Went to see West Side Story last night in Pittsburgh (while attending a conference). I went alone to the theater, and was grateful for the ushers, without whom I would have been utterly alone. And they were paid.

As I watched the story of rival gangs dance in hate and reconcile around a corpse, I sat isolated in a cavernous hall with no one to share – not a soul to care enough even to hate me.

And of course I participated in our little dance off stage (or perhaps on a much wider stage), especially as we filed out after politely applauding the efforts of the cast and orchestra together. It all seemed so perfunctory. So far from what should constitute life that I felt as if we has been the ones to take the bullet – that we were playing the part of a living community half-heartedly and without a script.

I listened for comments about the show as we slowly moved our way back to the places where we would end our collective day in sleep. But it seemed to me that we were already sleeping. Few people spoke, and it seemed everyone there but me had a companion. We refused to share this common experience with one another.

And considering what we had just witnessd together, that refusal struck me as obscene as it was utterly ironic. Were we afraid of each other, or were we unwilling of unable to work toward each other? We had witnessed the high cost of fear between people, surely. But no musical could have shown us how to reach across the gulf of apathy.

So we attended the play alone and isolated from one another. We watched the dance on stage as if it took place in another world.

A place for us.