Tomorrow is Sophie Auster's 35th birthday and there are two reactions this elicits from me. The first is that I feel really old since I remember when her parents showed her off to me just weeks after birth in their Brooklyn apartment. The second is how proud I am of her success as a singer-model-actress and her fearless championing of LGBTQ+ rights. She is certainly her mother's daughter, in beauty, talent and intelligence.

I went to school with her mother, Siri Hustvedt, whose novel "The Blazing World" won the 2015 LA Times Book Prize for Fiction (among her many national and international awards for this and other works), and I indirectly introduced Siri to her husband Paul Auster, who has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times (give it to him, already, he's 75). I was on the committee that curated the poetry readings at Columbia's St. Paul's Chapel. In 1981, Siri and I were two of the poets reading (the poem that ends "Love Has No Pride" was one of the poems I read that night) and I invited Paul. I got to know Paul in a cursory way a couple of years back when he attended one of the lectures Jacques Derrida had given at Columbia. (Mentioning Derrida makes me feel even older. Post-structuralism and deconstruction seem such long ago buzz words now.) They hit it off immediately. I was a little pissed. But then again, Siri was much prettier than I. Hard to believe, yes, but true. Add to that Paul was under the impression I was a guy.

Anyway, forgive my detour into the past to wax nostalgic. Sophie's birthday reminds me that she made a music video of her 2019 single, "If I Could," that starred a really wonderful trans actress, Jari Jones, in the type of role usually given to nubile cis women. Sophie's choice was to depict the budding romance between a transwoman and an attractive straight man, shot in and around the downtown streets and clubs of Manhattan. Additionally, they are both African American. And Sophie looks beautiful and sings marvelously.

So, please enjoy the video. Sophie, I sent your present via Amazon. (Forgive me) You'll like it. It's music.

If I Could -- Sophie Auster.

Hugs,

Sammy