My Mum died last year. In her last years, one theme was her unwillingness to accept small defeats. She was determined not to be admitted to a nursing home. She tried to walk outdoors every day. Every available gadget for the house was steadfastly refused for a while. She attempted to stay on top of her own affairs.
To her family, reluctant to see her suffer unnecessarily or to take reckless risks, this was frustrating. But I could also see why she did it. She was aware that each step down was not going to be followed by a step up, but was more likely to put another downward step into focus. By fighting against each step, she felt she was slowing down her own decline. Mentally, it also gave her purpose, and sometimes enabled her to enter denial of things she did not want to face up to.
She saw the last phase of her life as one long slippery slope, and her role to cling on to solid ground as long as she could.
If you have an ageing parent with a similar attitude, I have no idea how to advise you. If anything, doctors tended to support Mum’s approach, while at the same time offering help when she felt she needed it. Perhaps that is all we can do. If we take the alternative approach of forcing comfortable solutions, most likely the speed of decline would have been faster. Her last years might have been more comfortable physically, but they might have been shorter and caused her more anguish.
This is just one small example of how society has so far by and large failed to address the new challenge of longer lifetimes. More people grow old, indeed very old, and declines are slower. But most declines involve anguish, physical pain, and doses of shame and humiliation, not to mention the effect this has on the quality of life of families and carers. Careers, housing, pensions, health remedies: these are all still designed for former times.
I have few solutions. But actually, I wonder if this is just one example of a wider problem with the human psyche. Let us call it the fear of the slippery slope.
Take careers. While our competence follows some sort of bell curve, with experience and energy combining best in middle years, our job requirements do not, with demotion or stepping down into less demanding jobs almost unheard of. As a consequence, nearly all of us rise to our level of incompetence, and the PETER principle shows no sign of being addressed.
Why? It is partly vested interests of senior people wielding power. But it is mainly ego, recognising our inability to deal with any declining powers. Rather, we enter denial, and people around us tolerate it. This costs corporations millions, while also adding stress and humiliation to those publicly seen to fail and finally pensioned off before they are ready.
Retirement itself is seen in the same way. People are frightened that it is some sort of backwards step, so fail to prepare and fail to see the benefits. It may be a strategic retreat in some areas, but it opens the way to advance in so many.
In both cases, this is fear of the slippery slope. The mentality we seem to have been taught, or maybe inherited, is that if we are not going forwards than we are going backwards. Going backwards is dangerous since it becomes a habit. Stay off that slippery slope!
There are many other examples, from all aspects of life. Staying within corporations, whoever heard of a budget or plan that accepted any sort of decline? Yet on average half of all divisions have to go backwards! Harvesting is an important part of any business cycle, and the only bit which generates cash, yet companies generally have little idea how to manage that phase. In the case of monopolies or historic strengths, there is a lot of skill involved in carefully protecting advantages. Yet often good managers want no part of this, planning processes cannot cater, and ambitious chief executives turn to value destroying acquisitions instead of taking the cash.
With a few notable exceptions, the same happens to sports stars and sports teams. Most sporting careers end in failure – though Ryan Giggs seems to have proven an exception. Teams seem readier to destroy what they have with reckless change and risk than to protect what they have built – just look at Blackburn Rovers. People like to complain about Wenger’s Arsenal, but perhaps we should instead be celebrating what they have achieved.
In politics, it is even a saying that all careers end in failure, and just look at the average age of prime ministers and presidents! When records slowly emerge years after their retirements, it is a common theme that we learn that they had lost it mentally or physically (including addictions) while still at the helm. All to avoid those slippery slopes!
Even countries have the problem, given how difficult it seems to be to return from temporary leadership into solid mid-table performance. Bless us, the Brits still can’t cope with losing the empire, and some even think that leaving the haven of the EU will resurrect greatness rather than threaten oblivion. The USA even starts on the same course.
We might follow the same trend in family relationships, but for sure we do in health, and not just in the way my Mum did. We prefer to pretend we can still do everything, committing damage to our bodies in the process. Many of us even refuse to visit doctors, just to maintain our denial. We claim everything is OK, we refuse to face up to things or to seek help, and in the end we just collapse. This is how addiction starts.
