In its first cycle, City Love Song was an improvised story about New York which was performed in 24 cities around America. In its second cycle, City Love Song is a portrait of America, drawn from those 24 cities and the railroad tracks between them, which Jack will be taking to 13 cities around the world.
I almost blew Madison off.
This would have been foolish, and mean.
It would have been selfish. And worse–as my dear friend Angela was quick to see and say–doing so would have made me chickenshit.
True!
At the age of ten we moved (again!) and this time I knew what was left behind. We were bound for the far away and foreign-sounding land of Wisconsin, a place where people drink “melk” and play “tayg” and snow season stretches October to May. I hated leaving my friends. Blaming my family felt imprudent, so I blamed the destination instead.
For years I bore that chip, buried so deeply in my shoulder. I would never tell people I was from Wisconsin, only that it was where I moved here from, in order to immediately get on to the business of talking about other, more interesting things. What a jerk!
Wisconsin is beautiful and filled with splendid people. Madison is the sparkling jewel in Wisconsin’s hardy woodsman’s wardrobe.
It is where I went to high school. It is where I went to middle school, which is where I think we may truly be made. It’s where I am from. (But I was born in Minnesota!–see? It’s a reflex.)
Madison means family, and friends. Madison means old cohorts and colleagues that had watched my teenage self chew scenery on high school stages. I was one of those kids who took off for the Big City (Angela was another). Now 13 years had passed, enough time for the newborns of my senior year to be entering high school, and I’m blowing through town with my own show.
Blowing through town, because I’m afraid. I’m afraid that all those people who saw my teenage self proclaim his Great Destiny will find he has no more to offer at 32 than he had at 16. Afraid, in that deep-down way artists everyone can be, that the very people who should be on my side will not like what I have to present. Angela called me a chicken (she also called me something else), and right she was indeed.
Mom rustled up a good crowd and also modeled the merchandise. Thanks, Mom!
I made a few sheepish phone calls to get some local hands running promotions (thanks, Mom!) and squared up a performance date with Genna’s Lounge, just off gorgeous Capitol Square. Instead of being my “city of rest” (a role later played by San Antonio), Madison would host my 6th performance–and present my largest audience.
Fool, I told myself as waves of old friends and neighbors, former teachers and colleagues of my Mom came streaming into a space on the second floor.
It’s an odd room. Angular support pillars break the space up into long, soft-cornered triangles-within-a-triangle. At one end of this floor stands a raised platform where a performer can sit or stand with the Capitol Building glowing through a window at his or her back.
I refused another microphone and surprised myself by accepting an offered lighting effect. Just a simple wash on me and the audience in relative darkness. Ah! But these are familiar silhouettes.
The story, meanwhile, lies furled within me. It is an elaborate banner, painstakingly painted, which I will soon present to these fine people, who wait with the soft murmur of anticipation.
(The heart thumps once-twice, three-four, and a smile blooms within [my face is straight--I'm beginning the story]–but I know now, it is stark as the darkness, bright as the lights: these people are on my side. There is no safer audience than that in which the majority has already seen the height your grace and the depths of your ugliness. Unfurl that banner, lift your story, Jack: if you can’t do for these what you wish to do for the world, then this is the place you should recognize your failure. Now, GO!)
And so did I go.
This was the shortest telling–35 minutes by one estimate, 45 by another–and easily the most relaxed. That is not to say I was the most relaxed; I was comfortable but swollen with an urgent, pulsing energy. The story was relaxed, meaning more pliant; it was easier to ad lib, to make insertions, to move bits around. This led to numerous discoveries: more laughter here, smoother connections there and a deeper tension when the story took dark turns. The audience was with me, every step of the way. If that doesn’t secure the ground beneath your feet nothing will.
Then it ended. Applause, a few cheers, a call for an encore (holy crap!). Hugs and high fives and hand shakes, drinks and laughs and conversations, encouragement, praise and affirmation.
Home!
I relished all of this, bursting with down-home, feel-good, son-of-a-gun-I-done-it pride. I couldn’t stop smiling as I sold t-shirt after t-shirt, my first foray into merchandising. Angela embraced me and we mocked me for my early fears.
Between this night and Chicago I felt the project had found a form of success.
Fly, Icarus, own the night! Enjoy these heights, for in 22 hours a heater suspended from a ceiling in Appleton will dissolve those wings and send you crashing to the ground.
