I’ve started reading Barney Norris’ The Vanishing Hours. The first few pages are exquisite, and chime so strongly with my current mood that I’m just going to quote from them:

I thought if I could record all the beauty that I had witnessed, every image that had made me feel like my days were worth having, then maybe others…would be encouraged…to see past the things that beset them and look out for beauty. I would have loved to have found a book like that.

This blog is also a companion piece to Anticipation.  Against all expectations,  September and October were measured out in Bridge Theatre visits.   The staggered arrival times, pre-ordering drinks, strictly enforced mask-wearing, temperature checks, sparse seating, short peformance times and lack of interval – these elements of the entire-socially distanced experience were learned and grew familiar.  The first visit was, of course, heightened in all ways. It was exactly six months since we’d been in a professional theatre, coincidentally, unsurprisingly also the Bridge, and for most people in the audience I expect it was also their first time back in an indoor performance venue.  The atmosphere was excited, nervous, yet strangely sociable.  We talked across the 2 metre gaps with complete strangers, shared our stories, moulding ourselves into an audience despite everything.  The performance was both tentative and assured.  Tentative, because there was a single actor, a simple static set.. theatre pared down.  This first event could not escape the context:  the play directly addressed David Hare’s own experience, battling with ‘the Devil’ of Coronavirus.   Assured because, well because Ralph Fiennes cannot be anything but assured and commanding, because it was cathartic and deeply engaging, because it was theatre.  After months of screens and streaming, we watched with our own eyes.  Here. Now.  Real theatre.

I wept, of course.

And then, and then..each intimate event, some new, unexpected, moving evenings, interwoven with the exquisite masterclasses of Bennett’s Talking Heads.  And the thirsty place inside my soul was given nectar.  Enough to sustain, enough to harbour, bracing against the next lockdown.  Which we knew would come: of course we expected it, whatever rubbish the politicians spouted.

So now we pause.  The performing arts struggle again, trying to survive against all odds.  But since I’d expected nothing, it’s impossible not to rejoice and be glad that they were able to do so much.  Back to Barney Norris.

Days worth living fall on us like the sun coming in through windows, making unexpected angles.