It is the same with debt problems: we keep trying to improve our lifestyle, feeding our ego and our desire to impress. Many of us think we achieve this with material purchases. When we run into trouble, we enter denial. My friends the banks are very happy to help us into a cycle that is hard to reverse.
In summary, many trajectories in life follow an unhealthy cycle. Rather than up-slopes and down-slopes of similar gradient, we go up, then we cling on, then we fall off a cliff. And often we fall so far that we can’t climb up again.
What are the solutions? At an individual level, most of them lie close at hand and within our control. Recognise denial and fight it. Accept and strategic retreat and find new places to grow. Always fight the ego. When we have a problem, face up to it. Keep measuring. Adjust goals. Ask for help. Count our blessings. Recognise that peace outweighs achievement in the end. We can also use this mantra as friends and relations to others.
At a wider level, it is more difficult. Perhaps retreat really is something evolution has de-prioritised as contrary to survival of a species. But avoiding or mismanaging it sure messes up individuals. Perhaps the simplest of the solution set to change at a wide level would be the one about asking for help. It astonishes me how education and training systems often regard asking for help as some form of cheating. When we do ask, we don’t learn to do it well, with open enquiry and a mind to hear uncomfortable answers.
A campaign to ask more and ask better might be our best single answer to the consequences of fear of slippery slopes. Perhaps we can even change the terminology: why not relaxing slopes, or happy harvesting? Slopes don’t have to be slippery.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Pause in Progress?
The Economist had a characteristically well-researched and thought-provoking piece this week about global innovation. It debated whether things had slowed down. After the industrial revolution came all sorts of change that profoundly affected lives. The information revolution has arguably not done the same – yet. I loved a graphic which plotted the profiles of the two changes against each other, which indicated that a major spurt in the quality of our lives maybe just around the corner.
This sort of thing is hard to measure. As usual, the Economist did a great job, but conceded that a big part must be subjective. So I thought I would look at life (in the West) one generation ago and two generations ago, to see if I saw faster progress in the first or second period, while also making some guesses for the next thirty years. Coincidentally (or not?) 1950, 1980 and 2010 were all periods of austerity. In 1950 there was still a hangover from the war, and in 1980 a hangover from the stagflation and breakdown of social contract. 2010 saw us all paying for the finance industry’s folly. I wasn’t alive in 1950, but I can probably extrapolate from early memories and stories from others.
Let us start with life at home. Between 1950 and 1980 the big change was in the basics at home. Families gained many square metres, and acquired central heating and a well-functioning kitchen. This has to be a bigger change than between 1980 and 2010, where the main improvement is in marginal stuff like TV’s and computers. I predict the next thirty years might see accelerated change, with robots consigning much household drudgery to the history books.
For life at work, let us divide office jobs from manual ones. In the office, actually I am surprised at how slow change has been in both periods. The space, the contract, the relationship with the boss, assessment and roles have changed remarkably little. In the latter period though two things stand out. Nowadays people are less wedded to one firm. And communications and IT and made work global. Even thirty years ago, stuff went by mail and teleconferences were unheard of. Office life then was amazingly insular: no longer. In the next thirty years, I predict bigger changes. I expect we will all be contractors rather than employees, and work less rigid patterns.
Manual type work changed more in the first period through automation. But then in the second period it tended to be eliminated or at least moved overseas, so perhaps that is an even bigger change.
Next take health. It is hard to credit, but as recently as 1950, new-borns and their mothers sometimes died, everyone smoked and the atmosphere was full of lead and smog. That had all changed by 1980, and life-expectancy continues to rise as a delayed effect. But now we have all these old people, but haven’t managed to sort out how to pay for them or how to give them fulfilling lives. So I’ll say that progress has slowed. Social changes and personalised medicine have an opportunity to accelerate progress again in the next thirty years.
Travel and communications have changed the most, and here the most recent thirty years have seen most progress. True, compared with 1950, 1980 saw package tours and reliable cars. But since then things have exploded, with a much larger world more easily accessible. The prospect of choosing to live out of your home country was daunting only thirty years ago. Unfortunately, we still have road and airport queues, and daft security restrictions. In the next thirty years driverless cars could be real game-changers. Not quite beam me up Scotty, but not far off.
