I was hanging out with the kid I babysit last night. It was Friday night in Los Angeles and we were headed to the 8-10pm free skate session in Pasadena. I picked him up from school and we went back to his house. I had a discussion with his father about writing and being a writer. He tells me that someone once told him that for a writer the words are just the bones. The writing is the skeleton. The flesh of the work is what makes it a beauty or a disaster. I agree with him. He teaches his son a few knots using a string shoelace and grabs his things to leave for the gym. The kid and I sit on his parents couch and we watch music videos on the internet for an hour or so. At around 6pm we head out for dinner at a fried chicken fast food restaurant. As we are sitting there outside, having eaten all of his fries, he grabs one from my box and shoves it in his mouth. He tells me he found out he was a mistake. I assure him most of us were mistakes. That child birth is the beauty of nature being a force of reckoning and resurrection. His parents are going through a divorce and you can feel the cold air coming off his chest. His insecurities are building, he’s not wondering whether or not he’s really a mistake - he’s wondering if he was ever supposed to be here at all. I assure him there is too much magnetic energy pulsating from every microfiber and spark of brain cell combustion of his being for him to not be here in this world right now with me. I tell him how everything is only the beginning of time in the span of his life. I tell him how being a kid is going to be painfully prolific in the making of his character. I assure him there is a reason beyond belief for why a little boy like him would be born. He looks at the clock, shouts the time, 7:43pm, and we take one last bite before leaving for the ice rink.

He’s on the ice before I’ve finished tying my laces. I take my time and he begs me to get on the ice already. We skate around in separate unison - gliding along the circular ellipse of frozen water - blasting music from our big black headphones into our cerebral cortex. I watch as he helps a young girl who’s fallen to the ice in front of him, find her bearings again and I feel proud to know a kid like him. I watch as he’s more concerned with making conversations with the other kids at the rink than being good at skating. I look around as I skate and I see two men, alone, gliding on ice with headphones in and I’m warmed by the idea of safe spaces and the freedom to dream. Self-expression uninhibited by societal standards, two men who love to go ice skating on a Friday night in Los Angeles, California. I am reminded why writing is the greatest gift in the world and why I’d rather watch the world twirl around me than to be on the ground floor of living. I am reminded what it means to be a great writer. To use words as a vehicle to deliver meaning. To translate the flap of a butterfly’s fluttering into a word of art. To discover the roses of a world that appears as black, white and other. To obsess about the details of love and how writing can be used to get it right. 

I look around as I glide on ice and I am in love with the world again. I pass the families and the friends, the make up of a life well-loved. The kid and I meet for a moment on the ice and we discuss the quality of the ice rink. It’s our first time here. We both agree the Pickwick ice rink in Burbank is of higher stature. When the clock strikes 10:00 we leave the ice and unlace our shoes in unison. We leave the ice rink and on the walk to the car I ask him what he wants his art to be. He tells me it’s music. As we drive through the canyons on some highway between Pasadena and Fairmont, he connects his phone to the car’s audio system and he plays the instrumental ‘lyrics only’ video of his favorite song. He sings it with a hushed voice and insecure tone. 

I tell him to sing louder, to really sing it, louder, belt it. I tell him to put on ‘99 Problems’ by Jay Z and I show him how to use the voice’s architecture to elicit emotion like one of the greats. I tell him how Harry Styles hasn’t hit it yet. He hasn’t learned to beg for love at the hands of a microphone like Bruce Springsteen learned to do. I tell him to put on Born to Run and I sing it like Bruce sings it. I play the saxophone solo with my fingers in the air and noises coming from my mouth and I tell him that’s what it means to be a musician. To step aside in the middle of your song and let your saxophone player beg for a love only he knows of on an instrument of wind blown. I tell the kid if he wants to do music, we’ll do an album after the movie. We’ll spend two years crafting his voice in sound, body and mind and we’ll release the work when he’s 16.  

He puts on another one of his favorite song’s instrumental ‘lyrics only’ video and he sings it with a voice that’s not yet established but it’s louder. It’s the beginning framework for a voice that has what it takes to be great. A voice that has guts. A voice that recklessly abandons all faith in the hopes of a love like no other. I hear him grow in the passenger seat of my shitty old car and I feel proud to know a kid like him. I drop him off and we wish each other a good rest of the weekend. I don’t know when I’ll see him again. I never know,  I just know there will be. On the drive home I smile at the thought of achieving a dream like being Bruce Springsteen.

It’s October and I’m in love with the world again.