2003-10-29 - 9:17 p.m.

I did not know you, Elliott, but your music was beautiful. Yet you cut yourself through with a kitchen knife and died on the floor. Was the pain so intense?

How can I ever feel your music again? How can I trust your voice, when it has led you to such a bitter end? You said your music was not depressing, that it had to have sadness to make the happy parts meaningful. Perhaps you were lying to yourself.

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Maybe I have been trying to recapture something, something that will never be recaptured. There was nothing there, nothing that had been realized at least, nothing but the promise of the future. How ironic, to yearn backwards to a feeling that was itself nothing more than a vision of the future.

But forget it, forget it. All this is more thinking of the past, distracting me from the present.

So I�m out for a walk, and I�m just sort of watching all these condos that are getting filled in, luxury places with jacuzzis starting at $309,000. I took a tour through one of these new places for the hell of it over the weekend, across the street on Lawrence. The place used to be an alternative school, a place where kids who had been kicked out of every other school would wind up. I went up the stairs and was greeted by a bulletin board proclaiming the upcoming events for a school that no longer exists, directing nonexistent students to rooms that are quickly becoming the paneled kitchens and bathrooms for the future yuppies of Uptown.

I wish these things didn�t happen so fast. I wish there was a little more drag time between a neighborhood changing hands from the poor to the rich, giving the artists and other interesting people a little more time to hang out. But maybe in the time I have been here, I have moved from the artist to the yuppie class along with the neighborhood. I don�t feel much like an artist these days.

As I�m walking by the Chinese food place, a blonde-haired woman is shouting into the window, �I�m gonna fucking sue you, motherfuckers!� and reaches for something in her handbag. My pulse races, and I walk as fast as I can to get arround the corner before she affixes her attention on me.

Later, when I sit down at Starbucks (am I a yuppie, or a contrarian artist? Is there a difference?) she is shouting at some customers, and I take a seat as far to the other end of the store as I can. She wanders back to the doorway, shouting all the way, and the man behind the counter points to the door and says, �Beat it!� with a stern voice. �I�m gonna fucking get this place,� she shouts incoherently as she leaves.

�The thing is,� he tells his fellow worker, �in all the times I�ve been here, I�ve not once felt physically threatened by the people that come in here. They�re harmless.�

When the customers she was shouting at get up to leave, he apologizes for the disturbance. �It�s just part of the ambiance of the area,� he assures them, and they nod back and smile.

I�m happy with how the man handled this woman. He knows Starbucks has moved in on her turf, and they must tolerate disturbances like this for the time being. But I wonder how those people shopping around for $300,000 condos with jacuzzis will like this particular type of ambiance.

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