Chasing Rainbows

As a reporter who covers town planning meetings, I've seen a few applications submitted for projects that get approved but never get built.  I can relate.  This summer I had a writing project I had planned to pursue, but nothing came of it.

I mentioned earlier on my blog that I had found in New York a street accordionist dressed in a unicorn head, a man's suit, and women's shoes and nail polish.  I also said that I wished to seek out this person - I'd only seen pictures and video of said performer on the Internet - and write an article about this person.  I was finally able to connect with this performer after finding this performer's Facebook and Twitter pages, and I contacted this person with my idea of writing an article.  The performer loved the idea and agreed to it, on the condition that I don't reveal the performer's name or sex - this person wants to keep people guessing whether it's a man or a woman underneath the unicorn head.  Although I had seen videos and pictures of this performer in Central Park, I still had not seen this performer in person.

For the record, I have since found out the name and sex of this person, so for lack of a legitimate gender-neutral pronoun with which to call said person by, I will refer to this performer as тл.  Those are this accordionist's initials in Cyrillic.

As you can tell, writing an article about тл was going to be tough.

Anyway, I ran the idea by an editor I work with at a local community paper in Manhattan, and he liked it.  He told me to let me know when I nailed down an interview with this person.  As for the performer in question . . . well, in late May or early June тл told me that тл was going to be out of the country until late in June, and I said I would be happy to meet with тл and hopefully catch тл's act when тл got back.

June passed.  Then July.  Then August.  I didn't hear from him at all.  Also, my editor didn't follow up on my idea in all that time.   I was available to go into the city any time during the afternoon all summer long, but  I won't be as available going into the fall.  Just when I'd given up on the unicorn-headed accordionist, тл sent me an e-mail for the first time in over two months, telling me тл'd be performing in Central Park during the Labor Day weekend.  Nothing about meeting for an interview, though.

I didn't bother to go.  It costs sixteen bucks for a round-trip bus ticket to Manhattan, and I'm not going to schlep all the way to the city just to see a single street performer in Central Park - especially when I'm suddenly going to have a lot less time to interview тл later.

So, no, the article is likely never to be written.  Summer is almost over, and I have other commitments.  Having learned this person's identity and satisfied my own curiosity about тл, and having waited for тл so long to get back to me, I've lost the desire to go ahead with the article, especially when my editor is in no hurry to check back with me on it.   I feel like I'm better off washing my hands of the affair, and leaving this unicorn-headed performer alone to play the accordion and eat a rainbow or two. 

I'm going back to writing about buildings that get approved but never get built.  At least there's a pot of gold at the end of that.