The rehearsal

Not all of the graffiti here is about the war. In between “Ruzzia is a terrorist state” and “Freedom for Ukraine” you can find half-baked poems about warm tea and soft kisses. On one of my very first trips to Tbilisi 12 years ago I spied some Bukowski scrawled on a crumbling wall, and imagined him alive still, laughing his ass off if he came across it.

The city is shaped like a boomerang, or maybe a crescent moon. To cross the center point, there only a few options. On foot, one of them is a series of tunnels under a curlicue of on and off-ramps that are covered in graffiti. One of them is a quote from Peter Pan, “Think of the happiest things, it’s the same as having wings.” I walk under this message every time I go to that end of the city.

Next, there are ones that ask “Will you buy my art?” but there is no clear idea what art, and who made it, just the question dangling there in the rain, in the sun, and late into the night. An old woman often sits by a cardboard box here, with things like chewing gum and matches lined up in careful rows, that no one seems to buy. There are also practice rooms a few steps down from the street. I hear some soul (or maybe r&b) coming from one, and the saxophone player is leaning halfway outside the little door. I stand there for a moment, and he eyes me. I give him a little thumbs up, get myself to crack a smile. He nods, and leans into his horn, playing some tiny part more for himself, maybe seeing if he knows the notes before he actually plays.

Practice rooms are a fine use of raw space, often in a lost corner of a city, a murky basement, a floor of a sagging building, no need for a new bathroom, or much security. They are just empty spaces, where bands pay by the hour to find themselves. The chairs can be broken, the amps don’t need to work that well. The microphones can stand lopsided and no one cares. I think of the rooms in New York I crammed into, sweaty and loud, playing someone else’s songs, waiting to be told I was doing things right, or simply ignored, taken for granted but I had to be there all the same and for free if I wanted to be in the band. I can’t remember much graffiti from those East Village walls, except for one by Rene “I am the best artist” and the one of Gringo on Astor Place before it got painted over. But the practice rooms I remember all too well. The ones on 7th avenue and 28th Street, the street of flowers. The basement off of Rivington, pushing aside old needles in the gutter to yank open the metal door that led downstairs.

And somehow, here now so many years later - as confused and surprised as Bukowski would be.

The band is not bad, and I stand in the street for some time, leaning to see deeper in the room, but all I can see is the horn player’s back, and he is playing his part for real now, without a care in the world, because the rehearsal is not the show, it is just a warm up, a sharpening of pencils, a pop quiz that you cannot fail. As long as you are there you pass with flying colors.

The stray dogs are barking, circling McDonalds looking for a hand-out, or someone to drop a French fry. The wind kicks up, and the whole street smells of raw onions and roasting meat, of salt, and spice, sweat and pomegranate, car exhaust, and fresh cut flowers.