IF: Then

In a post-modern world of personalized news feeds, TIVO and a service economy have we gone beyond the basic need for community? Has our ability to carve out and compartmentalize made the world at-large the equivalent of a giant vending machine waiting to dispense only what we need when we need it sans the messy need to interact, collaborate and innovate?

For the majority of the population we start our days commuting in our own private bubbles. Our only "social" interaction is "the jerk who cut me off" or the bumper to bumper dance we join in as we crawl towards our workplace. We may turn on the radio, but for the most part it isn't to find out about the world or our community so much as to check our portfolio, laugh at the cruelty of an on-air personality or to lose ourselves in the music that reminds us of a time in our lives when we didn't queue up every day for the same desperate ennui.

Once we've reached our destination and parked our vehicles we then begin a blinkered day of getting things done with little concern for context or impact. We travel to our allotted workspace, fire up the computer and proceed to output. Periodically, we may pull ourselves from the screen long enough to get feeling back in our legs, to relieve the strain on our back or to catch up on the episode of Survivor we missed. We aren't concerned about the members of our working community, unless of course, they are impeding our raise or making it difficult for us to "Get 'er done." Our lunches consist of hasty consumption typically over a report or article we need to read, but have no time during the day. We return to the office less refreshed and more disconnected than we began our day. We furtively glance at the clock on the screen dreading and anticipating the moment when we should go home. Some of us lurch out of our cubicles futiley hoping that if we reach our cars quick enough we'll be at the head of the anonymous serpent that is snaking home. While others bow their heads still further and deliberately plod ahead on the keyboard towards a mythical completion and fulfillment of the task.

Finally, we reach home; put the car in the garage and trudge inside to vacantly stare at our spouses and children. The need to communicate seems overwhelming as we force a conversation over the meal that everyone needs, but no one is happy to eat in their self-absorbed, over-scheduled lives. When the meal ends all parties disperse as the personal interest grenade sends each scurrying with little interest in what anyone else wants or is doing.

The irony is that at every turn we continue to enable communication and connectivity, yet people continue to be more disconnected and irreconcilable than ever before. We spew forth mindless gibberish in emoticon emails or text driven phone calls, yet rarely say more than the superficial hello. We know less and less about each other and become weary and wary at the prospect of learning more. The connective tools have enabled us to feed on only what contact or information we have for our immediate needs, but have not linked us to the restorative power of community. We have collaborative softwares at work, which facilitate not collaborating at all with the flesh and blood person beyond the key strokes. We can even order in our meals so that the only contact needed to splurge by "eating out" is to hastily hand the cash to the delivery person and retreat inside with plastic and paper encased sustenance to be eaten while browsing inane emails about Viagra or flipping channels trying to find reruns of last week's NASCAR event.

So, though my tone is bleak, what do you think about the idea of community as a necessity? Do we still need to connect and interact? Or have we gone beyond that to an isolated world of serving up only what we need, when we need it with out the messy necessity of others?

Auditions are fast approaching. We've had responses from all over southern Michigan. So, we're looking forward to some exciting and diverse performances.

We're also looking for the procrastinators and the "I was gonna" folks still lingering outside.

So, if you or someone you know simply can't remember to schedule an audition or is frightened by the whole idea of scheduling, then you are encouraged to arrive between 9:30 a.m. and 10 a.m. to get on our "Will Call" list. As time allows you will be fitted into any audition slots that open up before noon.

Auditions are at the Creole Gallery 1218 Turner St. Lansing, MI 48906. Please bring a resume and have prepared a contemporary comedic monologue.

P.S. Be sure to check out tips for auditioning in a previous post.

...Sex

Thank you George Michael.

There isn't a more succinct and evocative word: sex. With a single syllable people can be piqued or repulsed. Sometimes I think that saying it is even more shocking than seeing it simulated on the screen or stage. There is a danger and excitement and taboo all rolled up into the word that no presentation could quite replicate. When you see it, it becomes mundane, but to have the freedom of imagination when you hear it spoken, it becomes something far more than the act.

This visceral reaction to the letters S-E-X, is why our season is entitled "Sex Sells." We want to pique interest, prompt opposing ideas and prick a society that has on many levels regressed to a puritanical, quasi-Victorian sense of mores. Whether it's a fascination with the mammalian protruberance of an aging rock star flashed during a sporting event or the fear of a gay conspiracy trying to usurp the rights of heterosexuals. our society is obsessed with sex.

So why not join 'em?

We start the obsession with one of America's original provocateurs, Mae West. Ms. West knew what she was doing when she called her first play "Sex". She understood that it would set everyone atwitter just by talking about he show. She then went the extra mile and created a story that for 1927 was scandalous, the prostitute gets a happy ending! Can you imagine?

Well, that's just the beginning forward to bringing you sex all year.

Growing up, we all thought that the right clothes, the right friends or the right car could make us cool. For the past two years, Michigan politicians have been trying to convince us that a similar thought process will revitalize our faltering communities by making them look and think cool. Just as it was in high school, this line of thinking is bullshit.

First, when was the last time you thought a politician was cool? Okay, so what makes anyone think that a politician would know cool even if it came up and bit him in his overstuffed backside? While the accoutrement of cool are superficial and politicians are the masters of the art, that doesn't mean they know cool or the arts.

The next time a politician launches into well rehearsed response on revitalizing your community with the arts and creating cool, ask him or her when was the last time he or she went to an arts event. Ask her what she considers the arts. Ask her what she is going to do to support the arts, while government at every level continues to gut and decimate funding for it. While magic tricks are entertaining, the illusion of supporting the arts is just that when politicians spout platitudes; funding fritters away and they don't even bother to attend the myriad artistic opportunities in the community.

This is not to say that I believe the government is responsible for supporting the arts. On the contrary, I believe the best art will always be self-sufficient and distance itself as much as possible from the guiding hand of government funding. But I do believe that politicians who wish to appear progressive and tout a vision for the future should know at least a little bit about what they're talking about.

Locally, politicians point to the success of such areas as Old Town, but the reality is that the success of that area stems from a passionate few not from a politician's vision. What's cool is that a group of remarkable people are trying to create a place in which they would like to live, which in turn will inspire others that would like to live in a similar place. Old Town is cool, but that's because of an energy and a drive of participants, not because of a politicians bold new view of the future.

Yes, Lansing's downtown needs to be revitalized, but there isn't a city council member or mayor, that is going to make it cool. They can make it inviting. They can remove the barriers to getting people down town, but in the end cool is something determined by some one else not manufactured by committee or council. Nor do those clamoring the loudest for the city's dwindling resources have any better connection with cool or the products/services that a younger demographic is interested in.

Some day I would like to grow up and be cool, but until then I'll enjoy a community of diverse people working to make something better than it was when they got there. I think those people are really cool and I feel very lucky to work with them now and again.