by Luke Durling
10/31/2024
Ever since I was a young boy, my father, head of maintenance and building engineer at my school, let me in the boiler room. It was exhilarating, yet surprisingly conventional. The maze of pipes pulsing water and electricity through the monstrous boilers and making the most ear piercing hum. A rattling and rearing air compressor that was probably more loud and dangerous than the molten water vats 4 feet away. The corner of PVC conduits and fluorescent bulbs that inexplicably stayed perfectly upright and never seemed to ever crash to the paint splattered concrete below. The workbench filled with tools, cobweb coated paint cans and surrounded by bent chair legs and broken desks wrenched to some agonizing angles.
I truly didn’t understand the risks these things all posed until much later in life, and by that time, I was so used to it these risks didn’t even phase me. To me the boiler room was so much more than some mechanical junk room, it’s where my father and my friends fixed the impossible or not worth fixing. It’s a place where we built, washed, cleaned, crafted, and repaired the most remarkable things. Sure, we threw away some things and the garbage was taken out there, but that was simply a messy inevitability. You can’t fix everything, that’s just life.
It’s also where the best smelling coffee flowed and where the best craftsmen, teachers, and mentors gathered to give a daily rapport of nothing in particular, just to make the day a little brighter. Grab a donut on their way through.
I stepped backstage at The Croswell for the first time in my life yesterday, smelling the richness of coffee and tufts of sawdust on the pitch black menagerie floor, a wall of paints, sealers, and sanders, row of red handles attached to ropes, hazards that could plunge if flipped.
I never felt more at home than I did then.
I found the same corners of slanted 2x4s just as solid as ever, scratches and markings on the walls not of wear, but of life, a million lives. A mixed shop of coffins, blackboards, plastic plants, umbrellas, buoys, crates, amongst all other things. Plywood etched with stickers and Sharpies until the soul of joyful graffiti became the wall itself. Things the others merely walked past I devoured. It truly felt like a place I could call home. This never truly occurred to me before I got up this Hallows Eve and considered that blissful smell that greeted me on the green room couch. I want to thank my dad for making me appreciate places like these and the stunning people of The Croswell for having me in this remarkable magic emporium.
Of course, I do understand why they only had me here now. The space is far smaller than what it appears to the crimson lined audience. Even the stage itself seems meager from behind the curtain. A remarkable magic of space and perspective is bent and twisted until you see a world instead of a room too packed for 45+ people to be in, but yet holds them all the same. Thankfully, I’m used to such tight quarters after spending mornings with six people in a mechanical office meant for one, two tops, laughing and smiling all the same. Even if this is my only foray on and behind The Croswell’s stage, I’m overjoyed to have been in such a hallowed space for any amount of time.
I feel like we all should have this kind of space in our lives. A space where we can be unapologetically ourselves amongst the slightest bit of foreboding chaos. A place where we can feel perfectly safe in a space where a million things could happen, good, bad and in between. It’s even better when it’s filled with like minded people who can laugh at the same jokes, discuss the same problems, and create the same, inexplicable mess of magic together.
Preferably with the smell of coffee and creamer wafting through the room.
Calm and Cultured 