The Assistant
The fates had their way this First Friday in May.
That is, a laboratory needs an assistant.
Walking alone down College Avenue putting up flyers, telling the multitude, in the rapids of the city, a small pebble making waves, fighting the currents, maneuvering, when I rest with food, the Spicy Pickle. I make an order, go around the way to the Benson gallery, oh the whole lot of nothing, but still, I see Deborah, assisting, offering drinks for the gallery’s event, the First Friday event.
Bold of me to explain to her that I’m on to something genius, that indeed this is a profound experiment that she must see.
And Sisa enters. An adventurer, no doubt, from a generation before mine, she suggests I take my foot out of my mouth.
I didn’t mean to say Deborah was dead. Who knows? I do know that Sisa took the 3 of us on a journey through town to some of the galleries showing their work. And we laughed, and we dreamed, and we discovered that art is here in this town, if not only to be made clear by Deborah and me, the artist and his assistant.
To the Truth and Lies we went, of where I read the Truth and Lies Premise, and toured with them the Venue.
Deborah left in a huff while I read some chapters of the latest novel I’m writing. She needed a cigarette, her excuse.
Later that night, while attempting to pull off the impossible--or bringing a group of drunken liberals to the venue so to hear me strum the acoustic, more drama ensues.
The rub here was, the sound and microphones were not wired, setup, or ready to work. Now at Everyday Joe’s, the Truth and Lies Experiment venue, they have a stage and sound equipment, they prefer it to be run by somebody who works there. The workers at Everyday Joe’s are all volunteer; all volunteer except Suzanne the Curator for the Arts and head Barista, she makes a stipend for her efforts.
So the key was to setup the sound and bring the 25 or so partiers to the venue.
Now Bob, the Baristo, working behind the counter, he says I should ask Tim, a sound person, a volunteer, if he would setup the sound.
I ask Tim who is sitting with a group on the couches seemingly friendly enough. He asks if I am on the schedule to play that night. In my mind this is a silly question. As discussed with and agreed upon by Suzanne, I am on the schedule every night, this being a month long art experiment. In negotiations it was decided that “the sky was the limit” that Everyday Joe’s would allow me to do what I wish, as the artist, everyday and every night.
Somehow this volunteer, Tim didn’t hear the good news about the experiment. He decided to exercise some sort of power and declare that I wasn’t on the schedule and therefore he would not setup the sound.
Now, I’ve got 25 drunken liberals who would rather drink then walk the ½ block it would take to get to the venue. But I really think it would be good to play this night with this group.
I ask Tim, I say: “If God were here right now, would you even recognize him. Would you even know?”
See Tim to me at this point is being fearful, and full of spiritual pride. There is an air about him that he wants to protect the sacredness of this Everyday Joe’s place. He seems judgmental thinking, me and my, drunken liberal friends ought not to be welcome in his place, being a volunteer there.
Of course my intention is to bring these to those. So as to let this God, the
So this man, to me, was exercising folly. He had a chance (if he could see the forest from the trees) to bring people together in the house of the God that he seems to worship. (Course he calls God, Jesus. And there's no reason to even get into the whole Pharisee Conversation, or that Jesus was a recalcitrant and hung out with prostitutes and certainly would have welcomed my music, and drunken friends, into his house.)
So it ended there and I played outside, in front of the bar where the drunken liberals were drinking.
The Tim issue did not go away. (Read later dated posts) Let me tell you this guy went crazy. I mean he wanted to cancel the whole experiment! Piping steamed was he.
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