On this particular day, the first friday of the month, you needn't even live in a punkhouse to know that in any major metropolitan area, you may simply put on your loudest thrift store gear and place your chin on your fist in front of some heinous canvas to get as much posh food as you can eat without embarrassing yourself. (It surprises me that art gallery folks don't seem to have noticed that, at least with the young people I know, the art gallery has followed the theatre into death, and so these colorful, earnest-looking youths are in fact present for the basest of reasons.) Colorful? Check. Hungry? Hell yes. Washed? Meh. No need to knock myself out.
To understand what came next, you must know that it requires some amount of effort to get downtown from where I live. The hills take a steep toll on any bike travel. So I had to make the trip worth it, calorically speaking. The first stop was a gallery on the river. I saw the refreshment table in my periphery vision, but I avoided it strictly for some time despite my intense thirst and grumbling belly, and focused on the paintings. "Garish. Good heavens. Does everyone have to rip off Dia de los Muertos?" Emboldened by my lengthy homage, I firmly stepped up to the refreshment table to see what I had caught. Hawaiian Punch. I skipped it, though I was thirsty as hell. I put a log of funfetti bread on my plate, then the topping... cream cheese? With pimentos... meat chunks?... and... is that -- marshmallows? What the hell. This is an art gallery. Where's the pineapple and goat cheese? Where's the wine? Then, like Gulliver stirring on the beach, I realized: I'm in the Appalachians. I could spend the rest of the night choking down spam on saltines. I continued to feign interest in the paintings, but I was concerned, to say the least. Someone yelled. It was a huge boy. Huge. "THAT'S THE ROCKET MAN I SAW!" He was pointing at the painting. The man he had approached cringed and nodded, "Oh, really?" "YEAH!!! MY ROCKET MAN!!!" That was the artist. I left quickly.
It took me a while to find the other galleries. They were further up in the hills. I followed the sound of drums to an extremely well-attended drum circle. I counted about fifty drummers, whaling away as only Euro-Americans can on various Africanesque percussion instruments. Another couple dozen people danced the expiatory dance of the Euro-American left. A few darker faces observed with expressions of mild concern.
The second gallery had wine. I chugged a glass. The art wasn't so bad. Chugged another. The sprinkle bread-cream cheese-meat goo revolted. Unfortunately I have Sancho Panza's belly. So I drowned my agony in more food. It pretty much worked. *Sparkling* mineral water and chocolate cookies. Cheese and crackers. Hummus. (And there I was getting down on Appalachia. Shame on me.)
By the time I went home, the drum circle had swelled to include all of downtown Asheville. Some very sad mariachis were playing all alone outside the circle. I felt a little homesick for them, and me... or maybe just sick.
No comments:
Post a Comment