Reflections

A soloist musician or actor makes an extraordinary effort to induce into the audience the feeling that the one playing music or performing a play is an ensemble of performers, each imparting a different tone ultimately merging into a harmony of ideas.   This is the case of those producing the act, but how is the case with the one receiving what is being performed on stage?  And how can one individual view the show as if he was an entire audience?  

Just as you walk down the streets of Amman city center alone, discerning the faces of hundreds of people, each with a story and a concern, and you combine all your impressions into a mosaic of senses, you watch a movie alone, with empty chairs all around, trying to skip from one chair to another, reacting differently on each.      

Just as it seems to be my destiny to walk the streets of Amman alone, impersonating the life of each pedestrian, the other day I was destined to be the only viewer of an Egyptian movie shown within the Meeting Points festival at the Al-Balad Theater in Amman.             

I came to this cinema-turned-theater before, being one of a handful of viewers eager to see in art the other face of a daily reality hanging over us like a monster.   

In my case, it took a lot of effort to finally be a soloist viewer.  But why want to be a soloist? I guess I wanted to be all the viewers in one.  I took the difficult route to get there, ascending a stairway squeezed between old buildings -- now swarming with DVD stores on both sides of the road leading to Jabal Amman. 

People ascend with you, yet you find yourself alone in a theater.  You start thinking how if all these passersby went into the theater with you and watched.   They leave you, but leave with you their faces and souls, which you take inside.     

You watch for hours alone.  You applaud the show as if the theater was packed with a thousand viewers.  Theater, life -- no difference.  Go into it, solo if necessary, but bring out with you a thousands viewers and souls.