Brent and I went to a Christmas show today. It was okay, not great, not horrible, just okay. But part of it is probably one of my favorite theater experiences I've had in a long long time.
The show consisted of two parts, the first part was a recitation of a Truman Capote short story. It was well done. A one man show basically. Well acted, well performed. Moving story. If you like stories that are just slice of life sort of pieces, which I do, so it worked for me.
The second part was winter songs. Not necessarily holiday, but some holiday, but winter feeling songs. Songs about going home. Those sorts of things. And this part was one guy at the piano and two performers. The guy that did the Truman Capote story and a woman. They sang and told stories. Lovely voices. Stories that were memories of their lives and past holidays.
So one of these stories was from the guy. He talked about being in London when he was young. He was on his own and headed to a hostel for the evening. He had just gotten off the tube and was jostled in the crowd. Realized a few feet later that he hadn't been bumped, he'd been mugged. So the money he was going to spend at the hostel was gone. He was broke. There was a piano there from one of those "Art Everywhere" installations and he sat down to play. Put his hat down to collect some money, hopefully enough for his night in the hostel and maybe a beer. He sang the song he sang that day and talked about the hope in his heart at Christmas. Well he finished his song and turned to collect his take and...someone had stolen his hat. So now he is going to sleep in the train station. With zero money and the same amount of faith in his fellow man.
And he left the stage. Ended the story on that note.
The audience didn't know what to do with that. At all.
You could feel it. The AND?? reaction. They were waiting for the happy ending. They wanted him to say "and then the millionaire gave me tickets to fly home on his private jet" or "and that's the night I met the love of my life." To be perfectly honest, I was not. As soon as he said he put his hat down I thought, someone steals his hat. Because that's how I would write the story. I loved this moment in the theater. The waiting. The reaction from the audience. The waiting feeling for the "more" part. The happy ending. The ending that wasn't coming.
It's often how I write the story. There is no happy ending. Or even a tidy one. I leave things open ended. Or sad. Or awful. Because that's the way life works.
We are all programmed to look for that happy ending. Or that tidy one. The one where every problem can be solved in 20 minutes. Or if it's a feature film two hours.
I see it playing out in real life all of the time. It's part of why I have been couching my posts about the latest Trump revelations with "I don't think anything will come of this." We want there to be lines that are drawn. Good guys and bad guys. And we really want the bad guys to be punished. And that often doesn't happen in the real world. If the bad guys have enough money they don't ever face consequences. In this case the establishment that can bring about charges will most likely not because they need him. They want him just where he is so they can do what they want. He's useful to them so they don't care about right or wrong in this case. The ends justify the means.
It happens most of the time. You would think we would be used to it.
But we aren't.
We crave happy endings. Where the good guys are rewarded, the bad guys are punished and there are clear lines showing us who the good and bad guys are. Those are the stories we tell ourselves.
Except for you all. You who read my stories. Where there isn't always a tidy ending. Where a simple happy ending is a rare treat.
Just think of it as me preparing you for the world. You wouldn't sit in that audience and think AND?? Where is the rest of the story? You'd just be glad he didn't crush his fingers in the piano.
You're welcome.
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