Growth spurts, growth hurts

What to do when the world around is rapidly changing? Perhaps we cling. Perhaps we hide. But it is the brave who meet it head-on.

I don’t know if I’m with the brave. I’ve been called brave before. But seeing the old fall away from my city, particularly as it relates to music and dance, is like scraping off a part of my body. I’m connected to it. And in the face of death, I feel like I am dying, too, sometimes.

I swell with emotions. It seems there is no limit to the grief I will experience in this long life I’m going to live. To lose health, friends, family, job, apartment, money, true love, false future, youthfulness, and now – my city, my music.

It is akin to an identity crisis when such loss is experienced. Who am I without that? We know who we are in relationship to things, people. Remove them, who are we?

I am feeling lost. I’m actually quite sad thinking about My Miami Music and the state of affairs it’s in right now. It’s home. It’s my home.

Does anyone have reverence for home anymore?

Sometimes it is as if I can’t breathe. My joy is wrapped up in it, you see? Music is joy. And I am sad to see things fall apart with no rebuilding in near sight.

I’m coming to Miami next weekend to visit Space. It is one of the last strongholds that has seen me since the age of 17.

Half my life can be rooted in going to that club. And soon, one day, with all the construction, that place will be a thing of the past as well.

Who am I without these things? Who am I without My Miami Music? I’m really at a loss for words. I abandoned, I found myself, and it seems like just when I got myself back, renewed my True Love, everything is being pushed away from me. And I don’t understand any of it.

While I’m in anonymous Florida right now, I have a feeling New York will be the next step in this quest towards my life’s devotion to music events. I’ll give New Yorkers a taste of their own medicine – that of invading our space.

I’m a Florida girl through and through. A Miami girl more specifically. And no one can take that away from me. Even as my city goes underwater, and is no more, I will have to ask, “Who am I?” And the answer will be, “Well…I’m still that.” I’ll always be that.