Social changes have been faster recently. Arguably, 1950 and 1980 were both characterised by class and prejudice, whether gender, age, race, sexual preference or upbringing. Also, mental illness and abuse remained hidden in families. By 2010, much of this has been swept away, a major achievement. That footballers, of all people, could be walking off pitches because of a few racists is a triumph. The (western) world for gays now is a wonderful one compared with in 1980. Even divorcees or so-called illegitimate children used to have a tough time only thirty years ago. Things have gone so well, that perhaps further gains until 2040 here could be minimal.
Education has changed surprisingly little. True, we moved from a classed based system in 1950 to a more universal one in 1980, and a widening of tertiary education by 2010, but how people learn has stayed much the same. I expect a revolution in the next thirty years, with personalised and remote learning taking over. A current advert on US TV shows a sick child dialling in to a class. That is just the beginning, folks, and the teacher’s unions and fat college administrators in the end won’t be able to stop change.
A few more macro topics. Domestic politics has changed depressingly little. Before, people voted based on their class, now it is based on some sound bite. Again, change could be coming. International politics has changed a lot, from a war to a cold war to something of a mess full of contradictions, held back by old-fashioned views of the role of countries. But don’t hold your breath for change. Economists are just as much feeling in the dark now as they were in 1950, but I think some fundamentals may be “solved” in the next thirty years, with a massive benefit possible to all of us. Culture has changed in its accessibility, but no so much in its content or format. Apart from yet more personalisation, change could remain slow.
Finally, let us take the world in its context beyond the planet. In 1950 we had ignorance, in 1980 a few sound-bites about ozone layers and the like. The period until 2010 saw major change in knowledge and awareness, but little in action. We can only hope that the action will follow in time.
So, do I agree that progress has paused or not? The results of this little survey appear quite varied, so I devised a little scoring system, with headings scored between zero and three for each period. According to my scoring, the period between 1950 and 1980 totalled 10, and 1980 to 2010 scored exactly the same. Gains in home and health in the first period balanced gains in social things and travel in the latter period. But 2010 to 2040 scored 13. Maybe I am a wide-eyed idealist, but I really have high hopes in health, work, education and even politics and economics.
There is another factor to consider, which is to look beyond the West. Even if progress has slowed down in so-called developed countries, progress elsewhere between 1980 and 2010 has been startling. I want to shout for joy every time I see figures showing how malnutrition, early death and opportunity have been transformed across the world since 1980. Ansoff might call that market rather than product development, but for me it still counts, and is reason to be very cheerful indeed.
I also believe that the social changes in the West and the general improvements elsewhere bode well for the future. Progress used to be driven by a small elite. Now we can only imagine and marvel at what newly-empowered Chinese or Indians might come up with to change our lives, comfortable that communications technology will help progress spread ever faster.
On balance, the Economist came down against the claim that progress has stalled. I think I agree. If I stay lucky and believe the health statistics, I might even be alive at the next checkpoint in 2040, and perhaps by then society will have addressed some of its contradictions concerning the aged. As I pause from my eighth degree course and re-set my personal travel-pod, I can hope to be able to pause and celebrate those thirty years. And hope is good for progress anyway.
This sort of thing is hard to measure. As usual, the Economist did a great job, but conceded that a big part must be subjective. So I thought I would look at life (in the West) one generation ago and two generations ago, to see if I saw faster progress in the first or second period, while also making some guesses for the next thirty years. Coincidentally (or not?) 1950, 1980 and 2010 were all periods of austerity. In 1950 there was still a hangover from the war, and in 1980 a hangover from the stagflation and breakdown of social contract. 2010 saw us all paying for the finance industry’s folly. I wasn’t alive in 1950, but I can probably extrapolate from early memories and stories from others.
Let us start with life at home. Between 1950 and 1980 the big change was in the basics at home. Families gained many square metres, and acquired central heating and a well-functioning kitchen. This has to be a bigger change than between 1980 and 2010, where the main improvement is in marginal stuff like TV’s and computers. I predict the next thirty years might see accelerated change, with robots consigning much household drudgery to the history books.
