Page 13 of I Dreamt That You Loved Me

“That’s how I feel about my art. In high school, all my paintings looked like Picasso or Salvador Dali rip-offs. I was just imitating other artists and producing sloppy copies.”

“Yeah, but that’s how you learn,” he said. “By emulating the greats who have gone before you. Once you’ve mastered the basics, then you can run with it and find your own style, change the composition.”

I nodded. “You have to know the rules so you can break them.”

“Yeah. Your art can still beinspiredby Picasso but be something entirely different.”

“Like your covers,” I said. “I recognize the original version and it’s still in there to some extent, but you make the song completely your own. I don’t know how you do it.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “I can’t paint or draw or sculpt so I guess we’re even. But I feel like my music is all over the place. No one can even figure out what genre it is. Which is good because I don’t want to be put in a box, but at the same time, I just have too many options.”

“What a terrible problem to have,” I joked. “The audacity of beingthatgood that your options are endless.”

He rolled his head from side to side on the sofa cushion. “I’m not as good as I want to be. Some nights are great, and everything flows. Most nights I’m just up there jamming, trying to figure out what the hell I’m doing.”

He pushed his hands through his dark, wavy hair and released a frustrated breath. “No one knows what to expect on any given night. What the fuck ismysound? I don’t even know.”

I don’t think artists ever thought they were good enough.

The creative process was so slippery and elusive, like you knew what your vision was going in, but the final product always fell short. Or, at least, ended up being something completely different than what you’d initially imagined.

But after a month of going to Gabriel’s gigs,Iknew who he was. A risk-taker who pushed his voice to the limits and hada gift for interpreting music in a way it had never been done before.

He could be the next Bob Dylan. The voice of a generation.

“You’re just you,” I said. “You’re experimental. Unique. You can sing opera or gospel or rock or the blues…”

“I sing them all,” he laughed, throwing his arms up.

“Sometimes all at the same time.”

We laughed.

Gabriel drummed his fingers on his thigh, his head moving to the beat of the music. I wondered if we heard the same thing or if musicians listened to music with a keener sense of appreciation. A more critical ear.

“What does it feel like when you’re up there performing?”

“It’s like…” He thought about it for a minute, one eye closed. “You’re reciprocating the energy of the people in the room. But at the same time, I almost leave my body and just let the music flow right through me.”

“So you’re just up there levitating. Defying the laws of gravity.”

“My feet never touch the ground,” he said with a laugh. “But after a show, it always feels weird. Like I’ve given everything I have inside me and then I’m so emotionally drained that I feel hollowed out and empty. It’s fucking embarrassing.”

“Embarrassing how?”

He sighed. “For two hours or however long I’m up there, it feels like my sacred space, you know? I share all the secrets of my soul and when the music stops, I’m staring at a roomful of strangers and I feel so fucking exposed.”

That sounded like my worst fear. “I couldn’t do it.”

“Yes, you could,” he said emphatically. “If music was your passion, you’d do it because you can’t imagine doing anything else. It’s like…I always knew I had to do this. I need to do this. And if I don’t, I would just, you know…perish and die.”

With anyone else, I would call them out for being overly dramatic but that was just the way Gabriel talked. He was either madly in love with something or so completely dismissive it bordered on rudeness.

Gabriel gestured to the collage hanging above the sofa.Gentrification is Class War.“Tell me about the collages.”

“I did that one after the Tompkins Square riots in ‘88,” I said. “A group of higher income residents were trying to gentrify the East Village and complained about the noise and the unsafe atmosphere in the park. Homeless people were camping out in a tent community, so the city enforced a curfew on the park and activists protested. Cops came in on horseback, destroyed the encampment and beat the protestors with batons.”

“Those bastards.”