WHIMSY: A NEW POETRY, PERFOMANCE VENUE IN INMAN SQUARE CAMBRIDGE

WHIMSY: A NEW POETRY, PERFOMANCE VENUE IN INMAN SQUARE CAMBRIDGE

By Portia Brockway


Whimsy is a monthly performance venue organized and MCed by Markus Nechay (Surrealius), a local artist, at the Outpost 186, a small art gallery in Inman Square, Cambridge.

Markus recruits various types of performers, including musicians, poets, rote and improvisational actors, and dancers. He interweaves performances with his whimsical oratory.

He sometimes centers the night around a theme: such as this coming Sunday’s Valentine’s Day Special; or Edgar Allen Poe’s 200th birthday, on our January evening together.

In addition to Whimsy alternatives, OUTPOST 186 “hosts series of experimental music and performance events Wednesday through Sunday, and special art exhibits. It also serves as a node for progressive and experimental media. Open 1-4pm Tuesday-Sunday or appointment.” Contact: Rob Chalfen - robchalfen@hotmail.com
http://zeitgeist-outpost.org/

About the history of Outpost 186: Have you visited the Outpost 186 yet? You may have enjoyed its antecedent, the Zeitgeist Gallery hot node in Inman Square; preceded by their original location on Broadway, in Cambridge. Egg Al (Nidle) cultivated it to be a place where people could come, and sleep, or lie on the couch, or just gaze in to space at all the art around them, from Nick Wynekin’s comics to Mick Cusimano’s animation, and wander about the heart.



Whimsy is as Whimsy Does


Whimsy is
as whimsy does.
It’s full of imagination
and light and love.

For Poe’s 200th birthday,
in a pretty room:

We tune
at the Blue Moon.
Clara Neelands
tremolos harmonic howls.
We re-iterate: Owo-o-o-o-o- -

Josh Putnam is astute:

“I am a puzzle and a lock
and a bomb and a dangerous drug.
She is the glass key to unlock my sky.
Let her in; everything changes.

Let it out!
It never hurts
so much as when hurting has no voice.
Why does it take so long sometimes
to remember what can never be forgotten.”

On guitar Ed Ayoub
sings from his original place,
bearded with a Semitic face,
this Fertile Crescent
runneth over.

Ben Beckwith plays
with his great nose down,
grinding notes from
boogie woogie goods,
our right hand of God, Ben,
Ground, Tree, Water.

Jane Chakravarthy
offers us Neruda’s penchants,
the sought smooth skin,
forms, human fondues,
cherries, the peach.

Markus Surrealius (Nechay)
in his top hat, black, and ascot,
Poe, raps at Lenore’s door.
What did the Raven say to Lenore?
“Never more!”
Nicole Edgecomb (Lenore)
stands fraught in her hood,
silent, grave.