For life at work, let us divide office jobs from manual ones. In the office, actually I am surprised at how slow change has been in both periods. The space, the contract, the relationship with the boss, assessment and roles have changed remarkably little. In the latter period though two things stand out. Nowadays people are less wedded to one firm. And communications and IT and made work global. Even thirty years ago, stuff went by mail and teleconferences were unheard of. Office life then was amazingly insular: no longer. In the next thirty years, I predict bigger changes. I expect we will all be contractors rather than employees, and work less rigid patterns.
Manual type work changed more in the first period through automation. But then in the second period it tended to be eliminated or at least moved overseas, so perhaps that is an even bigger change.
Next take health. It is hard to credit, but as recently as 1950, new-borns and their mothers sometimes died, everyone smoked and the atmosphere was full of lead and smog. That had all changed by 1980, and life-expectancy continues to rise as a delayed effect. But now we have all these old people, but haven’t managed to sort out how to pay for them or how to give them fulfilling lives. So I’ll say that progress has slowed. Social changes and personalised medicine have an opportunity to accelerate progress again in the next thirty years.
Travel and communications have changed the most, and here the most recent thirty years have seen most progress. True, compared with 1950, 1980 saw package tours and reliable cars. But since then things have exploded, with a much larger world more easily accessible. The prospect of choosing to live out of your home country was daunting only thirty years ago. Unfortunately, we still have road and airport queues, and daft security restrictions. In the next thirty years driverless cars could be real game-changers. Not quite beam me up Scotty, but not far off.
Social changes have been faster recently. Arguably, 1950 and 1980 were both characterised by class and prejudice, whether gender, age, race, sexual preference or upbringing. Also, mental illness and abuse remained hidden in families. By 2010, much of this has been swept away, a major achievement. That footballers, of all people, could be walking off pitches because of a few racists is a triumph. The (western) world for gays now is a wonderful one compared with in 1980. Even divorcees or so-called illegitimate children used to have a tough time only thirty years ago. Things have gone so well, that perhaps further gains until 2040 here could be minimal.
Education has changed surprisingly little. True, we moved from a classed based system in 1950 to a more universal one in 1980, and a widening of tertiary education by 2010, but how people learn has stayed much the same. I expect a revolution in the next thirty years, with personalised and remote learning taking over. A current advert on US TV shows a sick child dialling in to a class. That is just the beginning, folks, and the teacher’s unions and fat college administrators in the end won’t be able to stop change.
A few more macro topics. Domestic politics has changed depressingly little. Before, people voted based on their class, now it is based on some sound bite. Again, change could be coming. International politics has changed a lot, from a war to a cold war to something of a mess full of contradictions, held back by old-fashioned views of the role of countries. But don’t hold your breath for change. Economists are just as much feeling in the dark now as they were in 1950, but I think some fundamentals may be “solved” in the next thirty years, with a massive benefit possible to all of us. Culture has changed in its accessibility, but no so much in its content or format. Apart from yet more personalisation, change could remain slow.
Finally, let us take the world in its context beyond the planet. In 1950 we had ignorance, in 1980 a few sound-bites about ozone layers and the like. The period until 2010 saw major change in knowledge and awareness, but little in action. We can only hope that the action will follow in time.
So, do I agree that progress has paused or not? The results of this little survey appear quite varied, so I devised a little scoring system, with headings scored between zero and three for each period. According to my scoring, the period between 1950 and 1980 totalled 10, and 1980 to 2010 scored exactly the same. Gains in home and health in the first period balanced gains in social things and travel in the latter period. But 2010 to 2040 scored 13. Maybe I am a wide-eyed idealist, but I really have high hopes in health, work, education and even politics and economics.
There is another factor to consider, which is to look beyond the West. Even if progress has slowed down in so-called developed countries, progress elsewhere between 1980 and 2010 has been startling. I want to shout for joy every time I see figures showing how malnutrition, early death and opportunity have been transformed across the world since 1980. Ansoff might call that market rather than product development, but for me it still counts, and is reason to be very cheerful indeed.
