But each year, I see, more or less, the same attendees: mostly artists and performers, along with patrons and those associated with the arts professionally. The total attendance for last year's festival was about 25,000 people spread over 10 days. That's not much more than one sold out Trail Blazers game, and it's far from the 75,000 people who course through the Art in the Pearl festival over Labor Day weekend, an art gathering that's artistically and critically pallid compared to TBA. Of course, numbers don't capture the richness of any story. Still, these numbers reveal a dilemma. What is the city's affinity for the festival in the boldest terms?

a non-narrative collage of sensorial confusion, aka an America where the jig is up and the dream has died. Last Meadow is about the space of waiting, when things don't move forward, don't happen as they should, and mixed messages are the only ones we get.