Cultural Events #20 and #21

Mystery Performance and Anoushka Shankar



Andrea likes to go to live performances more than I do (I prefer movies, as everyone has probably noticed by now). It was her idea to go to one of the Chicago Reader’s “Hot Picks” last week – an experimental music performance by a man whose name I can’t remember at a gallery. I can’t remember the name of the gallery either. The art being exhibitied was erotica – the most memorable piece was a nighttime cityscape with an enormous pink penis swooping down from above, and there was an inquisitive face on the head of the penis. We were debating what the name of the piece should be (I settled on “It Came at Night”) but it ended up being something like “The Start of It All” (I can’t even remember what the title really was). The performance was somewhat interesting – the performer had constructed pallets (the kind you put paint on) with metal and wooden rods coming out, plugged the whole thing into an amp, and then manipulated the rods with various things. The gallery owner was spinning some of his recordings behind him. It sounded like it would have been good background music for an intelligent thriller or horror movie. There was an enormous crowd of about 25 people.

A few days later we went to another free concert at Millennium Park, this time Anoushka Shankar. The music was really quite enjoyable, and I might even consider buying one of her CDs. It was easy to listen to but somewhat experimental at the same time. The evening was only marred by our lack of food and alcohol. We came unprepared, and had to stare at everyone’s enormous picnic spreads. After dismissing the idea of stealing other people’s unwanted food, we bought wine from the food tent ($5 for a little bottle of Vendange – kind of a crappy deal). It was better than nothing.