Day 262…
During these very strange months of the pandemic I have been able to make a serious dent in my ‘to read’ pile.
I’ve always read a lot, but in recent years, I have been so busy and distracted by work and traveling that I would go for long stretches of time without ever cracking a book. Not these days. These days, I am finding the time to read quite a bit.
“Cracking a book’, by the way, is not anything that I would ever actually do. My mother was a librarian. The idea of bending back a book’s cover so far that the spine cracks makes a shiver of horror run up my own spine.
One of the things that would stop me or at least seriously slow me down in terms of reading is that I’d start a book and if it wasn’t great, I’d slog through it anyway.
Not anymore. If, after a few chapters, I’m not engaged, I’m out and on to the next.
There’s a site called Goodreads that is a kind of literary chatroom and library. You keep track of the books you’ve read, and you can see what other people have read and what they thought of them. I don’t read any of what’s there before I’ve either finished a book or abandoned it, but afterwards it’s interesting to see how my opinions line up with the greater reading zeitgeist.
I’m not sure what happened that allowed me to give myself permission to walk out on a book, but having started doing it, it has made my reading life that much better. There is only enough time in our lives to read so many books. Ditching the dull ones gives me more opportunity to read the exciting ones.
Like reading a book, there are many people who will never leave a show at intermission. I, alas, am not one of those people. Sometimes, I just get to the point where I start to think about how nice it would be to be to be anywhere else rather than in the theatre where I am sitting, and I will flee.
There was one musical, that will remain nameless, where I was sitting in the last row in the back of the second balcony all the way on one end. To this day, that remains the only show that I couldn’t wait until intermission to get away from. I left in the middle of the first act. The only reason that I did is that I could do it without anyone around me noticing.
Occasionally it isn’t possible to go. Somebody in the show may be a friend who knows that you are coming. Sometimes, we are sitting so close to the stage that we aren’t sure whether the people we know onstage have seen us or not.
Unfortunately, I can often tell if I want to leave within the first 90 seconds of a show starting. Once it becomes apparent, the resulting hour and a half until intermission can be truly unbearable.
I’ve never walked out on anything that Patti LuPone has been in, but I know that she can’t see anything beyond the first two or three rows of the house. She will sometimes appear to connect with somebody further back, but usually, that’s just acting. Usually. Sometimes the house is bright enough in certain scenes that she can see further.
Now, don’t get me wrong, she’s not scanning the crowd for people she knows. If she’s in a musical, she’s usually not looking out, she’s looking at the people she’s acting with. In a concert, however, she’s on her own and connecting with the audience.
If Patti’s onstage you are pretty much assured that a spotlight will be on her the whole time.
Spotlights that make it possible for everyone to see performers clearly, are usually completely blinding to the performers themselves. They have to train themselves not to squint. When we were doing Patti’s virtual concert, we had to add bright white tape to the top of the cameras, so she’d know where they were.
There have been times when I’ve been in the third row at one of her shows and Patti’s looked right at me, or so I thought. Then she’d be surprised when I saw her backstage. There have also been times when she looked right at me and did see me, so you can never really tell.
Thankfully, while she has certainly been in some things that weren’t great, I have yet to see her in anything that was so bad that I felt compelled to leave. I can’t really say that about some other friends’ shows, alas.
Jersey Boys only has three spotlights and they get focused on whichever of the main characters are most prominent in any given scene. So, while the Four Seasons are often blinded onstage, the rest of the cast who might be sitting at tables as part of an audience listening to them in the scene are not blinded at all.
I don’t want to suggest that they are searching through the audience for people they know while their fellow performers are singing. That would, of course, be unprofessional. Every once in a while, however, when I have sneaked into a performance to take notes, I have locked eyes with one of them from the back of the house. I would immediately know that the jig was up. And, so would they.
In the Broadway company, one of the original women in the cast had the ability to know where everybody was - immediately. In the opening number, the three women would enter from upstage right in a line. They take about three or four steps to center stage and then turn and move downstage in a line. Within two or three steps of moving downstage, she would be able to see me in a dark auditorium standing all the way in the back. Every time. It was pretty remarkable.
I am finding the news difficult to watch these days.
To be clear, I am finding news of the President difficult to watch these days.
