Northern Spark in the rain: a journey
Editorial
Find parking around the corner from Open Book. The rain has stopped at last. Maybe it’ll be a nice evening for an art festival after all. Stroll inside, follow the signs up the stairs and get immediately ushered into a side room where visitors are invited to improvise a piece of a collaborative story in a tent. Three minutes in and already you’re part of the art. Get your prompt from the volunteer, hunker down in the tent and swiftly forget the “get to the action” imperative that was drummed into you in your MFA program. Launch into an inane ramble that’s mostly allusions to Archie comics and David Crosby lyrics and be grateful both that there is a 30-second limit on stories and that the tellings are anonymous.
Stroll through the rest of the building and ponder printmaking and bookbinding and Douglas Adams and other art forms that are obviously amazing but not quite in your purview. Decide not to linger because there are more venues to see and the rain has picked back up. Regret that you couldn’t bike to everything like you planned because nowadays the idea of late-night downtown biking in the teeth of a driving rainstorm makes you a touch uneasy. Feel like a tool as you drive a few blocks west to find parking and still get soaked to the skin on your way to the Hennepin Avenue bridge.
Descend the winding ramp into a mud-spattered scene that looks pretty much exactly how your MBA friends probably picture these arts things you’re always going to. Navigate the mud pits and pools of standing water, as if your shoes could possibly get any more saturated than they already are. Take a spot at the edge of the Revolver Write Fight and watch a bald man smear paint across plastic sheeting while two women frantically jot down narratives about literary arousal. Feel the vibrations of hip-hop echoing off the concrete pilings beneath the bridge. Mentally write and revise texts describing the scene to your MBA friends, making sure to maximize the surreality of watching a writing duel under a bridge along the Mississippi River in a downpour just before midnight. Take a sidebar to wonder whether you’re drawn here by the art itself or by the story you’ll get to tell tomorrow. Shrug off those concerns and go take a ride in a fake elevator operated by an enthusiastic actress who gives you surfing lessons on the ninth floor. Exit the elevator and climb to the top of the adjacent trailer. Stand tall and stare into the rain. Study the faces of incoming festgoers as they slosh their way down the ramp. Silently dare the lightning to try something.
Write a dream on a notecard. Clip it to a net filled with balloons.
Walk back to the car. Head downtown to see that Jaime Carrera-Venus DeMars OCULUS dance thing because those are two people who consistently pique your curiosity. Make a few wrong turns as you try to figure out just what building this performance is in. Stop in your tracks as a bolt of lightning shatters the sky and all the downtown people drop their personas to ooh and ahh. Find the venue at last. Stand outside a storefront and watch a human writhing behind glass while a distorted image of Venus DeMars scrolls across a bank of TV screens. Consider that this is happening just blocks from the usual Saturday night wallow of nightclubs and pedicabs and $70 theater seats and that this is an astonishing thing whether or not it speaks to you personally.
On the way back to the car, notice a tiny figurine on the ledge of a window, gazing intently at the darkened office space inside. Spot another a few steps up the block, then another and another. See that they are some kind of fantasy characters with wings and capes and swords. Wonder whether they were placed here as an inspiration or a taunt to the people inside. Decide that intent is in the eye of the beholder and also that this might end up being your favorite work of art for the evening.
Trudge to the Convention Center and try to stave off the weariness that goes along with a fourth straight hour of rain-soaked art-hopping. Find it all the harder to do that once you see the visibly dispirited faces of the artists huddled on the sidewalks, smiling gamely at the trickle of passersby in the noble spirit of the-show-must-go-on. Head inside the center and find your friend Asia, who has reluctantly moved her interactive hopscotch game indoors because the water was shorting out its circuitry. Asia asks if you have a press pass and says that last year a lot of journalists used press passes to jump to the head of the long lines. Remark that there have been no lines this year.
Step inside a box with a dozen others and listen to “Funkytown” on a single headphone while a man silently leads the group in a Minnesota-themed game of “Never have I ever.” Soon the audio switches to a woman professing her love of the Greenway. Watch two men step to the center of the room and hug intensely while arms from outside burst through the paper walls and write Minnesota-centric words inside the box with Magic Marker. Leave the box and try to buy a grilled cheese sandwich from a food truck only to be told the guy ahead of you got the last two slices of bread. Splash back to the car as a trebuchet-launched water balloon spatters against a map of Minneapolis, its effect somewhat dulled by the pool of rainwater around it.
Feel sad for the artists who worked so hard on all of this, and on the Green Line Light Rail launch, and on the Stone Arch Festival and on all of the other art projects that were altered or erased by the whims of today’s wandering storm system. But also feel grateful that these things existed in the first place and that some of them have soldiered on in the face of natural adversity. Remember that rain or no rain you have spent the past five hours exploring art and theater and interactive creativity in dozens of ways that most people will never have a chance to see. Remind yourself not to scorn those who didn’t make it out, because this really is fairly miserable if you don’t come at it with the right mindset.
Climb back in the car, stare at the clock through increasingly bleary eyes and decide to make one last stop. Work your way back over to the bridge, parking closer this time because it’s after two. Wind your way back down the ramp into a much smaller but no less energetic crowd. Huddle under the net of balloons with a couple dozen fellow vagrants and listen to the repetitive drone of the improvised music project. Decide it doesn’t matter whether you’re doing this as a true art lover or as an experience junkie. All that matters is that it’s 2:08 a.m. and you’re under a bridge and there’s music and there’s art and the river is flowing and the rain is pelting and people are dancing and over your head is a sea of glowing white balloons and none of you will ever be here doing this ever again.
