FOLD YOUR ARMS (seating)

"So what did you think of the music?"

I couldn't say. I wanted a table.

And here I return belatedly to the text "It's not their job to not look stupid." (Although the easier option will always be to do what I did in the last post ie. throw some old, recently unpacked English exercises up on the net… Actually here's another: 

 

You see, there is such a thing as having too many apples. Apparently if you start attracting tigers then you know... And what was Mrs. Burnside doing while I churned out this unchecked, speculative drivel? Counting apples. I've lost my thread now. I mean it's barely worth returning to but I might as well.) Two points really. The first:

Last Wednesday in the Shunt Lounge (an increasingly common point of reference in these posts, though not - I sympathize - a Common Point of Reference) three musicians sat improvising in a tunnel on a raised concrete plateau before a lit bank of about 200 no-frills, pull-out, flip-up seats. I think one or two of them were making exploratory noises with instruments while the other processed these on laptop. Anyway it was packed. People were blocking fire exits.
But:
Now:
If you wanted to listen to this music, you had to watch it. (Or else stand at the side and watch other people watching it.) You couldn't sit at a table or lie on your back. You had to place yourself in the socially awkward position of noisily clambering over well-dressed strangers to sit still on a hard seat, fold your arms and watch three men variously scratch, drop and tune things or stare at a laptop. Which as a performance, if you think about it, looked stupid. But only because of how everyone was seated. Do you see?

2nd point: In that same Lounge I was reunited with Silvia and Gemma who had just returned from Sardinia. They'd been invited to perform a show based on Pinnochio up in the hills. Here the paying audience were seated in a mini (and driven around) while an unpaying, unseated audience of neighbouring Sardinian hillbillies heckled, threw rocks, threatened arson and finally went to the priest who recommended a sentence of death by hanging for witchcraft. At any rate that was the verdict that reached Silvia and Gemma in a black Pinto at two o'clock in the morning. So they moved on.

I don't really know what conclusion I meant to draw from this except that, I don't know, between these two points there surely exists a happy medium.