I walk. Every morning. Well, usually. I'm paying for the sins of my youth when certain invincibility hadn't met with inevitable old age. My knee has seen some hard use. I can climb stairs like a rock star all day, but going down the stairs is a horror show. The Oregon State University parking garage is an excellent rehab spot. (For my physical injuries. Not for, well. You know.) I can gazelle my ass up the stairs, then sloth the car ramps down, slow and easy, before gazelling back up again. The campus, responding to COVID, is deserted. I see only the odd runner coming by with knees a third the age of mine. Enjoy them now young human, and try not to spend your youth kickstarting old Harleys and British motorcycles.
I now seem to have a little time to do some of those things I should have been making time for all along, like walking. (Or getting tackled on the beach by a golden retriever. Totally worth the ibuprofen needed to walk the next day.) The campus is my own private garden; abandoned without being dystopian. Earbuds in and mask on, I explore and visit the university where, 25 years ago, I dropped out to build the Avalon Cinema. My knee hurt less then.
This is all under the crushing weight of the Darkside being closed and the stupidity that led to that. I show movies for a living, not chase government money. I'm not comfortable begging the good people of my community for support, which has been nothing short of breath-taking. Our snack bar is in chaos because of the renovations needed to be COVID-safe. I'd prefer to be upgrading the picture and sound in the auditoriums. But, because our leadership failed to make us all grow up and put on our big-girl masks when this shit hit, I'm putting locks on restroom doors and installing hands-free towel dispensers.
My protests have always been on my screen, not my sleeve. But my screens are dark, and my rage is getting darker. I am clinically non-political. It's part of the business. Professionalism. Like a urologist not talking about patients' penises at dinner parties, no matter how magnificent. Then there's the total lack of professionalism exhibited by faceless bullies eschewing restraint and using the actions of a few assholes as a license to cripple anyone exercising their first amendment rights. So I put funny stuff on the marquee that goes viral and avoid FaceBook, unless it's to see pictures from Finley Wildlife Refuge. Yet, the damning evidence of the incompetence that leads me to be walking every morning rather than showing movies every evening is piling up like the dead from this virus. I want to put on my motorcycle off-road armor and head to Portland and be part of the chorus calling for treating people like people and be "one of those" shoving half the peace sign into the faces of those cowards who hide behind badgeless anonymity; who have tarnished their oaths by beating fellow Americans. I've been in the theater business for most of my life; I can take a beating. But, one baton hit to the knee, and a lot of people depending on me are going to be seriously pissed. It would also invite commentary from those who have never read the constitution. (Here ya go: https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/) I guess I could poke them with a crutch. For now, I can still hide behind my cowardice of apoliticality, calling for understanding and seeking common ground from the saddle of my high horse. Hi Ho Silver! To the dispensary!
Also, I want the new normal to include my friends who disco on the right side of the political dance floor. It's hard making new old friends. I'm sure there are a few who won't have me back, or whom I won't have back. Genies can be hard to put back in a bottle. After years of not responding to their critically-challenged views, my silence has been taken as an emphatic agreement. Thus, I am now a traitor, defecting to the other side. If they'd shut up long enough to let me talk, they'd'a seen I was there all along and might know why. The days of letting folks be grumpy when challenged with facts have gone. Much like the proper functionality of my knee.
The Darkside will reopen when that can happen without making people sick. I know that day is coming. I know it in my heart, but the wait is getting old. I miss my customers. As a militant introvert, that says a lot. I miss seeing my workers stoking the star-making machinery behind the popular film. Since I have a theater to rebuild, I'm not going to be a free man in Paris, unfettered and alive, for a bit. But, I have a future to decide, and I have decided to fight the fight to get the Darkside and Corvallis back to where it was before a comet in the sky offered more comfort than anything coming from Washington.
I'm rooting for the people who can bend a knee for the eight minutes and 46 seconds it took the knee of a shitty human to kill yet another black man in handcuffs. Getting down on even one knee is a little tricky for me these days, so I'm anxious to get my feelings back on a movie screen. For my whole life, good movies (and a few bad ones) have resonated with how I feel better than any pundit or protest. At my most misunderstood, an understanding voice first came to me in mono sound from a tube amplifier, and still speaks the truth today in 8.1 Dolby Digital. Those words and those dancing images are not just for me. They were meant for a room full of strangers taking a chance on a film, and each other, daring to commune back when the most significant risk was a noisy eater in the front row or some idiot texting in the back. They will return along with the days of crowds so big we have to count seats to make sure we didn't oversell, and one of us would get in front of the room and work the crowd, making sure people were laughing and not fretting. I want those words in all those different languages to be washing over an audience again—our audience, our community. Then I will have my voice back. It would also make my knee feel better.