I also believe that the social changes in the West and the general improvements elsewhere bode well for the future. Progress used to be driven by a small elite. Now we can only imagine and marvel at what newly-empowered Chinese or Indians might come up with to change our lives, comfortable that communications technology will help progress spread ever faster.
On balance, the Economist came down against the claim that progress has stalled. I think I agree. If I stay lucky and believe the health statistics, I might even be alive at the next checkpoint in 2040, and perhaps by then society will have addressed some of its contradictions concerning the aged. As I pause from my eighth degree course and re-set my personal travel-pod, I can hope to be able to pause and celebrate those thirty years. And hope is good for progress anyway.
Friday, January 4, 2013
Going Live
One of the advantages in living in a big city is the opportunity to see lots of events live. Now we have settled in, we have started to make the most of this. In December, after my orchestra and choir concert in Bucharest, we have attended four contrasting events in New York.
First came my first trip to the Metropolitan Opera. A previous choir gave us a very generous gift token to the Met as a leaving gift, so we can enjoy this place many times. As with most venues in New York, the first decision is how much to pay. Ticket prices at the Met vary from 25 dollars to something over 1000 dollars. Another thing to be aware of is the quaint American way of adding surcharges, whether tax, booking fee or something else. We paid 80 dollars for two Met tickets and found ourselves about half a mile from the stage.
But everything else about the experience was great. In some ways, the distance helped, as it created a clear panorama view of the whole stage and its effects. The singers are amazing, how they can project so far over so long is a wonder. The Met has a beautiful location in the Lincoln centre. The audience is quiet and knowledgeable. And they have a neat facility whereby you can have personal English (or other language) subtitles for the text. It might have been a mistake choosing Mozart for our first try, since three hours of Mozart lacks a bit of variety for my taste. But a very good experience overall.
Then we took the family to see the Nets play basketball at the Barclays centre in Brooklyn. The pricing there was very similar, except that the best seats were even more expensive than the opera. This time we paid sixty five dollars per ticket to sit the same half a mile away. Once again this was less of a handicap than I expected, as the action is still clear and distance lends some perspective too. What basketball has done is really to build up the experience around the match, with good entertainment during (frequent) time outs and intervals, and great use of replay screens.
A sports crowd will always be more rowdy than an opera crowd, and here I was caught between emotions, maybe because we were so far away. The crowd shouted plenty of abuse but did not seem to be engaged in the action all the time, and our view was constantly blocked by people moving about or by beer sellers. It was nothing compared with previous experiences on the terraces at West Ham United, but somehow in the indoor theatre environment I found it annoying.
I think we were unlucky in choosing a game that was a bit of a blowout, where the result was more or less decided very early on. One of the best things about American sports is the way such a high proportion of games stay competitive until very near the end, but not this one. Perhaps engagement would have been more positive in a close game. Still, overall, another fun experience to be repeated sooner rather than later.
A third theatre trip was to a modern ballet in Manhattan. This one was fifty something per ticket, and we were surprised to find another huge theatre and another half mile view. This one was a bit of a last minute decision on a cold, rainy day, but was still good entertainment. Perhaps for such a packed theatre and expensive tickets we could have expected live music. But the choreography was imaginative and the performance excellent.
Perhaps one surprise was that the half mile view detracted more from the ballet than the opera or the basketball. In all the disciplines, one of the advantages of being close is to get a greater feel for the intense physicality of the action, with players sweating and running short of breath. Half a mile away there is none of that, and perhaps it was the ballet that lost the most as a result.
Then, sandwiched between these three performances, we visited something for free, namely a Church service. We have become used to visiting the Episcopal Cathedral on 110th Street and a Church of the same denomination on 5th avenue named St Thomas. So far, we have not been disappointed, rather awestruck by the wonderful performances of heavenly music in perfect settings. The nine lessons and carols service at St Thomas’ on the Sunday before Christmas could rival anything performed in English cathedrals or colleges, and with a much larger audience. One wonderful feature is that the congregation actually sings, and with gusto. That is certainly uncommon on Catholic Churches.
