Entertainment

What Nourishes My Hunger For Entertainment

PHOTOGRAPHS: I am a fan of several popular entertainers, though not the sort of fan that stalks stars seeking autographs. I never understood why anyone would want the scribbled name of any one. I do admire photographs and enjoy looking at my collection of handsome men and beautiful women as well as images that don’t fit the norm. I have worked with people often described as unappealing or odd or even less than human. However I find them more often, more human and more beautiful, than the brightest of stars. So, I am not always impressed by that special and almost unattainable beauty we see and enjoy. I once had my picture taken with a famous singer. I was at a concert with friends who sort of swept me along with them and ambushed this really tired and sweaty singer as he came off stage. He was tolerant and gracious. He wrapped his arms around us and smiled for the camera. It’s funny because that picture proved that my eyes can be easily dazzled whereas a camera can not. He wasn’t as tall as I had supposed nor was he remarkably more handsome than others of my acquaintance. He has pleasantly ordinary looks. But he sings with such power and emotion it makes up for all that. I still have a picture of myself within his embrace it is a novelty but not nearly as precious to me as pictures of my father. Those pictures fill me with longing for the decades I spent with him now that he is gone. The other was just a tiny snap of a moment. A reminder of a great concert I attended with friends.

MUSIC: I can’t help it. I love being entertained. Sing to me. Tell me a story. Dance. You steal my attention away from reality and that decorates my day. I admire talent. I am in fact amazed by composers and song writers and equally thrilled by musicians and singers. Every note planned for and executed, a neat package of music and words and emotions expressing everything from tortured love to exquisite beauty. I have wild dreams of being a guitar in the hands of a blues guitarist. I feel pretty sure I could sound soulful and weep as poignant and right as the finest Fender Stratocaster. Um, just for your information, I left the word ‘obscenely’ out of this paragraph I imagine you might find figuring out where I might have originally written it, amusing or not. It only slightly enhances the impact of what I wrote.

DANCE: The connection of music and math in human achievement is fascinating to me. The human body needs and loves to move. Dance is influenced by counting and rhythm and beat and melodies. Dancers express and interpret music through symbolic human movement. Children dance unrestrained with abandon and I have my own fond memories of dancing in the front room of my childhood home listening to Bolero and other exotic albums my parents owned. We were dressed like gypsies with long skirts and bare feet and no matter how ridiculous we probably looked we felt strikingly beautiful and graceful. I feel those same feelings when I watch real dancers and always long to move like I imagine I could as a child. I do in my dreams.

STORIES: How tedious the job of acting must be. To change your personality. To repeat lines over and over until you sound just right. To preform the same play nightly to different audiences. To be tossed around and made to fit a real or fictional persons clothing and life. To change how your voice sounds, how your face looks and to embrace and kiss someone you do not know or love, like you mean it. These things are all done in motion pictures just to interpret a story. And if you remember I admitted that I love to be told a story. So I love actors. I watch interviews with actors and find it interesting how seriously some take the responsibility they feel towards their fans. Others not so much. But I understand. I would never want to be a star or famous in any way. I just don’t care for the attention. So, although I admire most of them, I find the irreverent actor who makes wise [sic] comments that make interviewers pause and who just won’t take anything seriously, so much more refreshing than the polite well mannered actor/interviewee who willingly lets TV personalities dupe them into playing weird games that make them look foolish. Not that I enjoy anyone with a bad attitude I don’t appreciate rudeness at all, ever. But I am not the sort of person who wants to know intimate details about an actors real life. It is none of my business, yet you can find lots of intimate information online such as approximately where an actor lives, how much money they make, how tall they are, how many times they have been married and even their mother’s maiden name. It is ridiculous and intrusive. Then again you can also find out the wonderful causes an actor supports and all the great performances they have made over the course of their career. Only a hand full of people know anything about me, however I like to think that I entertain some of them. Oh and I support Arc of Wabash County.

Well it’s time to wrap this treatise on entertainment up. I think about the deep past when humans first had the time to do things other than fight to survive. This all probably started with a great story teller, the claps and stomps and rhythmic noises that lured a tribe to dance and sing and the drawings made in the sand and the paintings made on cave walls. All this as we sat enthralled around a fire seeking amusement and enjoyment with our fellows and we were fed. And so I am still, nourished.

Judith A. Sears
©06/26/2018