Went and saw a musician last night (Greg Brown and Bo Ramsey – definitely more Michele’s style, but they were very, very good), and as we were walking to the car past them as they were smoking afterward. In order to maintain some semblance of cool, we simply gave them a little, “Great show, thanks,” with a wave and kept going. That’s always tough, isn’t it? Resisting the desire to run up and say, “Hi! In descending numerical order, here are fifteen things I liked about the show!”
Instead, of course, we kept walking and then went over and over the things we wanted to talk with them about, and (barely) resisted the urge to ‘wander by’ a second time. “Oh, hello! Ha ha. How funny. We were just going, um, back, toward a, em, thing. So, there seemed to be a heavier blues influence and what I’m wondering is…” It’s that desire to expand on the shared experience, I suppose. The funny thing, of course, is that generally that’s a positive thing. At least in my own experiences, if it’s genuine, a person-to-person interaction, that’s great. It’s when it gets objectifying or predatory that it’s unpleasant. So often those kinds of interactions are carried out with all the grace and style of a fifteen-year-old boy trying to unclasp a bra, or they’re more about “owning” the experience more than other people who were there; and that’s when it becomes a chore. I always loved talking about the experience, anyway, when I’ve been the performer. It’s the hyperbole or treating the performer like a machine dispensing entertainment I hated. Even if it was someone who didn’t like something. If it was when I was doing comedy, the difference between the two, sincere and objectifying, would be the difference between them not liking a bit, and actually saying why, as opposed to someone just saying, ‘your show sucked.’ Or – one of my favorites – that I “use too many big words.”
I realize that the guy who said this probably wasn’t actually squinting and breathing through his mouth with that slightly plugged-up-nose sound when he said it, but in my memory he definitely is.
Anyway, those post-performance conversations are always tricky because it really is such a fine line between expanding the experience and belittling it, isn’t it?
Joel Clements 