DON'T CLOSE THE DOOR

If there are things I wish that I'd known all along, they would be (in no particular order):

Write everything down.
Take more photographs.
There are no mistakes.
Coincidences always end up making sense.
Love the way you look today.
It all matters, even if you can't see it yet. even if you never see it. It matters to someone.

Because one day, when the kids are grown, leaning in to their own adventures and plotting their grand entrances into the world, we'll look back on these days when Levon was still a doughy little thing on his mama's hip and think to ourselves, those were the days. And we won't be wrong.

There was, once upon a time, my magical first year in the city. I knew nothing then, and longed to know it all. A lifetime of dumb luck and naive mistakes loomed before me, and there was no conversation too trivial nor moment too insignificant. It was all so new, and all. so. thrilling. Life in the Lower East Side was a dazzling haze of art openings and parties, coffee and cigarettes, and creation. Creating films, creating music, creating art... making anything we could get our hands on just for the sake of that fleeting sense of expressive satisfaction- making things for joy. There was a cafe our closely-knit gang of friends all congregated at from the time we rolled out of bed- messy-haired and positively brimming with tales from the previous night's escapades- until they closed at 2am. Then we would pay our bill and all migrate together, clad head to toe in faded black, cloaked in oversized second-hand leather jackets and worn boots and antique jewelry, to the bar across the street to continue our conversations until the sun came up. Some of us worked at the cafe as well, and it quickly became our clubhouse of sorts.  Each day was a caffeine-fueled romp through the narrow streets and shops and galleries downtown, each night an unimaginable scene from some gritty surrealist film. We had all been lucky enough to find one another, an unassuming little group of wildly optimistic misfits, in this run-down neighborhood in this great big city, and we were quite certain that it would never end. With so many influential and interesting people passing in and out of the cafe day after day, week after week, year after year, we were sure that the magic would keep growing forever.

We'd all heard the hushed whispers that the cafe was closing, all accepted the fact that our beloved clubhouse was on it's last legs, but when the day arrived, quietly and without occasion, and the front gates of the cafe stayed pulled down and locked, we mourned. The neighborhood followed shortly- beautiful century-old tenements bulldozed one by one and replaced with luxury hotels and condos. Our favorite places began to disappear, and soon our favorite people followed. And suddenly our home was unrecognizable. That was the first time I heard myself mention, those were the days.

I came to find out that we were indeed right, the magic does keep growing forever. But it morphs and twists and takes on new forms with age. The next five years of living in the city were golden. I grew up a little, learned a bit about grace, a bit about humility- stories for another time. But my oh my, those were the days. Then there were the first years of my marriage, when it was just us against the world. We partnered off, found an old railroad apartment in the East Village and over time re-built, re-wired, sanded, painted and sculpted the space into the wood-plank-floored kingdom of our dreams. We painted portraits and hung them on the wall surrounded by dried roses we'd given one another over the years. We wallpapered our kitchen in vintage french film posters and built a headboard out of tree branches. We became the ones who threw the parties, overcooking the entrees while our guests laughed and played guitar on our torn Victorian sofa in next room. One time I botched an entire Thanksgiving dinner for close to 40 people, grossly underestimating the amount of time it would take to cook the turkey and ending up not serving food until well into the evening, when our friends had all had one too many drinks and the music selection had naturally evolved from Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong to rare Beatles recordings to old Sephardic Jewish records. We ended up eating dry turkey and smoking cigarettes and dancing to Moroccan mandolins well into the night, crammed like sardines amongst the overflowing bookcases and antique lamps in our funny little apartment. It was very Breakfast at Tiffany's, and I'd hear friends lamenting, years later, well those were the days.

Spaces changed, babies were born, and the city, as always, continued to transform. When I first walked into The Deep End Club, I couldn't quite put my finger on what about it seemed so familiar. It was just a shop around the corner from our tiny tenth street apartment, run by the sweetest woman with the most interesting stories. You could always count on Tennessee's smiling face and charmingly formal British accent to be there. Over the next couple of years a community grew around that shop. The space became greater than the sum of its parts, and The Deep End Club bloomed into a neighborhood sanctuary, a place we could go to meet like-minded people, see friends, plan movements, and support and empower one another. It was where my children learned how to use a rotary phone. It was where I learned to practice Reiki. It was where I sat, nearly two weeks overdue with Levon, surrounded by women meditating to try to help bring the baby. I went into labor the next day. It was the birthplace of some of my most treasured friendships. And as our country teetered on the verge of massive shifts, it was where we all gathered to discuss how we could organize and stand up against the insanity, violence, oppression, and racism that our country has been stuck in since long before my time. It was a place of hope. It was our new clubhouse.

One late spring day my children set up a lemonade stand outside of the Deep End Club. They had painted rainbow-hued signs and taped them up and down the block with scotch tape. All proceeds from the sales were going to the Bernie Sander's campaign, for which we'd all actively been campaigning for months. "Lemonade for Bernie!" they would joyfully heckle at the passersby. The faint sounds of Tennessee's band NAF practicing down in the shop's basement drifted up through the gate to the sidewalk, a fitting soundtrack for the slow and sunny afternoon. The door of the shop was propped open to let in fresh air, and as someone passed they accidentally closed it. The children ran over to pull it back open, hollering enthusiastically, 'Don't close the door!".

