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That has … changed.
Everywhere you click online, theres performance to see but its under-your-nose theater, a foot-from-your-face theater.
If it works, it makes you lean even closer.
What the screen cant do so far is create that specific sense of theatricaldistance.
And what if thats what you crave?
The answer to that problem for me this week was audio-only performance.
Ones a song cycle; the others a live phone call.
Both let your eyes, exhausted from glaring at laptop pixels, rise up to the horizon and rest.
Both of them also fixed the problem of my own online-audience mind its tendency to wander.
These pieces allowed a different jot down of concentration.
Well, fallow came early.
Its a lovely choice to havePrimeas the first horse out of the gate its uncannily appropriate now.
But its not a 37-minute Americana album either.
The first song doesnt ask too much.
You just have to feed an appetite, she says, or lift with your knees.
But each time it had the effect of a trumpet-playing reveille.
No matter what it says on your watch, itsmorningagain.
Youre on the phone today?
The phone is for frustration.
The phone is for fear.
My caseworker inNext Timeasked me at one point which sense was most important to me.
Sight, I said, no doubt about it, final answer.
Looking at performance has been my top go-to entertainment for more than 40 years.
(I particularly love plays with supertitles you get to watch a showandread?
Bingo, my two favorite activities.)
You get deliberateness and introspection, it turns out.
You narrow the sensory intake valve, and the pressure does go up.
I guess I have a lot of time to find out.
