Writing as Performance Art

Sandi likes a particular brand of instant "designer coffee" but if there is none available she will accept regular brew. This morning, however, there was no coffee of any kind in the house, so I volunteered to run up to the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf to purchase us both a cup.

It has been a while since I was there in the morning. It is a different place in the morning, kind of scary. Very busy, frantic I would say, with most orders made to go as fuel for a commute somewhere in the city. Then there were the "regulars" who come to the Coffee Bean to be seen writing. Like the commuters, the morning cast of "look at me writers" is more intense. One of my favorites was there this morning. I have seen her before; one can't help but notice her. In fact, I question whether she is even writing; she is performing for the early crowd pretending to be unaware that she is attempting to be the center of attention.

She is in her mid 50's and sits at the bar wearing reading glasses and an Ivy League Cap turned backwards on her head. Her station is near the door and across from the register. She perches high on a stool in the eye line of every customer who orders and works feverishly over a black Dell lap top and today a stack of printed papers.

When I say feverishly I mean her pace is that of an editor who is late with the Sunday edition of the New York Times. She is amped on espresso looking, typing, turning, sipping and most grandly mouthing every word of her work as she reads. I was always told not to move my lips when I read silently and have turned that into a career. She, however, looks like a silent movie played at 78 RPM acting out each word with over the top facial expressions.

Occasionally she makes a quick look around the shop to see how many people are looking at her, not out of embarrassment but enjoyment. If she is not being looked at enough she gets more animated with her "reading". When she is being observed by enough people she will tap something out on the computer, still mouthing the words as she does. It is an odd site to say the least. I am drawn to it like a moth to the flame or tiger to the prey... trying to figure it out is fascinating to me.

Writing is not performance art. It is something you do in preparation of Art. Writing is like building a stage set and focusing the lights for the show. Writing is not the show itself. Libraries not coffee houses are perhaps the best place for this activity. I know that some of us don't have nice offices to write in, or our environment at home is not conducive to the calm needed to write, but to seek out an environment which is as hectic as an early morning coffee stop doesn't seem like good use of time.

I could be all wrong about the "backwards hat lady", but it seems to me that unless you are the catcher for a baseball team, wearing a cap backwards is a sure sign of demanding attention. Reading silently like you had turrets syndrome is another sign of attention demanding.

Heisenberg, the physicist, said that an experiment is changed to the degree that it is observed by an independent source. If what he says it true, this project the "backward hat lady" is writing is being changed beyond recognition by placing it in observational mode at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf.

As you were,
Jay