Say when


There are two types of people in Portland: people you know and people who look like people you know. Both were out in droves on September 3rd at the Time Based Art festival at the Leftbank.

The glint of bicycle lights refracting off street signs punctuated the night air. House music spilled out into the road, where vendors sold street meat to the jumble of idle, smoking youth. From the swarms of bicyclists out front one might assume P.I.C.A. was giving away top-tube pads to anyone on a fix-gear bicycle. Alas, this was not the case and as I walk through an open door, visitors could head straight to a dancefloor or downstairs to view some art. Considering the assignment was to document the art show and not grind against sweaty woman dancing to the cacophony of DJ Acidophilus' electronic beats, I choose the latter.

I don’t understand modern art. Maybe I don’t have a sensitive enough palette to fully appreciate cable wound around TV antennas and saturating art installations with tungsten lighting. Someday

The Works is worth visiting it’s just the people I know that worry me. People who look like people you know are great because you instantly have a rapport with, even if it is one-sided, and can shift those feelings over to your new-found, familiar-looking friends. But when you see that woman whose name you can’t remember whose white, shag rug you vomited over after drinking a night’s worth of Jagermeister; those are the sorts of people I can do without seeing.

Someday I will appreciate art and learn when to say when.

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