Welcome to our annual Fall Arts Guide. We'd like you to use it to be a cultural astronaut ... or, at the very least, as a reference for your next dinner-and-a-show.
Spun sugar probably isn't the proper metaphor for the process of compiling a 7,000-word calendar each month. Formatting hundreds of entries, checking on times, dates and prices, or editing the resulting "mouseprint" (our managing editor's term for that itty-bitty calendar typeface) can sometimes feel more like gnawing on hardtack. But talking to club owners, curators, filmmakers, painters, ballet dancers, poets and playwrights every month is better than cotton candy. And when the listings are done, seeing a snapshot of the city's cultural life at that particular point in time — well, I'm not going to even try to qualify that feeling with a metaphor. I will say that's why I dig mouseprint: I know it is what gives us room to list the Rep and the Midnight Company, the Symphony as well as BB's and The Bluebird.
For the Fall Arts Guide, we've assembled 15,000-plus words of mouseprint; it's pretty much every jot of information we had at press time for shows taking place now through December, as well as some season highlights and interviews with artists (John Waters and Howard Shore among them) whose work you can see this fall. As satisfying as it is to look at a month in the life of
St. Louis' art scene, the whole arts season in one glance is ... well, whatever you associate with "an insane wealth of wonderful stuff, spread out right at your feet" — sample sales, family-reunion picnics, carnivals, libraries or a craft-paper grocery bag full of Halloween candy.
So, though this assembly of mouseprint takes time and meticulousness, you shouldn't treat it gingerly. Rip it out, mark it up, leave coffee rings on it, stuff it in your raincoat pocket or paper clip it to the plastic divider in your Filofax. And as the girl with the ever-expanding accordion folder, who sifts through countless press releases and postcards, who saves the date for art openings and jazz shows and musicals, I have a little bit of advice. I force myself — granted, not as often as I should — to go to art events where I feel too old, too young, too weird, not weird enough, overdressed, underdressed, over-institutional or anarchic. And I very much recommend you do the same. It is true that there is nothing more mortifying than showing up to an art show in office casual, only to be blinded by evening gown sequins and champagne bubbles. Conversely, I have worn penny loafers into punk shows and felt like the primordial dork.
But braving that discomfort to get to the art can be the gateway to major cognitive rewiring, if you can stand veering away from living your life at room temperature. If you are the guy who opens his closet to see 42 lumberjack shirts (all different plaids, of course) or if you never go out to listen to music at all, just once, go hear the Ariana String Quartet play Mozart. Contrarily, if you buy season tickets for the Ariana String Quartet, go down to the Way Out when Dave Stone's circuit-bending free jazz ensemble, Squid Choir Orkestra, is playing. If you feel more comfortable in galleries more likely to tap a keg than set out boxed wine, go over to the Saint Louis University Museum of Art, and see the Eleanor Turshin glass collection. If you think you only have eyes for bucolic pastels, go down to Fort Gondo and Boots. Or just pick some random art exhibit. If you show up and the art makes no sense to you, it doesn't matter — if you don't tell anyone, no one will know. There is always a back door to sneak out of if the amplifiers are too loud, if the crowd is too drunk or the poetry is bad. More often, the poetry is not bad. And sometimes, if you're in one of those moods where you feel like all the stars in the sky are going to defect and affix themselves to the wrong side of the universe's fabric, it can be transformative.
Of course, there is much to be gained and nothing lost by keeping up with old standbys — I've walked out of multiplexes, abandoned bad breakfasts, regretted driving down certain roads, but I've never, ever kicked myself for going to a play, an art show, a concert or a film screening (and I include in that list a painful Cirque du Soleil rip-off staged in a black-box theater, a grainy photography show in a basement full of chain smokers and short experimental films that were bewildering ... in a bewildering kind of way). Much more often, I slap my forehead to think I almost missed, for instance, John Foster's 2005 vernacular photo exhibit, "Accidental Mysteries," at the Sheldon, or Brave New West, a doc screened by the Webster Film Series this past June. I am sure there are dozens of other shows I should be mad at myself for missing that I didn't even know about. What I hope — fingers crossed — is that we've done our job well enough so that you won't have to worry about that.
