what holiness is in the movie theater, this temple and peace – waiting for a film in silence, as entering a cathedral and sitting on the still perfection of a pew … the six or seven waiting humans quiet, communication unusually negligent in its relentless global responsibilities and demands.
then,
two humans enter and the one’s voice is resonant, traveling easily through the
space, as he talks about his life history of biological weight, bmi, diet: he is 10 rows in front of me, 15 seats to the
left, yet he is next to me, his mouth sitting in my ear … this necessary
profanity … holiness, if not aestheticized in the arc of a myth … always so
brief.
what
keeps me from decapitating him in my mind is that his voice is rich,
unpretentiously melodious, and while his topic is ostensibly banal he is so
engaged – even joyed – by his chatter – his bmi is the entire planet’s
naturally, calmly ecstatic and consumptive concern! – that it’s hard not to get
temporarily drawn in. though i don’t
give a shit, i want to ask him questions about his experiences with
vegetarianism in his 20s, about those beets he had in morocco, about the geopolitical
and historic relations between flatulence and bmi.
his
voice, while never loud or aggressive, occupies every seat, the ceiling in its
expanse, the ubiquitous air, of this 500-seat theater. the nine or ten of us waiting for our sacred
cinematic rite to officially begin – his companion too is obliterated – for the
eight or so minutes between his entry and the film’s start, inhabit his voice
and become nothing but his voice and his narrative about the mass of his meat
is the world.
