Photo by Evan Kelly
9:35am | I just got back from “Illuminary Interlude” over at the Long Beach Museum of Art, and lordy, what a fine evening. Certainly the art was first-rate (Pebaluna was hella tight, California Condors just got a new fan, Imaginary Lightbulb Factory’s shadow-puppet Rhinoceros was good fun, Tiger Tank Euphoria and Alyssandra & the Daymakers were every bit as good as I expected them to be, the visual elements were comme il faut), but the overarching star was the community at large.
The event was quite well attended, but it’s a bit strange to me that a free event on a temperate November evening at the LBMA’s beautiful grounds isn’t automatically attracting an overflow crowd. If you weren’t there, and you’re not a misanthrope or an agoraphobic, I ask you: what the hell are you waiting for to get you out into your community? Because while in some cases good fences may make good neighbors, when you’ve got neighbors like these, the more you fence-trample to get out of your own yard, the better.
See, I know people like you. One of my closest friends is like you. When he lived in Long Beach he and his wife would sit at home night after night watching TV, leaving their apartment only to go to work, the gym, go out for a meal and the occasional movie. I’d keep him abreast of various events I knew he’d love—and of which there has been no shortage in Long Beach for a good while—but he would just stay home. Now he lives in Westminster—far more fitting for that never-get-out-in-your-community lifestyle.
But this is Long Beach, and what this city has to offer is truly amazing. Yes, there’s a tremendous amount of artistic talent, but more generally Long Beach boasts a ridiculously high quotient of lovely people. Get out to one of these events and you can’t help but notice what an eclectic mix of nice, interesting folks your neighbors are. It’s almost enough to make one hopeful about humanity.
And so if you’re not getting out to obviously great communal opportunities such as this one, then your life is poorer than it might be. As is ours (i.e., those of us who do make it out to events like this), because in a very real sense community is who shows up—and we’d love to see you out there.
Of course, some of the people who show up we’d just as soon have stay home. This was a free event, with the LBMA nice enough to accommodate everybody with happy-hour prices on drinks and food—and yet we still have a**holes coming out who can’t bother to throw their beer bottles and plastic cups in the trash, instead dropping them right on the ground at their feet. If you don’t have enough respect for your community to clean up after yourself in even that very rudimentary way, stay home, won’t you? You’re an a**hole, and no one needs your company.
But for the rest of you, there are some really special things happening right now. And you live only once. And your life is happening here. So why not make the most of it?