Fringe

Being in my twenties, which was now over four years ago, I had relatively traditionally young idealistic prospects. This was especially true where it concerned the avant-garde. I was involved with all types of artistic, business and scientific ventures, that ranged from extremely moderately successful, to complete failures. Like so many in the same situation I consoled myself with the vision of the artist, or even polymath, who was recognized only on the fringes of society. It was a depressing awaking to shed the delusion of unrecognized genius, in favor of the more likely prospect which was mediocrity. I have grown to see my own pretensions in many things I have been involved with, and for the most part try to hold myself to at least closer to accepted forms of success. Well, it is not so easy. I am producing a play called “Perdita” with my wife Marine for instance, that I can’t imagine everyone won’t love, but still it sits at a small theatre, not filled to capacity. This is nothing unique as times are very hard in theatre. No one is doing well. Still a shocking thing happened the other night, that brought back my old thoughts about artistry and success. An audience member after the play came up to me, crying and clearly moved, and said “thank you for supporting important Fringe work” The creator and playwright Pierre-Marc Diennet is truly brilliant, and since I had absolutely nothing to do with any creative aspect of “Perdita” I can say that with no fear of sounding arrogant. I truly did nothing. So when I was trying to convince Pierre of how well received this play is I told him that “people really are telling me they love it, and post blogs etc. I believe them because I compose music, and people tell me “nice job”, and I know the difference.” My music is the kind of Fringe that people say “nice job”, because they don’t want to hurt my feelings, while “Perdita” is the kind of Fringe where people want to help make it not so fringe. The very night that the audience member “complemented me” I watched the new Fox series by the name of Fringe with a great deal of interest. It is about a mentally ill (insane in fact) scientist, who does work for the government on some truly wacky science, like the paranormal and teleportation. Interesting and entertaining. During the opening credits though there is a montage of words and images to show just how Fringe this show really is. In with the mind reading, and bringing the dead back to life is the word nanotechnology, which ran a chill through me more than actually seeing a dead man reanimate. This is because nanotechnology is the science I work on and consider my day job. So I have no idea what my point is, but clearly in my mid thirties I need to come to terms with the fact that I really am Fringe after all.