Day 162…
I am sitting in Millennium Park in Chicago, Illinois staring at the Bean.
That’s not it’s official name, of course. When the artist Anish Kapoor finished it in 2006, he, somewhat pretentiously, called it Cloud Gate. It’s an enormous 66-foot-long and 42-foot-high rounded concave chamber covered seamlessly in highly polished and reflective steel plates. It looks like an enormous blob of mercury, or, in point of fact, like a big mirrored bean.
At first, people made fun of it, but now it is a beloved icon of the city. People flock to it to take selfies.
This morning while I am looking at it, I cannot get near it because it has been closed off by barricades to prevent people from congregating underneath it.
The entire park, as a matter of fact, is completely barricaded and there is only one entrance into it. Only so many visitors are allowed in at any one time. At the moment it’s just me and maybe ten other people.
Chicago is a great city and one that I have been to many times. I spent two months here with The Phantom of the Opera twenty-five years ago and I’ve been coming back ever since.
We did the pre-Broadway run of the musical Sweet Smell of Success here. I was here with the first national tour of Wicked. I’ve stage managed both Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin here. I think Mandy’s concert last year was the last time I was here. We also ran Jersey Boys here for two years then returned after we closed for several shorter engagements, so I’ve been here a lot.
Speaking of Wicked, one of the people in the ensemble of my company was a guy named Adam Lambert. After Wicked, he became a runner up on American Idol and then released an album that debuted at number three on the Billboard charts. His second album debuted at number one, making him the first openly gay performer to ever accomplish that. He also tours as Queen’s front man. If you have to find someone who can even come close to what Freddie Mercury could do, you are not going to get any better than Adam Lambert.
Yesterday, as I was going through the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum in Cleveland, I was walking through an exhibit of performance costumes and there, in its own glass case, was one of Adam’s jackets. While I have obviously been aware of his success, I guess I didn’t realize how successful he really was. It was a strange feeling to look at a jacket in a museum exhibit and know the guy, on some level, who wore it. If I had to pick out a jacket for him to wear, that would have been the one.
Since Wicked, I’ve done some benefits with him and happily, what you see with him, is what you get. He’s a little fancier now then back in the day when I was rehearsing him in as Fiyero, the leading role he covered, but he’s still the same joyful person to work with.
After I left the museum, I walked into downtown Cleveland which is not at all what I remembered.
It is extremely clean and orderly. All of the buildings, old and new, are pristine. There was not a shred of graffiti anywhere.
There was also not a sole around.
The streets were empty as were all of the monumental public spaces. Occasionally a car would drive by or you’d see someone sitting on a bench, but nothing seemed open and nothing was going on. It really felt like I was in a science fiction end-of-the-world movie.
I got back into my car and drove over to an area called Eastside. It was there that they painted Black Lives Matter on the street.
Eastside is a depressed area predominantly comprised of people of color. The people who organized the painting of the street felt that it was better to do it there to give the neighborhood a lift than to do it downtown where nobody would see it.
I might make the case that they should do it in both places.
Eastside is not nearly as pristine as downtown. Many stores and restaurants appear to be closed. The gas station off the street where Black Lives Matter was painted was open, but they didn’t seem to be doing much business. Instead, guys were hanging out in their cars with the doors open, playing music. What else are they going to do?
Last week, Chicago fell victim to the same looting and violence that we saw happen in other places around the country. They seem to have been ignited by a false rumor that police had shot and killed a black child. In fact, it appears that they shot and injured a twenty-year old man who had run from them and had turned to fire a gun.
The incident has exposed problems with the city’s Police Department policies. For one thing, the officers who shot Latrell Allen were part of a special squad who were not required to wear body cameras.
The officers claim that they recovered his gun from the area. In the past, there have been reports that the Chicago PD have planted guns to cover up shootings of unarmed individuals, so people are understandably wary of accepting that. Without the body camera footage, it comes down to the word of the officers who nobody trusts these days.
So, unsurprisingly, rioting and looting broke out. Drawbridges were raised to keep people from entering the city and freeways were shut down. Hundreds of demonstrators fought with the police on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, the city’s premier upscale shopping district.
Last night, as I was walking around, Chicago felt exactly like New York City did when, following our own spate of violence, the curfew was imposed.
Many stores up and down Michigan Avenue have been boarded up. There were police cars with flashing lights up and down the entire length from the Water Tower down to the river. There were also police cars parked up and down State Street in front of the Chicago Theatre and down by the old Marshall Field’s store.
There were a few people out and about and a couple of restaurants were open, but the constantly flashing lights from the police cruisers put too highly a charged energy in the air for anybody to relax.
The third night of the Democratic Convention was last night. President Obama delivered an amazing speech. What a difference it makes listening to somebody intelligent, speaking in well thought out sentences. What was amazing about it was that I can’t remember him ever being that blunt. I can’t remember any ex-President, ever, being so pointedly direct in the condemnation of the current sitting President.
It is a measure, of how dire things have become, that we are well and truly being warned that the very basis of our national Democracy is in danger of being destroyed.
Also last night, Senator Kamala Harris of California became the first African American woman to be officially nominated to a major party ticket. Her nomination came came a day after the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution that finally gave women the right to vote.
While the 19th Amendment in theory made that happen, it really wasn’t until the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s that any of the women in Senator Harris’s family would really be able to go to the polls. Poll taxes, literacy tests, fraud and basic intimidation kept them from being able to exercise their rights as American Citizens until we all stood up and said, “No”.
It’s time that we do that again. We all need to vote in this November’s elections.
I just walked down State Street back to my hotel to pick up my stuff and head out. There are so many more homeless people out on the streets here than I ever remember seeing.
As I was walking, a guy in a rainbow sequined shirt driving a beat-up old car drove down into each block and stopped. He then jumped out and handed every street person he saw a couple of bottles of water.
If you don’t feel it’s necessary to cast a vote in this upcoming election for yourself, then do it for this guy. He is doing everything he can with what means he has to help. He shouldn’t have to be out there doing that.
Chicago has always been one of my favorite cities. Even under these circumstances I am glad to be back here for a minute.
I look forward to coming back and seeing a play at the Goodman or Steppenwolf or Chicago Shakespeare or the Lookingglass or any number of other amazing local theatres.
I look forward to walking around in the Art Institute of Chicago and paying my respects to George Seurat’s masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.
I look forward to the Corner Bakery down the block from where I am staying to be open.
I look forward to seeing crowds of people reflected in the miraculous surface of the Bean rather than just the empty pavement.
We have the power to stop most of what we are all experiencing these days by literally just saying “No”. When we vote, our voices are heard.
One vote matters a little. All of our votes together, matters a lot.
We can't change the racial injustices that have happened in the past, but we can change how we behave moving forward. We can't change the fact that there is a pandemic, but we can certainly change how we are responding to it.
The way to move forward is certainly not in the way we are responding to these crises, now.
The time for a simple, “No” may actually have already passed.
I think it might be time for a “Hell, no”.
“but we can change how we behave moving forward” ❤️
“The right to vote is sacred” Barack Obama
Sending love to you Richard