Filed by Bil at 11:25 pm under The Arts

The recent yo-yo of heat followed by relieving rain followed by more heat is like the natural world taunting us. And just when I thought we could relax because the heat had cooled off just a little bit, I get word that the basement at Dream Theatre (like thousands of other basements in Chicago) is flooded. FLOODED.

Needless to say, all the free time I thought I had today was instead spent laboring to clean up the joint before our audience arrived tonight. It was a giant mess, but we were able to clean the visible parts of the theatre before our guests came. This is a victory, considering how much there was. There is also much more to do in the basement playing space, so I’ll be heading down there for a couple hours more before coming back north to the Hatemail recording session.

So, after several hours of covering ourselves in sweat and sewer grime, we somehow found the energy to put on a play to make the cleaning worthwhile. And it was the most amazing performance of this show anyone has ever seen. I mean, seriously, everyone was on fire tonight. It was fantastic. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it’s the kind of show I wish we could do every single night…without the flood first.

And yeah, this pattern I now find myself in (work hard to clean theatre, do awesome show, work hard again to clean theatre some more) seems very much like the weather itself: hot and miserable, cooling and fun, hot and miserable again. And that’s just life, man. Ups and downs. Bad times and good times. It’s all cyclical in scope.