For the Church service, we arrived the same thirty minutes early as we did for the other events, yet here we had perfect seats. The programme was better. And of course it was free, apart from the gifts we chose to make for the collection. In terms of value for money there is no contest. Whatever you believe or don’t believe, if you can appreciate sacred music at all, I have to recommend the Church service over any of the others.
It would be interesting to understand the finances of the four performances. The Church survives on collections, donations, and very modest performance fees. I would expect the ballet wages to be next on the scale, which means that I suspect someone somewhere was making a lot of money from the production we saw, since other staging costs apart from rent will have been minimal. The opera will pay higher fees to performers and the staging is more expensive, but then income from the show will have been considerable and donations will have helped as well, so there is profit in there too. Finally, the basketball, with the largest auditorium and the added benefit of TV rights, but where a lot of the income ends up with the players. No wonder coaches are fired after just a few poor results: a half empty Barclays stadium would spell disaster for the team owner.
In the age of technology, I wonder how these experiences will change in the next ten years, how many would be available at home, and what would be gained or lost as a result. Major sports are almost all available on TV already, and the Met opera streams to cinemas regularly. It won’t be long before I can pay a subscription for home viewing, probably with excellent sound quality. Even St Thomas’ streams its choral services on the web.
So why battle with the crowds and the subway and the entrance fees at all?
Sport on large fields already struggles compared with TV. Some, such as golf, are incomparably better on TV. We love NFL, but the thought of freezing in a vast outdoor arena any time after 1st October holds no appeal at all. There is the raw testosterone of being with fellow fans, but the larger the event the more diluted that is, especially now with all seating stadia. That leaves the “I was there” factor. I still treasure my 1975 FA Cup final programme. But the memory of the Nets against the Bobcats in a one sided regular season match will probably fade quickly and impress others less. I sense sports will have to go the way of basketball, and work on the event around the sport itself, with close ups and replays and interviews and everything the TV can offer.
Live music and theatre has a bigger advantage, which is that somehow recordings never match the emotional impact of live performances. Even poor amateur choirs know this, and just as well given some of my past performances! We went to see Les Miserables at the movies this week, and, magnificent as it was, it lacked something for not having live bodies singing on stage. By the way, if you like Les Miserables, you should try opera. There is little difference between the genres of musical and opera except for the snobbery and target audiences.
Perhaps technology will actually serve to grow audiences, with tricks like the personal subtitles. Pop music has after all gone full circle, back to the days when live performances were seen as most important, not least by the accountants. If that is true, then I guess that is all to the good for all of us.
And it will be worth living in a big city teeming with culture for a few more years yet.
First came my first trip to the Metropolitan Opera. A previous choir gave us a very generous gift token to the Met as a leaving gift, so we can enjoy this place many times. As with most venues in New York, the first decision is how much to pay. Ticket prices at the Met vary from 25 dollars to something over 1000 dollars. Another thing to be aware of is the quaint American way of adding surcharges, whether tax, booking fee or something else. We paid 80 dollars for two Met tickets and found ourselves about half a mile from the stage.
But everything else about the experience was great. In some ways, the distance helped, as it created a clear panorama view of the whole stage and its effects. The singers are amazing, how they can project so far over so long is a wonder. The Met has a beautiful location in the Lincoln centre. The audience is quiet and knowledgeable. And they have a neat facility whereby you can have personal English (or other language) subtitles for the text. It might have been a mistake choosing Mozart for our first try, since three hours of Mozart lacks a bit of variety for my taste. But a very good experience overall.
Then we took the family to see the Nets play basketball at the Barclays centre in Brooklyn. The pricing there was very similar, except that the best seats were even more expensive than the opera. This time we paid sixty five dollars per ticket to sit the same half a mile away. Once again this was less of a handicap than I expected, as the action is still clear and distance lends some perspective too. What basketball has done is really to build up the experience around the match, with good entertainment during (frequent) time outs and intervals, and great use of replay screens.
A sports crowd will always be more rowdy than an opera crowd, and here I was caught between emotions, maybe because we were so far away. The crowd shouted plenty of abuse but did not seem to be engaged in the action all the time, and our view was constantly blocked by people moving about or by beer sellers. It was nothing compared with previous experiences on the terraces at West Ham United, but somehow in the indoor theatre environment I found it annoying.
