Nov 16 2008
Adventures, Crises and the Joy of the Unexpected
Over the weekend I flew up to Oakland for a performance at the Happiness Hotel. This was a tragically hip gig of which I felt slightly unworthy. The place is a house shared by a bunch of musicians and, I think, other artsy types. It has the feel of a youth hostel for Oakland area stoners. My eighty-dollar shirt and cashmere jacket made me feel like a dork rather than like a prepared professional.
I was already a little bit off balance ‘cause my flight plans had to change at the last minute due to fires in the Southland that had closed down an airport. Also, I flew up, leaving my wife and dogs behind in our townhouse just blocks away from the area that had been evacuated. This caused me some guilt, not because I actually feared for their safety, but because I knew they were all filled with anxiety and on the verge of panic ‘cause of the smell of smoke and the incessant local news fear-mongering. Nonetheless, there I was, safe and sound in Oakland with a rental car and a hotel room.
The guy who invited me to come perform at the event met me at the door and introduced me to Devo, a Shitsu in a blue cape. The dog was very sweet. Nobody ever explained to me why she was dressed as a super hero.
I walked up a wood staircase and was led into the common room where I was told the performance would start at nine. Or ten. You know, whenever people showed up. Good so far. A friendly man asked me if I smoked pot and when I told him that I’d quit years earlier, he shrugged and rolled himself a cigarette from a plastic container of organically grown tobacco. I wondered whether the question about pot had been an invitation to share some that he had or an inquiry designed to lead me to share with him if I had some. He and I had a rambling conversation while I wondered how anybody was going to know that the non-descript boarding house of a building was a place where a show was going to take place.
Old books filled shelves in the room in which I was to perform. Where there was wall space, it was covered with odd vintage toys turned into art pieces and jackets from vinyl albums.
The smell of tobacco and the bohemian feel of the place took me back to my college days. The vibe of the place was very much like that of the flat in which I lived when I was in London studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. I was in my early twenties then and had no idea that when I was in my forties I’d be flying to Oakland to work this kind of a room. But being there over the weekend I felt very young and adventurous. I felt tremendous pressure to be as hip as my surroundings.
People showed up with their own beer. A lawyer/comic I’d met years ago in L.A. arrived with his girlfriend. Young men gathered in the room with facial hair both anachronistic and utterly unflattering.
Exhausted from a night of siren-broken sleep with my dogs and my wife in Sylmar and then a commuter flight booked last minute and all, I offered to perform before the others on the bill, musicians all. I took the microphone uncertain as to how my stories would be received and found this odd crowd, seated on couches and floor planks, sipping beers and smoking home-rolled cigarettes, to be delightfully receptive to my long-form, thinky story-telling. These were people comfortable enough to laugh at what they thought was funny, to applaud spontaneously and to occasionally engage in mid-story conversation with me in a way that was entirely participatory and not at all heckling.
With each piece I did I strove to be worthy of the warmth and hospitality they offered. The whole thing felt less like a show than a Salon and once I stopped being embarrassed – a feeling I was ashamed to be experiencing at all, really – that I was performing in such a setting, I had a truly wonderful time.
I flew home today, back into the fire zone. I walked with my wife and my dogs in the hazy air and I remembered to focus not on the allergens in the air or the vague sense of danger that hung over Sylmar but on the Autumnal smell of the smoke and the delightful surrealism of the red-sunned sky and the quiet, under-trafficked streets.
We live in interesting times. The world is filled with the faint smells of psychotropic youth. It is still possible to go places and have unexpected adventures. People who are not exactly like us will open their doors and their hearts and we can welcome one another and hear one another’s stories. We can converse without heckling and even in the sights and sounds of crisis we may find beauty.