Beckoned

"Put your skeletons in jail."

-- Beck, "Lord Only Knows"

--

The rain is funny this morning. It comes and leaves every ten minutes or so, as if there is a sort of queue of clouds in the sky, each getting their chance to drip on us. It makes me think of shows at the Fringe, where a single room could house as many as twenty shows a day. As soon as the first show finishes, they have five to ten minutes to clean up and get out, while the next show is setting up. And so on. Like clockwork: you tick, then you tock, then you take a hike. That's what this rain is like, and it's supposed to linger into tomorrow, as well.

It's probably great for the soil. I don't think we've had a major rain in a few weeks.

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I'm trying to find an apartment in northern Kentucky (a term that, strangely enough, only applies to Kentucky suburbs of Cincinnati). I have to move out of this house in June, hopefully right into the new digs. But trying to find a place for under $500/month is proving a little difficult. I don't want to swap the ghetto of the big city for the ghetto of a suburb. I want a cool place in summer, a warm place in winter, and I don't want to hear gunshots or teenagers having street jam sessions at 11pm. (Does this mean I'm getting old?)

Anyway, the search has been a bit fruitless. I figure, with all the students leaving at the end of the spring term, options should sprout in a few months.

And I've decided that I'm officially done with living in the same space as people I don't know. I'm either moving in with someone I know, like and trust, or I'm going onesies. It's a little extra a month, but yeah, it's worth that little extra. I'm not a misanthrope. I'll chat with you about movies, I'll come over on Mondays for poker, and maybe I'll even pet your dog if it looks nice; but I do not want to discuss, "Who took my milk?" or, "Okay, everyone, where are all the spoons?"

All that goes to say, I'm on the market for a new place.

Meanwhile, I keep getting harangued by the Craigslist headlines, written by people whose caps-lock and punctuation keys seem to have malfunctioned: 1BR-2BR/1BATH/$475MO: ALL UTLS PD REFRIG DSH LNDRY ONSITE LOVELY COMMUNITY W/ FRIENDLY NEIGHBOR WHO SOMETIMES MOWS LAWN DOGS ALLOWED WOOOOF!

--

Work is not so early today. We rehearse in the office now, because the library space was ridiculously cramped. Which is nice, because we not only get more space, but we also get to hang out with the office people (other actors, directors, producers) on our spare time. However, the office is upstairs from a computer-parts company, and they complain regularly about the noise. And because we are technically renting the space from them, we have to cow and bow. So we're only allowed to make noise during their lunch hours. Which is why work is not so early today.

On the one hand, it irks me that we have to bend to the whim of the office workers downstairs. But on the other, it is a sort of metaphor that I like. Theatre is an art, and as with all art, there is the temptation to think that it is a service rather than a luxury, that it is "so much more" than entertainment. (By the way, it is "so much more.") But in order for it to be "so much more," it has to be humble. And if we're making too much noise for the folks downstairs, well then, we should be quieter.

It reminds me of the Edinburgh graffiti initiative a few years back. To curb graffiti artists from defaming city property, Edinburgh officials extended a hand and created a program that lets businesses pay the artists for advertising space on the sides of buildings and public walls. So graffiti, which is a sort of middle finger to the establishment, shook hands with the establishment instead. Which angered graffiti artists everywhere else. They said that once graffiti was once it was paid for, once it was commercialized, it ceased to be graffiti. It became a scourge, a harsh parody of graffiti.

The art itself didn't make it art. It was the method by which it was allowed (or not allowed) to exist that made it art.