I could NOT sleep last night, mostly because I was full of the ShouldaSaids.
Open mic nights are back – though how strong that claim is, well, only time will tell. Having been rained out so many Sundays in May that we simply pushed off to June, eyeballing the weather going forward and wondering at the Bad Weather Conspiracy that seems to so thoroughly pervade our reporting, I’m trying to relax about the whole thing.
If we get to have an open mic, we do. If we don’t we don’t.
Today we did!
It was a small one. Decent crowd, tiny list. Even if the open mic WAS going to go forward I knew a lot of my crowd was going to be out at the Refuge in Woodstock, MD where Peter VanHouten’s rescheduled Summer SpringFest was going down, and as we crept toward the weekend it seemed pretty clear all of Sunday was going to get rained out in any case. But Saturday night, with a 40% chance of rain, I made sure I was packed up, Sunday morning with a 25% chance of rain I made sure I was sending the “we’re on but we might get wet” message and by the time it was time to head out with 15% chance of rain I knew we were probably well and fully “on”, despite the fact that events and weather prognostication had probably conspired to rid me of much in the way of a turn out.
A small list, an interested audience, and a racist facepainter. I mean, it was actually a pretty good day. Good performances, and a small list means things can be a bit more relaxed. I can be a little more chill getting from place to place, I can let people play a little bit longer. It was a good time. But every time I went over and chatted with the face painter that had set up in the neighbouring courtyard she would drop another weirdness into the conversation that told me she … she thought I was a different sort of person.
It turned out she’d worked over at Sandy Spring Museum the day before, and was quite irate that ANOTHER facepainter had shown up. After having chatted with SSM I’m still not clear whether they’d hired THIS facepainter and the second one just showed up and set up (not cool) or if SSM, after agreeing to hire THIS facepainter (and purportedly guaranteeing her exclusivity) actually HIRED a second facepainter (REALLY not cool) but I rapidly lost my sympathy as she described “that effeminate black” that she’d worked with at the museum… I mean… okay, descriptive terminolo- “and you know, working around here you get ENOUGH angry black woman administrators” ooookay I see where this is going – jeezoflip woman you shouldn’t be working here.
Well, I felt pretty shitty because at this point I, in a spirit of solidarity with fellow artists, had already been funneling attention her way and sure enough, now as I circled around I’d catch whiffs of conversation as she ranted to a captive (actively being painted on) audience about policing in Baltimore, “that crackhead Freddie nobody”, and how “yeah, we had riots because people don’t understand that you have to use force on some people cause it’s the only thing those animals will understand”.
Like… holy crap. And so – I ShouldaSaid a whole lot. Instead I gave the black woman who’d been waiting to do her set a bit of extra time and reminded her that though we were family-friendly, don’t worry about concepts, it’s mostly a language thing. And when I discovered that there was a poet being shy over in the wings “cause I don’t know that…. Uhm… your audience would really like my stuff” (usually code for ‘I want to talk about being black in a white world but don’t really want to piss everyone off) I assured her that she was welcome too… so in theory I did exactly what I believe I SHOULD do, which is give a (literal) platform to people who might otherwise be ignored, and (literally) amplify them in the direction of those who need to hear their words.
Meh. I doubt the Racist Facepainter got the message. But I feel like I was pretty clear about who’s welcome and embraced on my stage.
