From out of nowhere

What’s a work of art that you got to before it got big?

I was going to say, as I’ve said on a few other Fun Fridays, that this week’s edition is sorta like one you’ve seen before. But I’ve just looked at the one I thought this one was like and, really, it’s not so close a resemblance. And, really, so what if it were? Whenever memory is evoked, there’s always a chance other subterranean streams of remembrance will rise with it. We may recall an incident from our past that’s usually pinned to a certain person, but when we sit with it — maybe just out of boredom! — some other old acquaintance wanders in from the background and takes the memory over. Or we may focus on a childhood scene we dimly remembered as poignant or even painful, only to find on closer inspection that it’s actually funny.

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to get heavy. The prior Fun Friday I was thinking of had to do with artists — actors, musicians, director etc. — we discovered before most other people did, and for whom we retained a special affection on that account. This week’s is about a work of art (film, record, book, performance) that we similarly discovered before everyone else (or close enough).

There’s some overlap — like, if you discovered an album no one else had caught up to yet, it’s likely the artist was also an unknown and you got a twofer. Same thing if you picked up a publisher’s advance copy and discovered a writer nobody’s heard of. (Though it could be the solo artist was known to the trade before, but not to the general public — I remember Caleb Carr, for example, getting a big push for a book called Casing The Promised Land, which did not make him famous, 14 years before The Alienist, which did.)

Maybe the difference, besides the categorical, is that artists, particularly performing artists, win audiences partly with skill but to a large extent with charisma and style. When you’re bowled over by one, it’s a highly personal reaction, more like love than admiration. (Maybe that’s just true for shallow doofs like me, not you bigbrained lot.) A work of art, on the other hand, may also dazzle you, but admiration is mixed a little higher. I’m a fan of Firelei Báez, but because I became acquainted with her via her knockout works at a show at Boston’s ICA, it’s her works more than her that I think of.

Maybe I’m just trying to justify the theme because I have a discovery story of my own.

I was home from college for the summer and a school buddy got me involved in a theater gig at Fairfield University. After shows on the weekends we’d get high and hang out or drive around — we were the not barroom types (i.e. we were dorks) and there wasn’t much else to do after showtime in that area.

But one night we saw the old Merritt Theater, right up the street from my mother’s place, was showing a “midnight movie.” I had heard such things existed, but had never experienced one. (Very green, I was.) Our vague understanding was that people got high before attending, which made it seem like the sort of thing for us.

The audience was paltry and mostly biker types who were nearly paralyzed with whatever substances they’d ingested. They lounged across seats and muttered and blurted to each other as the lights came down and The Rocky Horror Picture Show started.

(I think it may have played the Westwood in L.A. by then, but had not yet begun its famous stand at the Waverly in New York. Or maybe it had, but outside the cognoscenti it was not yet a Thing.)

Like I said, I was green, and while the playing around with musical and monster movie conventions was something I could easily get with, the sexual content, particularly when it got bisexual, rather flummoxed me. I became very aware of and embarrassed at attending the film with a male companion — a handsome one, at that — and even more so to realize that there were only men in audience.

It was strong meat, too, for the bikers; silent a while, a couple of them lowered like bulls at the silhouetted Frank and Brad, and one managed to shout HEY THIS IS A FAGGOT MOVIE! Another shouted his assent.

But they didn’t move. They quieted down and, after Brad and Janet were left lost in time and space and meaning and as the end credits rolled, silently left the theater, as did we. I didn’t get laid that night, but I expect the bikers saw some action.

Your turn.