Later at one of her shows, Tennessee told me that they had heard the children's voices drifting down into the basement and  had turned that line into a song on the spot.

The Deep End Club closed it's doors for the last time a couple of weeks ago. Before the end, we all made this video together. And while, yes, part of me is saddened; the older, wiser, and against all odds, more optimistic, part of me knows that everything that happens is simply paving the path for what must happen next. Of course we'll look back and this time of our lives will all seem like a long lost legend, a glamorously romantic period in the city. It always does. And of course we'll nostalgically ask one another, well weren't those the days?

But I think that maybe, just maybe, the best days are yet to come. And that all of these tiny stories are just bits and pieces of something so big, so grand, so wild, that we'll only be able to read it backwards. I'd like to think so, anyways.

A DAY IN THE LIFE

Our Inglesina film is live! It was so much fun shooting this (despite the fact that Lou had two molars break throught the night before and we were all pretty much running on zero sleep), and I'm so incredibly honored and grateful for this experience!

A WEST VILLAGE PICNIC | A FILM

Nearly 9 months ago, just a few weeks after Lucien was born, the ladies of Small Fry teamed up with Jenner Brown of Lumineux Films to shoot a few NYC families, and we were chosen to participate! I've been looking forward to seeing this for months, and am so excited to finally be able to share it with you!

I can't get over how teeny tiny Baby Lou is (I think he was about 4 weeks old?!), and how chubby and wobbly little Biet was! For the film, we stopped by all of our favorite places in the village picking up supplies for a picnic, and ended the day at Washington Square Park. Gaby even wrote the soundtrack especially for the film, a fitting song called "Todo Por Ti."

 Here is the introductory piece I wrote for Small Fry:

“Gaby and I met 11 years ago in the Lower East Side. I had just moved to NYC from the West coast and had gotten a job in a little French cafe on Ludlow Street. The cafe had these huge windows that looked out onto the street, and when business was slow I would sit and drink hot chocolate and watch the city going by. Ludlow Street was really neighborhood-y then, and everyone knew and took care of everyone else, and by watching the people go by I began to learn all of the characters and people and families of the block. One of those characters was Gaby.

Gaby worked across the street at at a venue that had live music and poetry and comedy every night. He was an Argentinean who had moved to NYC a decade earlier from Israel (our family is a crazy mix of cultures!) and made his career in music. He and his coworkers used to come into the cafe for sandwiches before work, and me and my coworkers used to go listen to music at the venue after work, so, over time, we all became good friends.  (Gaby still tells the story about the first night we met: He was working with his friend Paul, and I walked in with my coworker after we had closed up the cafe and we walked right up to them and introduced ourselves. We hung out all night listening to music and after my friend and I left, he turned to Paul and said “I’m gonna marry that girl one day.” Five years later, Paul married us.)

The longer I lived in the city, the more I experienced how everyone in the neighborhood, from the butcher to the deli guy to the waitress at the cafe (me) to the newspaper delivery guy, was a family of sorts. There are so many people in NYC with no roots or family close by, and over time they all band together and form an extended “family”, taking care of one another and growing together over the years, like you would expect of a small town. Its a really beautiful thing to experience and be a part of, and that’s what we wanted to convey with this film. You think of NYC as this big majestic metropolis, but it’s really a collection of small neighborhoods, like little villages.

Over time, Gaby and my friendship evolved from friends to best friends to boyfriend and girlfriend to, eventually, husband and wife. We were married in a park in the village, and all of our friends and people from the neighborhood came. Then we were blessed with a daughter, Biet, and a little less than two years later, a son, Lucien. Our community evolved and grew to include the West Village (where we shot the film) and now Brooklyn. It’s really important for us to teach our children the importance of growing your community, fostering relationships with friends and neighbors, supporting local businesses, and appreciating the history of the city. They don’t have any aunts, uncles, or grandparents here, but they have a loving family that we’ve built over time with friends and neighbors who love them dearly.”

Thank you so much Jenner & Small Fry! We really love it!
(pssst.. Daniel Day Lewis made a cameo in the film too! Can you spot him?!) :)

Five Years Together

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."  

-Jack Kerouac 

Five years ago today, I spoke these words to you, and we said "forever." We smashed a glass under the chuppa and paraded through the village as Mister and Misses. And though our souls and our lives had been intertwined for many years already, on that day we proclaimed it to the world.  And then we set out on a grand adventure..

From the cobblestone streets of Paris to the dim crumbling brick of an abandoned Brooklyn subway tunnel, we explored.  From midsummer rooftop parties at our little home on second street, to wintertime games of fetch with Nico in the snow-blanketed park, we celebrated.  From street art to music to babies, we created. And through it all, through the hard times and the magnificent times, we found strength in each other.  And we grew.  Sometimes it's hard for me to fathom how much we've grown.

I dug through old hard drives and phones and pieced together all of these little videos (most of which you shot) from our past, so that we can celebrate and reflect on all that we were, all that we are, and all that we are becoming.  I love you Gaby.  Always and forever.  Sometimes I can't believe I found such a kindred spirit to walk beside.

Happy Anniversary my love.  Life with you is magic.

OUR FEBRUARY CHILD

is a...

PSSST...

We made this little video and are so excited to share it with you!

xx

Belle

Nico the Pony

A 12 second excerpt of how we entertained ourself all afternoon..

Pretty Face

Here is 30 seconds of nothing but a pretty face, my Biet Luna