Anj Granieri Tell A Friend About Us:

T he seat on the bus is too small for me, the woman sitting next to me large enough to need both seats. She is snoring with her head turned towards me, a stale air of ciggarettes and coffee coming at me like traffic. Through a spiderweb of raindrops that move in a race against the window, I watch a blurred plane, obscene and heavy, all that marvelous metal, lifting effortlessly into the clouds - blending in with the grey. People drifiting off to another place, gaining hours, growing younger, moving towards the sun. I squirm uncomfortably. My left side is numb. A man sneezes behind me and a wetness lands on my neck.

It has only been a month but already I am tired of buses. Of being stared at by hungry men, who stink of booze and whose eyes are wild. I am tired of being on guard, of having to look angry all the time, of waiting patiently for a bus for 45 minutues, only to have at the last second 5 people get in line in front of me. Didnt I move to aviod this? To avoid buses? Yet i know this traveling is all part of my transition and is necessary.

I am however, not tired of travel. I actually feel awakened by it. The dotted lines on the black pavement below us are like music, pumping methodically along the road, short-short-short-long. Short-short-short-long. I close my eyes and imagine the roar of the plane, the feeling of my stomach in my throat as the wheels lift. Of audiences who speak other languages. Of people I could reach and touch. Who could reach and touch me. Will I ever see those places? Is my music strong enough to suspend me in its wings and carry me all over the world?

The skyscrapers look like knives against the sullen sky. The city has struck me beautiful almost every day, but tonight it looks angry. Like it could swallow you whole. With no umbrella I roam the village, soaked to the bone, unaware of the rain, comforted by the water in my shoes. I am not depressed. I am not lonely. I am feeling only the solidity of my life here in a sobering way. Yet I feel like a furnace, a hot-bellied stove, embers flying out of the top, flames licking at the heels of the passers-by. It's no wonder people avoid my eyes. They are burning with determination.

I walk by venues, and hear music from within; like children whispering a secret with a smile on their faces. I pay a ticket, go inside, order a drink. Barely touch it. I dont want anything to hinder my experience, to numb it. I listen to the artist play the piano. It is like watching your man make love to someone else. When she finishes, the applause comes on, and I close my eyes and listen as if it were for me. I've done this long before I moved to New York. I'd go to a parking lot - listen to a live CD. Turn up the speakers until the car shakes. Here the roar of the applause. Take it in like clean air.

There is only a thin veil seperating me from a world in which I can play these venues in New York. A veil of recognition, in which I do not yet own. I sit a memeber of the audience, KNOWING I can do what the artists on stage are doing, KNOWING if only someone would give me a chance I could fill the room with such an energy that every person would feel kinetic. And yet, that thin veil, transparent but hard as a rock, seperates me from them. I dont know how to find the magic rabbit hole. I dont know where the door is to get in. To walk through a city with so much to offer and not be able to get your hands in it, is almost maddening. Like a poker game a gambler cant get in on. I am that girl, sitting on a full house, Ace's high, while the guy that's winning has just a pair. But in the end he wins, because he's in and i'm out.

So I walk the streets, rain dripping off my eyelashes, heated from within and think to myself "someday i'll get in." I breathe in the city air, battery acid sweet on my tongue, and smog filtering through my hair - chemicals of dope in the air, chemicals of love and isolation. And I know, like a fact of nature - this city wont break me. It may be a cesspool of dead dreams, of people who came to conquer and were instead conquered. But I will use their ashes to build a brightly colored pheonix, and for all of them who gave up, I will one day soar.

You've all seen the idea played out in movies: bright-eyed, singer/songwriter from a little town moves to the Big Apple to conquer her dreams. Well, singer/songwriter/pianist Anj Granieri is the realistic embodiment of that dramatic ideal. She picked up her 24 year old life and moved to NYC without knowing a soul. With an album already to her credit, and another one on the way, she prides herself in her committment to her dream. She believes, it is not a question of whether she will suceed with her music, it is a only a question of when.www.myspace.com/anjmusic.

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