echo

It's daunting sometimes, trying to think of what to say, what I could possibly have to say to entertain a passerby, or a friend, or myself in this space?
That is the duty here. To entertain, to engage, to communicate. This is not activism. It's just another moment that I struggle to infuse with some sort of life, or at least a hopefully natural extension of my personality.
I could talk about something from two days ago:

I went to the Chicago Cultural Center with the purpose of seeing some art, and also to place myself in a large ornate building and see how that felt.
I was wandering up a huge grand staircase, admiring the metallic inlay above me and in the walls when I heard a very large sound. It was of a grand piano, bouncing around the rooms and off the stairs and me. I felt urgent! Suddenly, there was import being sifted tangibly from the air and settling everywhere; the room felt thick. The sound was everywhere, and whomever was playing was doing so very vigorously.
I began to move very slowly, almost certain that something shocking or life altering was about to happen. A clone of myself that my unknown father had been growing and raising for the last 23 years was waiting for me at the top of the next staircase, and the crescendo of the music was coming closer as I ascended to meet my destiny in the eyes of myself...

I reached the top of the stairs and found the source in a grand room, that I realized I'd been in before. I worked a cleanup for a special events company after a wedding in that room. It's really magnificent. There's a high dome of colored lit glass in the center, and the ceiling gradually slopes down, covered in mosaic tiles until it meets the walls.
An Asian man with long hair in a pony tail sat in front of the piano, and he played like a small monster, his face moving and contorting with the motion of his hands on the keys and in synch with the music being issued.

There was seating for at least a hundred people in the room, but only a handful of people were there, all sitting near the back.
I quietly entered and took a seat to the side of them, and watched him play.
I spent an hour or two in that seat, and learned that his name was Alpin Hong and that he was only practicing for a recital the next day in the same room.
He was surprisingly good, and I felt just fine about sacrificing the rest of my gallery viewing time to listen to and watch him play.