His story has become tedious. He and his supporters were at least compelling in days past as they worked to undermine and destroy the democratic norms and the basic decency of our nation. Now that they’ve lost the election, their continued efforts to follow the same storyline just seem pathetic.
Their actions are so openly pointless and corrupt that the story seems like it isn’t going anywhere. I want out of it.
In a scathing 21-page ruling, a Judge in Pennsylvania who was, himself, appointed by the President, threw out the move on the part of the GOP to decertify the election results there. The language in the ruling sounds like a parent yelling at an obstinate kid.
“Calling an election unfair does not make it so.”
“Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”
“Voters, not lawyers, choose the president. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections.”
In Georgia, another Judge, also appointed by the President, threw out a similar attempt there saying that the request to halt the certification of the vote, “would breed confusion and disenfranchisement that I find have no basis in fact and law.”
The $3 million that the GOP spent on the Wisconsin vote recount did find a small discrepancy. 132 votes that were thought to be for the President, turned out to be for President-elect Biden. Those fools paid over $22 thousand apiece on votes for their opponent.
It is all such a waste of everybody’s time. And money. It is bad theatre and none of us should be forced to sit here and watch it.
And yet we can’t leave.
This story isn’t unfolding onstage or in a badly written book, it’s happening all around us. We can turn off the TV, and believe me, that’s what I am doing after a brief check-in every morning, but that doesn’t stop this nauseating story from just dragging endlessly on.
Michael and I have been watching A French Village on Amazon Prime. It just gets better and better.
One of the main characters, that we have followed for several seasons now, seems to be finally heading towards being killed by the Nazi’s. He’s had a million very close calls. It’s agonizing to watch and yet it’s everything we can do not to stay up all night to find out what’s going to happen to him.
That same story has happened here in the United States, as of this morning, 264,977 times since March.
Each of the people who have died as a result of this virus were a main character in somebody’s life. As each of these people met their ends, people stood by and watched their stories play out. They couldn’t just turn off the show and go to bed. It was a live presentation that didn’t stop. It doesn’t show any signs of stopping in the near future.
For the rest of us, it's hard to keep paying attention.
The newly conservative-leaning Supreme Court ruled against a New York COVID-19 restriction against religious gatherings above a certain number of people.
The mandate in New York was not in any way meant to keep people from worshiping their God. They were just meant to delay the worshipers from having to meet their God face to face for a few years. The hypocritically appointed new extremely conservative and unqualified Justice has already had an effect.
How many times can we live through the same story before we just can’t watch anymore?
The President seems to be completely unaware of the majority of his audience. Oh, his base, the “deplorables” are still there, but the people around him with any power are starting to pull away from him. The stench of defeat is starting to fill the room.
The two Republican Senate candidates who are campaigning in Georgia for the run-offs are having to figure out what to do with the President’s support.
On one hand they need him, but on the other hand, he is a national loser. The President showing up to campaign for them in person in Georgia is likely not going to help. In fact, it may hurt them. I say, have at it. Let him campaign to his heart’s content.
As a complete aside, I am currently reading William Gibson’s novel, Zero History, which I am very much enjoying. Gibson is an author that I just recently discovered, and this book is the third or fourth of his that I’ve read these past few months.
One of the characters in the book gets on a plane and stows her roll-aboard in the bin above her.
I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this, but I have always thought that the airlines referred to those carry on bags as roller boards. I sometimes vaguely wondered why they would have been called that, but never enough to actually ask the question. I just accepted it.
Seeing ‘roll-aboard’ in print was a true ahh-hah moment. Who knew? Everyone, I imagine, except me. Of course, roll-aboard makes complete sense and roller board doesn’t make any.
I have spent DECADES in the air thinking that they were roller boards. When I am next on a plane, I look forward to finally being in the know about what the flight attendants are really saying when they start making announcements.
We will get through this part of the story.
As much as I think we’d like to just get up and sneak out of the auditorium or toss the book aside, we are pretty much stuck here.
This feels like an intermission. We’ve had a horrible act one but is sure to be better after we get back from this break in the action.
Looking at the program, there appear to be a whole slew of new characters coming in to join the story that we haven’t seen yet. That’s sure to spice things up.
I can watch another act.
If it ends well, that’s all that really counts.
❤️God listens xx
❤️It all ends well, that’s what really counts....🙏💕