What Do You Think About When Watching The Nutcracker?
Saturday afternoon was, I think (believe it or not), my first time watching The Nutcracker. My wife, son, and I were bumped from our back-of-the-room seats and compensated with VIP seats, third row center. Early into the performance, I started thinking about the amazing opulence celebrated, maybe even taken for granted, in the ballet; and then about the opulence of symphonies and ballets in general and critics of luxury like Marx and Peter Singer and Mozi. Then I thought about the fact that I was thinking such things, while my wife was simply enjoying the ballet. [Update Jan 15, 2014: I doubt that my wife was "simply enjoying the ballet" (per the discussion in comments below); and I no longer even think I know what it would take for such a statement to be true.] I thought about why boys want to be soldiers, and about changing views of corporal punishment, the strangeness of wanting pearls, the sexuality of the costumes, whether too many pirouettes will damage the brain.
And then I wondered this: What if we gave everyone in the audience "beepers" that went off randomly a couple times during the show, asking people to report on their experiences, thoughts, feelings, sensations, whatever, just before the beep? (You know I've been getting into beepers!) Surely someone has done this sort of thing?
Russ Hurlburt and I have randomly beeped people during our talks. So far, among about 10 beeped experiences we've discussed with audience members, not a single person has reported being focused primarily on the content of the talk.
Prediction: People will, if asked after the fact, report much higher rates of absorption in movies, lectures, performances, etc., than one would see if one did a random sampling study. That wouldn't be a bad thing, necessarily. In a way, it's compatible with a much richer, personal, life-involving experience of the performance....