SALON NO.01

It was the cusp before dusk. Twenty minutes from showtime, the night was vibrating with a kind of peaceful chaos. Then, it unraveled toward a path none of us anticipated. It was an organic bloom sweet, alluring, like one’s favorite perfume. Let’s call it the tasre of absolute uncertainty. St. Gloria’s inaugural event will forever be cemented in my memory as that beautiful moment before it all happened. This is what remains of that night, in no particular order.

A man leaned into my space and asked, “Is it your birthday?” I smiled. In a way, it was: the birth of St. Gloria. Looking around the room, I felt like one of her mothers, just hoping she would take on a life of her own and run with it. Near the bar, my friend tasted the sipping tequila gifted to us by Casa J and joked that it gave off “probation vibes.” It was then that I began taking unofficial notes as we all soaked the goodness in.

When the show began, the audience listened. Kristina Rossi enchanted the room while Amber Lara’s saxophone danced through each note, her breath in complete control of the crowd's attention. I am continually grateful to have a pool of brilliant musicians I can seek out for sonic guidance. As the music played, I watched strangers mingle and whispers pass between them. Friends engaged in soft chatter, balanced against a kind and quiet concentration on the stage. It felt like a painting waiting to be framed, with me the viewer blessed enough to experience it from the very start.

Outside, the wind played wonderfully with the fabric installation Sasha and I had experimented with, making it dance and sway. Earlier, Amber had spotted a moment across the way: two women dancing as the wind carried them, remnants of something distinctly St. Gloria-esque on a rooftop just across the street. It felt like everyone had agreed to join the play.

Except it was no longer a game. St. Gloria was no longer just an idea living in our heads. She had a pulse now, and she had things to say. I was in awe. Shocked. Beautifully wrecked by it.

They had all dressed for the part. The moment we mentally called “action,” the crowd and the stage became a single organism. Dozens of different worlds collided in one room, yielding a strange, beautiful new vocabulary. At one point, my dearest friend Kyla scanned the crowd, leaned over, and said, “Wow. I didn’t know you had so many friends in New York.”

The truth was, I didn’t. I knew, at most, a quarter of the faces in that room. I was swimming in total strangeness, yet I felt entirely at home. Because that is exactly what this was: permission to build a universe from scratch. It was a space where Sasha and I could fully orchestrate, experiment, fail, play, and invite the rest of the city inside.

Salon No. 01 was the initiation. A massive thanks to the band a curation of brilliant artists I’ve had the privilege of knowing and, more importantly, the privilege of basking in. The night was perfect. At least, it was perfect to me.

dear@stgloria.com