Dear Self-Centered Churl,
I have to say: I’m impressed. You really get out in supposed support of the arts. You manage to show up at damn near every film, play, and musical performance I attend. In one sense, it’s truly admirable that you’re out there taking in so much of great art that Long Beach has to offer.
On the other hand, it’s deplorable. You insist on coming out to events that are about the audience’s attention being focused on what’s happening onscreen or onstage — and you won’t have it. You insist on checking your texts or even getting on your cell phone while the show’s in progress. You talk not in a whisper (which would be bad enough) but in full voice to your companions, with no concern for whether it interferes with the listening/viewing experience of those around you. And it would appear you don’t give a damn how it affects the live performers onstage. You seem to need some kind of acknowledgement every 10 minutes, some verification that someone is noticing you. It’s truly pathetic.
You’re quite a chameleon. You and your big hair and stupid purse were almost forgivable at the Art Theatre screening of Moonrise Kingdom, even though your chit-chat with your companion meant you missed much of the omnipresent detail and nuance. But at the Panther Heart show at the EXPO Building — which by design was more night at the symphony than band at a bar — you and your cheesy moustache were almost yelling to the guy next to you as you nattered the night away, oblivious to the nine people pouring their hearts out onstage to bring us highly detailed music full of dynamics. Then at the Long Beach Playhouse staging of Cloud Tectonics there you were, 30 years older now, sitting with your pal mid-row carrying on a conversation unrelated to the miracle unfolding up on stage, insouciant to those of us all around you infuriated with your disrespect for the actors and for us. I’ve even had the displeasure to see you dressed to the 9s at Long Beach Opera, talking loudly enough to be heard over the aria.
If it were something important (e.g., “I’m having chest pains. Call 9-1-1”), then by all means you should be heard. But why is it you feel your would-be witticisms, your recounting of a laugh with friends, your dim-witted analysis of the proceedings can’t keep for an hour? I like talking with my friends as much as the next guy; what I don’t do when I’m feeling chatty is go to a play. For starters, there are places far more conducive to conversation than a darkened theatre with people running around onstage. But more centrally, I have respect for what those actors are trying to do — never mind for the strangers sitting around me who didn’t lay their good money down to hear me talk.
Is it that you lack a yet-to-be-discovered gene dictating common courtesy, or is there something in your upbringing, your history, your programming that makes you callous to the collective will, leading you to disregard the presumed social contract you enter into when you walk into a theater?
Perhaps you’re just weak-minded. I suppose it does take a kind of intellectual discipline to focus on a single external object for an hour-and-a-half, to take in its details, to process and analyze it. I suppose it’s easier to check in for a couple of minutes, then move on to something else.
What I’d ask you to consider is that what is easier may not be more rewarding. I submit that were you to go to the Art Theatre and concentrate on an entire film, start to finish, you would be sure to get more out of it. And I suggest that with practice such focus would become less and less unnatural, that unlearning your bad behavior would produce side benefits of a calmer mind and a broader range of thought.
But your mind is your business. Mine and everybody else’s is our own experience — which you’re ruining. Think about where you are. Think about why the rest of us are there. Yes, if it’s a bar, have a drink, shoot some pool, and whoop it up with your buddies while the band plays. That comes with the territory. But if you’re in a theater, look around and see that it’s not your living room. If you’re at the opera, think about how much money the people around you spent to be transported by sublime. If you’re at a free show a band is putting on so as to debut their sometimes-whisper-quiet conceptual epic, consider what it does to the experience when you prattle on about your stupid day.
I know it’s hard for you to grasp, because you’re pretty selfish, but IT’S NOT ALWAYS ABOUT YOU. Sometimes it is. But when it’s clearly not, please, keep your mouth shut. Just for a little while.
With all due respect,
The Rest of Us