I hate crickets. I always have. I despise their creeping bodies, moving silently, taking upstation as you sleep – rustling through fallen paper like roaches that don’t fear the light. – when you wake up and click on the lamp they just sit there, waiting – and when you click the lights back off they wait a little longer, and then make their creaking, sharp call to more of their kind. I hate crickets. The quiet ones, the lobster crickets, camel crickets, cave crickets – whatever they’re called – they’re even worse. Terrifying form and unpredictable leaps, they fill me with loathing and my basement has quite the colony, slowly eating their way through the wooden frames of my lair. It’s one more reason to crave the coming of winter, and with the spike of cold weather we had, they’d finally made themselves scarce – but now with a resurgence of warmth (it was almost 80 degrees today) so too we have a resurgence in lobster crickets, and as I lie in my bed, thinking too much and fretting, they slowly retake the floor.
I loathe them.
Tonight brought the death knell for the West Madison open mic. I think I’m disappointed to see it go, but moreso because I just don’t get why people weren’t coming to it. It was a good room – nice feeling space, and small enough that it simply wouldn’t have taken much to make the place feel full – but it kept feeling like no matter the effort, people just stumbled across the place. Lisa (the owner) has a good local community there, but absolutely none of them were interested in the music, so we were just chasing people out. In addition you always have to have a good percentage of “fun” vs the less …
easily-accessible artists, and with such low numbers, well, even one comedian can just turn off a room. Comedians are just – they need a critical mass – they NEED a room to be amusing or it’s just weird and tonight I (thought I) gave an escape for one who was just foundering, moving on to the next artist. Later that night he was outside just sure that he was never going to try THAT again. I apologized and tried to be encouraging – but none of the performing arts are easy, and if you’re going to get discouraged after two weeks, well, maybe it’s not for you. Still, I feel like an asshole, and maybe I’m taking it out on the crickets.
