Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.
– Charles Mingus
I read that quote when I was a teenager, not yet jaded, and it stuck with me. So much of the labor that makes The Things Around Us possible is unseen. Every time I set up, before I can play a note, I spend hours plugging in wires and cables. It took hundreds of late nights, in complete isolation, replaying each small section of music over and over and over, trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B a little bit faster. Do you know how hard it is to turn knobs and push buttons and switch instruments and fix a thing that came unplugged while you are telling a story on stage to strangers? It’s hard. And to make it seamless is to make it look easy, commonplace, without thought, as though it flows from me. My art is to destroy the evidence of my efforts.
There is a general exhaustion in the air these days: a half-decade of pandemic, financial uncertainty, political unrest. I don’t know a single person who loves how things have been going. It’s rough, and we haven’t yet seen the full toll this will take on us.
In response, I wanted to make a show that gives much and asks little. A moment as a gift. A show that is more about you than it is about me. There is nothing didactic about The Things Around Us. It is composed of stories that remind you of truths you already know and music that brings back feelings long forgotten.
The Things Around Us is my effort to find levity without naivety, emotion without manipulation, and honesty without despair. Please enjoy this gift from me to you.
– Ahamefule J. Oluo, Creator and Performer