A call for help and other art thoughts and Mess fallout

Blogging, this labour day Monday from a flat above a bar on Kensington in Toronto where Sara Stanley and Sean Dixon and many other great Canadian theatre heros have lived and worked (but not blogged!) Elran and I had to leave Indyish for a weekend, hustle hard and far away from Friday’s Mess and now are recovering in the kooky Kensington pad with art accumulation everywhere from a wedding reception with rented fountain walls, a backyard from Home and Garden (literally), an aquarium with imported coral, parrots and more to make you feel bedazzled by wealth (remember how the bedazzler would shoot right through fabric to make its glinty gleam? That’s how I came to feel - shot through by other people’s wealth, by rich kids bragging about their high standards.)

I love art making and artists of all kinds - there’s a joy and pain and labour and truth-seeking dialogue to it all that makes sense to me more then anything else, and so perhaps I’m bound to be conflicted about wealth. The stereotype of the poor starving artist is not untrue - growing up with a playwrite dad I can confirm this for you. And so naturally some artists feel love for the instruments of their profession in a way most people who haven’t gone hungry seeking beauty won’t understand. Checking my emails today I find that one of the artists from the MonthlyMess has, with stereotypical but no less agonizing artistic absent mindedness, suffered a painful loss in the realm of art instruments. Santosh is a great bassist and multi-talented musician and dearly sweet guy. Heavily medicated on Friday night following wisdom tooth removal trauma, he played an incendiary ten minute improvisation on the bass while Alison Louder performed her cosmological spoken word. Then, the meds overtook him, I guess, and exhaustion after a long night of 5a7 and soundcheck and show, he left his bass outside the Main Hall and drove away.

Hey guys, I left my bass outside of the mainhall last friday, after
performing at the monthly mess. As would be expected, it wasnt there the
next day, and neither the green room, nor the main hall people have seen it.
If you guys can put up a post on the indyish website, or ask around for me,
I would love you forever. Its the bass I learned how to play on, and has
super powered emotional value to me. It is a black bass guitar with a plaque
on it that says pop machine, and a small key taped to the pickup. I am
offering a really good reward to anyone who brings it back to me. Thanks,
call me at 514-616-313 if you hear anything, or email me at
.

Ak- it’s painful to read and think about - please help the man! Email this link around to anyone who was at the Mess and see if we can find a trail of the missing bass. Maybe some good hearted soul has it and would return it if only they knew to whom it belongs? We can hope.

Meanwhile, hopefully, his ally Alison Louder is able to cheer dear Santosh up.. she did after all win the relay for the two full weekend tickets to Osheaga. Congrats to her good luck and best wished and crossed fingers to Santosh, and to artists everywhere, their heads full of hope and music, their best intentions in place, their dreams and questions taking up all kinds of practical, bottomline thinking type brainspace. Hats off to you, guys, and try to take care of each other.