I'm down at Intelligentsia again today (Broadway and Barry, in the Lakeview neighborhood), avoiding the heat and watching all the cute girls, and a few minutes ago ran into my friend Rob. Rob is an actor and former non-profit arts administrator, someone who used to be closeted and married, but who came out rather late in life and as a result has had a major lifestyle change right in the middle of his forties.

Rob's been following along with the progress of this arts center I'm trying to open these days, just as a growing amount of you are as well, and of course wanted to know all the latest concerning it. And unfortunately I've hit a snag when it comes to the part I was working on this spring, which was finishing up the business plan - basically, I'm so broke these days that I can't even print out edited versions of the plan, for the boys down at the Small Business Administration to go over with their red pens and edit even more. And since very few people in our modern age are comfortable with doing electronic edits of electronic documents (which usually involves special set-ups in special programs, like the "track edits" set-up in MS Word), this has kind of put an end for now to timely edits to my business plan, and timely updates from me concerning them.

Hell yeah it's frustrating! I'm tantalizingly close to actually finishing the business plan, as a matter of fact; most of the plan itself is in its final form by now, and the only thing really being changed on a regular basis anymore are the simple statistical figures in the back, as well as the grammar and punctuation of the copy. I knew beforehand, however, that this process was going to be full of setbacks and frustrations, so am trying not to let this particular one get me too down, but to simply move ahead with whatever it is in the process that I can do. For example, part of this process involves changing my personal website in a rather radical way, so that it's easier to track where I am, what social-networking services I belong to, what the latest is concerning the center, etc. And this may not seem an important part of the process, but it actually is, because it allows simple fans of the center to become active participants in the funding process; it allows you, for example, to notice a wealthy patron at some opening one night who you think I should meet, and be able to jump on your cellphone and not only see if I'm already in the neighborhood, but to easily drop me an instant message if I'm not. It allows people to get "addicted" to the center if they want, as defined by Douglas Atkin in his marketing guide The Culting of Brands; to follow along in as nerdy and detailed a way as they in particular want, instead of me defining those parameters for them, and to even play an active part in the process if they want, even at such a beginning level of it all. And if you're one of those obvious people who can't see beyond the immediate consequences of immediate actions, then of course you won't understand why this part of the process is so important to its entire success; if you're a smartie, though, you will.

And then the other thing I can do these days as well, of course, is simply talk about the center to others, and try to get people as whipped up with excitement about it as I am, and to maybe convince some of them to become the obsessive online followers of the process that I'm making it so easy to be these days, and maybe even to seriously consider handing over a check for $200,000 (which is the full amount of what I need in order to open this center in the way I'm envisioning it). And this is free, of course; all I have to do is open my mouth to be accomplishing this part of the process. Specifically, though, a new summer program has started up here in Chicago, that I'm hoping will produce even more fruit than the usual environment where I might gab about the center; basically, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) has decided to sponsor a free Tuesday-evening series of live jazz events all summer, specifically for people my age who are just getting off work at the same time. If the press release is to be believed, it sounds like it's going to be great - a different local jazz troupe each Tuesday, free drinks, free food (courtesy of Wolfgang Puck, no less), all taking place outdoors on the back patio, designed for no other reason than to get young people into the habit of frequenting the MCA.

The key to something constructive coming out of such a summer series, I believe, is in always keeping the long-term view of it in mind; namely, not only do I not have to be doing the hard sell the first time I theoretically meet people there, but I'd actually probably do some damage as well by turning on the hard sell that quickly. I've got an entire twelve weeks, after all (or however many weeks are left) to work on even the tiniest positive result; to get a rich person to even request the business plan, for example, or to get someone at the Department of Cultural Affairs aware of the plan and talking about it within their organization. In this context, I don't have to be making any kind of sudden moves for this plan to work; I don't even have to talk to someone until the third or fourth time we've noticed each other at the various events, which will hopefully have their curiosity factor up to a point where the conversation itself will be a little easier to initiate.

So I'm going down to the first one tonight and am checking it out; as we've all recently learned, after all, appearances can be deceiving, and what sounds cool on paper can easily become a nightmare in real life. If it's a semi-decent event, though, and seems to draw the kind of people I'm hoping to meet at such an event, then it's most likely that I'm going to become a regular at it, and to establish a long-term plan for eventually having a few positive things center-wise come out of the experience. And this will be my first official opportunity to be "Arts Center Jason," which I think will be interesting: the Jason who wears appropriately subversive yet tasteful clothes, the Jason who only has a cocktail or two over the course of an evening, the Jason who actually has his shit together and deserves a check for $200,000 (versus the Jason who's been fired from every single humiliating, low-paying, bottom-of-the-rung white-collar job he's ever held - the MCA people don't get to meet this Jason). And that'll be interesting, I think, to see how difficult or easy it will be to be "Arts Center Jason" for an entire night all summer - which will be a good test for when the center eventually opens, and I have to be "Arts Center Jason" sixteen hours a day, every day of the week.

Anyway, if any of my readers happen to be attending the MCA thing tonight themselves, won't you please drop me a line at ilikejason at hotmail dot com? This whole schmoozing/whoring thing always goes a lot smoother when you have a partner in crime.