Thursday, September 4, 2008

Firefly summer

So this happened on Sunday in parks around Chicago . . .




Pics by Abe Mendoza

It's part of a public performance series called The Summer is for Fireflies. I didn't get to see it, but they told me about it on NPR.

I didn't realize until I went looking for pictures that my friend Sarah's involved. That's her looking for birdseed.

Like I said, I didn't get to see it, but hearing about it on the radio (twice today) nearly made me cry. This is public performance intending to induce wonder. One of the bystanders said, "It was nice to have a little bit of that fantasy kind of brought into the everyday reality that we have. It was nice to have something unexpected and fantastical happen."

That's exactly what my critical thesis is about, or at least what inspired me to choose my topic -- the desire for the marvelous in everyday life. It's here. It's here.

The impulse behind these performances reminds me of Improv Everywhere. I've never been so lucky as to see them in person either, but watch this and tell me magic isn't real.

3 comments:

Leann said...

That was the coolest thing I've ever seen!! thanks for posting it.

Rachel Wilson said...

Yay! I am childishly delighted that for the first time this week, people I don't know have started to comment on my blog!

Gwenda said...

I don't want to make your head explode, but I hadn't quite realized what your topic was. You might find some helpful stuff here: http://www.interstitialarts.org/why/scholarly_resources.html

Especially Fantasy and Mimesis...