I think we were unlucky in choosing a game that was a bit of a blowout, where the result was more or less decided very early on. One of the best things about American sports is the way such a high proportion of games stay competitive until very near the end, but not this one. Perhaps engagement would have been more positive in a close game. Still, overall, another fun experience to be repeated sooner rather than later.
A third theatre trip was to a modern ballet in Manhattan. This one was fifty something per ticket, and we were surprised to find another huge theatre and another half mile view. This one was a bit of a last minute decision on a cold, rainy day, but was still good entertainment. Perhaps for such a packed theatre and expensive tickets we could have expected live music. But the choreography was imaginative and the performance excellent.
Perhaps one surprise was that the half mile view detracted more from the ballet than the opera or the basketball. In all the disciplines, one of the advantages of being close is to get a greater feel for the intense physicality of the action, with players sweating and running short of breath. Half a mile away there is none of that, and perhaps it was the ballet that lost the most as a result.
Then, sandwiched between these three performances, we visited something for free, namely a Church service. We have become used to visiting the Episcopal Cathedral on 110th Street and a Church of the same denomination on 5th avenue named St Thomas. So far, we have not been disappointed, rather awestruck by the wonderful performances of heavenly music in perfect settings. The nine lessons and carols service at St Thomas’ on the Sunday before Christmas could rival anything performed in English cathedrals or colleges, and with a much larger audience. One wonderful feature is that the congregation actually sings, and with gusto. That is certainly uncommon on Catholic Churches.
For the Church service, we arrived the same thirty minutes early as we did for the other events, yet here we had perfect seats. The programme was better. And of course it was free, apart from the gifts we chose to make for the collection. In terms of value for money there is no contest. Whatever you believe or don’t believe, if you can appreciate sacred music at all, I have to recommend the Church service over any of the others.
It would be interesting to understand the finances of the four performances. The Church survives on collections, donations, and very modest performance fees. I would expect the ballet wages to be next on the scale, which means that I suspect someone somewhere was making a lot of money from the production we saw, since other staging costs apart from rent will have been minimal. The opera will pay higher fees to performers and the staging is more expensive, but then income from the show will have been considerable and donations will have helped as well, so there is profit in there too. Finally, the basketball, with the largest auditorium and the added benefit of TV rights, but where a lot of the income ends up with the players. No wonder coaches are fired after just a few poor results: a half empty Barclays stadium would spell disaster for the team owner.
In the age of technology, I wonder how these experiences will change in the next ten years, how many would be available at home, and what would be gained or lost as a result. Major sports are almost all available on TV already, and the Met opera streams to cinemas regularly. It won’t be long before I can pay a subscription for home viewing, probably with excellent sound quality. Even St Thomas’ streams its choral services on the web.
So why battle with the crowds and the subway and the entrance fees at all?
Sport on large fields already struggles compared with TV. Some, such as golf, are incomparably better on TV. We love NFL, but the thought of freezing in a vast outdoor arena any time after 1st October holds no appeal at all. There is the raw testosterone of being with fellow fans, but the larger the event the more diluted that is, especially now with all seating stadia. That leaves the “I was there” factor. I still treasure my 1975 FA Cup final programme. But the memory of the Nets against the Bobcats in a one sided regular season match will probably fade quickly and impress others less. I sense sports will have to go the way of basketball, and work on the event around the sport itself, with close ups and replays and interviews and everything the TV can offer.
Live music and theatre has a bigger advantage, which is that somehow recordings never match the emotional impact of live performances. Even poor amateur choirs know this, and just as well given some of my past performances! We went to see Les Miserables at the movies this week, and, magnificent as it was, it lacked something for not having live bodies singing on stage. By the way, if you like Les Miserables, you should try opera. There is little difference between the genres of musical and opera except for the snobbery and target audiences.
Perhaps technology will actually serve to grow audiences, with tricks like the personal subtitles. Pop music has after all gone full circle, back to the days when live performances were seen as most important, not least by the accountants. If that is true, then I guess that is all to the good for all of us.
And it will be worth living in a big city teeming with culture for a few more years yet.
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