. You haven’t begun
to think about a costume of course, much less
the concept for the grand entrance hallway (a clumsy
one, always, and yet the theme of clumsy conversation
that makes up about half of the after-party talk.
Is it that nobody’s high yet? Perhaps.). But I am
so swimming with, well, if not ideas, then notions that
this whole thing can be brought together for the good
of everyone, should something purple walk out of my
closet and say, “Del, I’ve got it.”… Well, no such thing
happens, at least poste haste. However, as if on
breakthrough, you realize that this is exactly what
you’ve always been working your way towards;
or at least sidling your career practically along-
side. (And I’d say that the crash details of this “intro”
are about to be known around the world. Or at least
around ours. And Mr. Smith’s. Or maybe not Mr.
Smith’s. He’s wonderfully out of touch.) And.
It’s your call if not calling. And I see this written
all over your face like a map so in wonder of this
world of potential that, well, it has a world, a geo-
graphy of potential. It’s your calling, remember.
Um, and your call. But do you realize this ASAP? (Is
it a new calling and the old calling simultaneously?
This would take a while for you, for me, for us to parse
through individually and in toto, I can tell. I even
see that glimmer, say, with fortitude, that it’s your
profession’s responsibility to emanate, if you will.
And it damned well will be your entrance. A
world of sighs all around.)
Time will tell how things turn out in this slightly
off-beat club in the oddest part of San Francisco
(for San Francisco – I mean, the club had been part of the
city’s mainstay since I was part of the city’s mainstay,
which began toward two decades ago now (not the actual
moment I pulled in to the city, but the moment I
began this endless party). I’d recalled with lots
of funny faces, the ongoing theme of the awkward
hallway that made its way from the slightly off-
kilter parked cars, under the little umbrella—it was
always at least drizzling—over the red carpet and
into the great indoors, and finally toward the beat of the
herky-jerky come-what-may that led to the dance floor –
oh I heard once that there were gigantic round hay bales!).
The event was filled to gala-proportions that night. Even Mr. Smith
showed up, something that had been a less expected part of the gamble.
And you, you’d found your profession, if you will. Even if it was
momentary. And more than anything, you found your entrance.
Life, we’d see once again, was to be grabbed by the balls and kissed
so desperately hard one wouldn’t know if it’d immediately be spit
up (life; the poor balls, etc.). And this we had made the good if not
grandiose thing that begins and often ends all things so fantastic.
These wacky words are for my lovely and exuberant...and gracious...
friend of 32 years or so, Tammy Powell
