There are some who might believe that Austin has gotten less weird over the past few years, but they are in a minority for certain. The wheel has already been set in motion, long before we ever got here, and some wheels start to spin spontaneously, and some are guided by ancestors that speak inspirations from a land far beyond. It’s not the perfect time in history, nor is it the place, any place, to determine the weird no place and every place that Austin can be. It’s one of those unspeakable energies that cannot be evaluated while it is performing is natural mystic magic but only is open for assessment later, much later. All we can know for now is that Austin has hotels and they are lovely, and you will have a lovely time here.
It’s not the time to decide, or even guess, at the long-term effects of Greg Romero because it’s simply much too soon. We can know for certain, however, that he was part of a series of coincidences here that caused the wheels that were already set in motion to spin just a bit faster, and a bit stranger, which means that Austin will remember him because he understood where he was when he was here. This experimental playwright (among many other hats) has left footprints, and coming to Austin and looking at living memories reveals some of his day-glo traces over all the important sacred cows.
Not that Romero doesn’t like cows. The deeply compassionate vision is elaborated in plays like The Most Beautiful Lullaby Ever Heard, and can also be found in public acts that move art backwards into dada while it moves into the great ceiling fan of the future, the one that will chop us all up unless we learn how to burp. These acts include taking extremely small donations from large groups of people, and shaving his beard in public. This is an electric word machine, with one conduit to pop culture, and one to the angel of history, and simultaneously stalked by Cajun pookas who know your mother. His influences come from everywhere, and he brought them here with him, for a time, and now has gone to the four winds and scattered, or is perhaps in Philly, where it will be nice to meet him for a beer or a coffee sometime.
Related posts:
