good morning ~

(click the link / ritualistic hallway to listen)

My Big Breaka special freak circumstance just for me

today’s track is the first thing I recorded after moving all my gear from upstairs to downstairs, feels nice

John and I just released the second single from Sunbeam of No Illusion - - it’s called “Little Winds” and you can stream it everywhere, but here’s a video feedback visualizer I made for it:

also - - had the recent pleasure of being a guest on the Songs of Our Lives podcast and had a really sweet hang with Brad:

Songs of Our Lives #119: Ben Seretan – Foxy Digitalis

On this episode of Songs of Our Lives, it’s Ben Seretan! What a joy this episode was to record. Ben’s the best. His new album, “Sunbeam of No Illusion,” with John Thayer is one of my early favorite…

Maybe ten minutes after the performers took their bows I was feeling the first tickle of relief creeping up the back of my neck. We made it through, nothing too too terrible happened, and the historic blizzard blowing in was still a few hours off. I'd make it home and might even manage to grab a few passed apps at the after party. But then there was a terrible call that came in over the walkie talkie. Third hand news - my buddy who was shuttling people to and from the parking lot had been asked by a couple of very upset people to call the cops. It seemed like someone had gotten confused trying to attend the show and had wound up lost, wandering through the very closed and very dark sculpture park. I remembered suddenly the man who had angrily stomped out of the show, frazzled because his extremely loud cell phone kept ringing. He put on his coat swishing with force, an unpleasant eddy in an otherwise nearly totally silent room. As he made for the door I asked him if he needed a ride back to the parking lot, but he was already mid-conversation with his wife, furious at her for making his cell ring so many times. He started hissing at her as soon as the door closed behind him, asking in a hideous tone where the fuck she was.

So then I understood that this poor lady had arrived late and gone to the wrong place entirely, no one around to guide her or greet her, scant on details, groping blindly through the grounds while we sat in the barn in the dark. I had a horrible vision of this poor lady stamping through the knee-height snow as the storm rolled in, frozen in place, another sculpture in the sculpture park. So I peeled out in my Subaru, hopeful that the crew I had in place would shuttle back the 50 or so remaining attendees without issue. It was maybe five minutes total for me to get the news over walkie, process the info, and haul ass over to the parking lot, but apparently in that small window of time the issue had resolved itself - there was no one over there in distress, no one actively seeking help or forming a search party. But we also didn't have contact info for the people who asked for the cops to come and we didn't have anyone who could for sure visually confirm that the lady had been found. So I spent another ten minutes or so driving around the sculpture park, checking out the nearby driveways, looking for any kind of sign that what had been so urgent and immediate of an issue was no longer in need of anyone's attention. All was quiet, calm, the area already bracing for what had the potential to be a historic storm, so sign at all of anyone needing our help but still a creeping feeling of dread.

My whole job on this theater production was basically to make sure that nothing went too wrong - keep the artists happy (a Herculean task), make sure the propane heaters don't blow up, lock the building at the end of the night. And I got stuck in the elevator almost immediately during load-in. I really didn't want to so quickly erode the sculpture park's trust in me, so I tried to first call the lighting designer who did not pick up her phone despite three tries. Then I quietly requested that my two stagehands come and rescue me, but they were unable to do anything - none of the buttons that normally operated the lift seemed to be working. Once I crossed the half-hour mark I knew that I had to call in people from the park - fortunately the front desk guy knew how to use the special elevator key and he was able to get the door open. Once I was out, it resumed working normally again, no problem, a special freak circumstance just for me. So I tried to avoid having anybody ride the thing as best as I could and prayed that no one attending the show would need mechanical assistance getting up the stairs.

This kind of work feels often like you are being paid to worry. A good event producer can foresee unpleasant circumstances arriving from a ways off and can find the right solution to avoid them. Over the course of my 90 hours in the barn I worried about channeling electricity properly, I worried about the space being too cold, I worried about people slipping and falling in the mud - and to that end I spent considerable time emptying bags of brittle hay onto the muddy paths. I had to worry about arrivals and departures, babysitters, the flow of the audience, maintaining silence and darkness, chair numbers, when the catered meals for the cast would be dropped off and where. I worried about what might happen in the case of a fire, checked all the exits. And worrying about all of that was mostly successful in that nothing too terrible came to pass - in the end I was the only one who got meaningfully stuck in the elevator. But when this poor lady was possibly lost among the sculptures in the snow I immediately blamed myself for not worrying enough, for not anticipating this particular situation. In hindsight that doesn't feel like the most sustainable reaction.

It wasn't until a couple of hours later that I was finally able to confirm for sure that all vehicles in both of the possible parking lots were accounted for - all cast, crew, volunteers, and staff were safely on their way home. Relief, finally, a sense of having gotten through it, what a fucking slog, my brain chemicals still sloshing around in unideal ratios. At the bar they were out of drink tickets - curse of the last to leave - but as the too-loud Balkan music echoed off the high ceilings I took the very last potato croquette as a trophy.

But what about you? What are you responsible for? Who are you worrying about? If someone puked in the venue, would cleaning it up also ultimately fall to you?