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I walk into a warehouse show on a rainy Sunday in Baltimore. It’s the Full House Festival at Floristree, one of Baltimore’s flagship warehouse hubs. A slew of noise bands/artists (Blues Control, Tickley Feather, Black Vatican) and the headliner, Cluster (pioneer experimental electronic artists), all variously take the stage between 4 p.m. and midnight.

Someone is selling gourmet sandwiches for $5. I contemplate stealing one. I find 50 cents on the bathroom floor. These quarters may or may not have cat urine on them. I chip them free with my sneaker. I pick them up, using toilet paper to shield my hand. There are about 80 people outside; they will never know about this. I hold the quarters by their edge and wash them.

Luckily, they have these coconut macaroons for 50 cents. I buy one and go on about them so much that the girls give me a second for free. They made them. I want to get something in my stomach before having a beer. Beer is inevitable — I could weasel a beer from Robert E. Lee while wearing Yankees hat. I do. A kid in an Army jacket offers me a Natty Boh after a brief chat about the lineup, though I may have achieved this result on a subconscious level.

This audience communally retains the expression of one who is waiting for a sandwich at the deli counter.  Cluster begins to play. It is a band of importance.  I am supposed to like them, but I end up liking them anyway. The two electric shamans stand at opposite ends of the stage. They negotiate erratic sparks into some journey. Kids keep talking; I think they’re on a guest list. I’m recording all this for posterity. I have a Radio Shack digital recorder: It’s mostly filled with half-baked musings that disintegrate under a pile of continual input.

I can’t get mad at these kids. They just remove themselves with small talk to combat the horror of confronting the possibility of “not getting it.” It’s a justifiable fear. Suppose we’ve been tricked? The band may have been joking for years … maybe we don’t even get THAT joke. What if THAT joke is the actual substance of the music? Brilliant.  Maybe we’re just tasting the spoon.

Ed Schrader is a member of the Wham City Arts Collective and host of “The Ed Schrader Show.” The next performance is 9 p.m. Thursday at Metro Gallery. His column appears Fridays in b, the paper.

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