the tinyblog

I took myself out on a date last night. Beth sent me this invite to a performance in a semi-industrial area of Seattle. It was supposed to have something to do with music and sculpture, and those huge truckbed storage containers that Seattle's waterfront industries pull from boat to train day and night on giant cranes.

It was quite a bike ride away, almost on the other end of the city. I got on my bike knowing I might have to ride all the way there and all the way home (about 25 miles in all). Plus, it was raining. I felt grouchy and lonely though, and I didn't feel like a very fun date. I wondered if I could get myself to put out anyway.

Down I wound through Wedgewood, the U District, downtown, Pioneer Square with it's noisy college drunks and rasta wannabe's, SoDo with the noisy Mariner's fans screaming for baseball blood, and finally down near the West Seattle Bridge, feeling warmer, freer, tougher and the rain having finally died down.

The path to West Seattle Bridge crosses many train tracks where automated or partially automated trains run short runs to load up and move those huge storage containers. As I approached the bridge, I saw a train coming. If I would have hurried I might have passed in front of it, but it didn't occur what was happening until too late.

I sat there, got off my bike and peed in the grass, and waited, looking off into the distance to see if I could determine how long the train was. It was long. After a while, it actually stopped, blocking my way for who knows how long. I sat for a long time. There wasn't really any way around it. On the ends of each car were thin, minimalist metal ladders, and a platform leading over.

If I hadn't had my bike, I might have considered just climbing up one side and down the other, but I knew it would even then be a stupid risk to take. I know how easy those wheels slice your damn legs in half. Finally the wheels made a sound like escaping steam, and then a minute or so later the CRUNK CRUNK CRUNK of metal fittings straining against each other began and the train finally moved.

I hustled my way across the bridge and started looking for this performance. Somehow I had the idea that the party somehow occurred in one of those storage containers, but I did eventually find the huge warehouse building where it actually was. It really was big, with huge cranes on the ceiling, and several storage containers scattered around all over it.

I finally got the gist of it. The art and sculpture was the storage containers. There was a big photo of another sculpture a guy had done with storage containers, stacking six of them haphazardly in some desert-like location. But here in the warehouse the main attraction was just one that had been leaned up against another one.

Along the lower third of it, there were all kinds of boards, pieces of sheet metal and wires clamped or otherwise attached to the bottom edge of the freight container. We sat around for awhile and then the emcee came up and told us that the performance was starting. This guy with headphones came out and started wielding these boards and rubbing them against surfaces in the metal. There was another guy with an electronic board messing with the feedback. He pounded on pieces of it with his fists, plucked things, played things with bows, and basically made a bunch of slow, eerie sounds.

It was cool but I kept wanting him to just bang on the side of the storage container himself. He never did. People were putting their heads against the metal to feel the vibrations. It actually reminded me of this CD with a sheet metal case that I bought when I first moved to Seattle called Metal de Metal by Aube.

Then he finished and I was left to schmooze. (Might have actually hooked up another client...we are running out of schedule!)

There was another more bandlike band later called PlanB (what a horrible name for a band!). They were good, and they had this guy projecting these amazing 3-d graphics that pulsed in time with the music. Sort of like racing fuzzy comics.

I asked him what software it was and he told me that he wrote it, using C++ and OpenGL. He's a programmer for Adobe, and he's been doing this in his spare time.

I was hungry like a beast from bike-riding and tried to talk a few people into heading to Chinatown for some kind of sloppy soup, but no takers. I got on my bike and started the insane ride back.

On my way back I encountered another train, this one was stopped by the time I got to it and had no signs of moving. I looked at it for a long time, and then firmly hoisted my bike up onto my shoulder, swung myself up in one movement, and was up and over to the other side of the car in seconds. The train still hadn't started moving as it went out of sight behind me with the wind whooshing in me.

I stopped at Ocean City for a sloppy bowl of soup and some cold soy milk before I began the gnarly-ass bike ride the rest of the way home. It was a good date.