Ingmar Bergman: More Fun Than Nick Coleman

After the NARN show today at the Minnesota State Fair, I walked around the Great Minnesota Get-Together with Brian "Saint Paul" Ward from Fraters and Swiftee from Pair O' Dice.

It was not just your typical jaunt around the fair with a couple of guys, though. No. We were on a mission.

In his column late this past week, Nick Coleman was noticing a throbbing undercurrent:

Ever since 9/11, there has been an edge to the fair, a throbbing anxiety that has murmured just below the sound of screams and compressed air machines. But this year, it has seeped in a little deeper, becoming an actual undercurrent of discord.

So as we trolled from beer garden to bierstube, we were in search of that throb; looking to surf that undercurrent.

The State Fair is, in Nick Coleman's world, a miasma of incipient misery. And we had to find it; to comprehend it; to own it, to roll it in our fingers like a fine cigar, to truly be the throb, to become the discordant cataract.

Like the lost kids in Simon and Garfunkel's America, we set off to find...

...the Real Fair.

Like pilgrims tracing the steps of Joyce through Dublin on Bloomsday, Brian, Swiftee and I walked reverently into the Horticulture building, where Minnesotans...:

...go to catch a glimpse of ourselves, to find out how we're doing, to look in the mirror and check the mood of Minnesota. No one person can take it all in, and not even the combined effort of every newspaper and TV station in town can quite capture the mood. But after a first stroll around the fair Thursday, I say: The mood is not good.

Once inside:

I had just left the crop art exhibit in the Horticulture Building, where I found the usual depictions of celebrities and pop icons -- from portraits of Pope John Paul II to one of Johnny Cash, amusingly composed entirely of various seeds all of which, befitting the man, are black.

(...and, befitting the column, induce flatus)

But there were edgier works, too, including a life-size immigrant worker scarecrow. The champion scarecrow wears a sombrero and a crucifix, has a face made of burlap and has a pamphlet in his pocket about how to learn English. Created by Laura Burlis of Minneapolis, this scarecrow isn't about the fears that trouble crows. It's about the ones that trouble America.

One award-winning crop-art display was a miniature military cemetery, complete with a seed-art Old Glory and gnarled trees standing amid a somber scene of graves laid out in rows. Each grave, bearing a painted number, was represented by an upturned lima bean. "In Tribute," was the title given by artist Steve Dahlberg of Minneapolis, who added: "1,863 casualties as of 8-20-05."

Dahlberg put the finishing touches on his work last Saturday. By the time the fair opened, 11 more had died, including another Minnesotan.

While standing in front of "In Tribute", I asked a bystander, Weldon Kruczynski of Dassel, if he felt a throbbing anxiety, an actual undercurrent of discord.

"I feel something throbbing", he said sourly, heading for the exit.

We headed out onto the street, in front of the Leinie Lodge, following the column's deft flow:

I stood at attention Thursday as National Guard soldiers raised the American flag outside the Leinie Lodge and we observed a moment of silence. Nearby, in a familiar tableau that was unsettling, a man lay flat on his back in the intersection of Dan Patch Avenue and Cosgrove Street, attended by ambulance workers while a small crowd gathered. I was thinking of lima beans.

Looking for inspiration, I pondered the chubby little legumes too.

I walked into the street, where another man was lying flat on his back.

"Pardon me, sir; are you noticing an undercurrent of actual discord? Perhaps some throbbing anxiety?"

"No", said the man, Evan Young of Mazeppa. "Feeling pretty good, right now!"

Foiled. No throb. No current.

The three of us meandered past the National Guard booth, seeking throb:

You wouldn't know there was a war on over at the National Guard booth

...which is ironic, given that you wouldn't know there was an investigation of Air America going on in the Strib, either, but again, I digress:

But it is always left to artists to tell the truth

(...since goodness knows the media won't...)

One provocative art exhibit is an installation of communion wafers by St. Paul artist Margaret Hilger. The piece is called, "In God's Name: America's Holy War," and consists of hundreds of wafers spilling onto an altar, each printed with a date, presumably the dates of troop deaths in Iraq. Many visitors passed "America's Holy War" without reacting, perhaps missing the message. Others stopped in their tracks.

"It's a very good statement," said Lucille Matousek of Mankato. "We are sacrificing our young people for nothing, in a pseudo-religious war."

Lana Thormodsgaard of Colorado, who was in town to see her three Twin Cities-area sons, was knocked almost speechless. She felt "assaulted" by Hilger's work at first, but after staring at it for a while, it started to make more sense to her.

"We are in a spiritual war," she said. "It's exactly what God did when he sent Jesus into the world. He declared war on the principalities and powers of the Evil One. It is a holy war."

I don't know if that's what the artist intended (I couldn't reach Hilger). But there is not just food on a stick at the fair. There is also food for thought. No one ever said a fair is just fun and Ferris wheels.

No, indeed.

The Minnesota State Fair is a miasmic quagmire of misery, all throbbing anxieties and heaving discords - and none of the three of us were clever enough to find them.

Or so we thought. But then we wandered into the Labor Pavilion; the anxiety throbbed; the discord flowed like a...well, a hidden undercurrent.

Swiftee: "I feel the throbbing anxiety".

Saint: "And the undercurrent of discord!"

We wandered to the DFL booth.

Saint: "Throbbing!"

Swiftee: "Discord!"

We retreated to the Leinie Lodge again, satisfied on the one hand that we'd found the throb and the current - indeed, that we'd found the point or purpose to a Nick Coleman column at all!

The Minnesota State Fair: Bring your Prozac!

(If you're not attending in the company of Nick Coleman, or planning to read him before entering the Fairgrounds, disregard the above advice...)

Posted by Mitch at August 27, 2005 07:47 PM | TrackBack