Fifteen minutes before the film was supposed to start tonight, a slight trim man in a madras shirt bounded towards the front of the theater.  I'd noticed the organ keyboard facing the audience before he came in, and I'd idly thought about people sitting through silent movies accompanied by virtuosos staring up at the screen.  But then this guy came flying down the aisle and sat down on the bench, his back to the ten or so people scattered around the theater.  It took him a long time to get the light to work above the organ - he fiddled with it patiently, and his confidence in its workings paid off when the light finally flickered on. 

There must be a "swoop" stop on this particular theater organ.  The first few notes he played were surprisingly tremulous (weird, wild vibrato) and replete with slides from one note to the next.  Was he setting the mood for the Jane Austen movie that the ten scattered people were going to see?  It was a sort of Hitchcock mood, if he was.  Theremin in madras.

When I got here today it was blazing hot, and I really needed yet another pair of sunglasses in order to move around outside.  The woman in the store who sold me the glasses (which I will lose in the next few days) said that what she really liked about Ann Arbor was the people and the absence of franchises.

This guy at the organ was definitely not a franchisee.  He played "People Will Say We're In Love" with tremendous religiousity, big plagal cadences.  He played "Surrey With The Fringe On Top" with aplomb, and "Oklahoma" with the "swoop" setting in full flower.  Big blasts of sound, starting from nothing.

It was real artistry.  You could tell when he was getting to his big finish - Oklahoma blew around us, big baseball-stadium chords, and we wanted to burst into applause.  That's when the real organ-show started - he improvised with "You Must Remember This," as the screen finally lit with images. 

But it wasn't time for the film just yet.  He was improvising to the sponsors' brands, staring up at the screen, riffing on You Must Remember This, as the Ann Arbor Improvement District (paraphrasing here, I don't remember the sponsors' names) expressed its silent support for this great theater that had brought us all together, in emptiness, with a guy in a madras shirt playing the organ as if his life depended on it.

He ended smoothly, the sponsors stopped rolling, and the film began.  No previews.  This time we were released to applaud, and he bounded back up the aisle, smiling just a little.