At the beginning of the second “act”—calling it that feels a little inaccurate; then again, how else could one refer to our forced disembark/reembark as anything other than an “intermission” in the most literal sense—one of our audience members brought up having attended a talk given by legendary composer Steven Sondheim and having been captivated by Sondheim’s charisma. He described Sondheim as almost radiating genius, of being calm and confident and magnetic.
This moved our conversation to a discussion of the most charismatic/famous people various of us had seen or met or interacted with. Before we moved onto that though, the same audience member made another, altogether different observation about Sondheim. Sondheim is widely regarded, especially among died-in-the-wool musical afficianadoes, as one of the greatest composers ever, if not the greatest; this audience member is himself a composer, which makes Sondheim someone he idolizes. But our audience member noted that Sondheim didn’t seem to be very happy, and in fact seemed to be suffering under the burdensome notion that he could never again match the feats of genius he’d accomplished earlier in his life. Evidently Sondheim seemed to be a rather bitter person as a result.
Our audience member’s conclusion, then, was that while Sondheim was a hero of his, he didn’t seem like someone he wanted to be or be like—that he might be a hero, but he wasn’t a role model.

That’s What Friends Are For
Since posting about the Wait—You Actually Haven’t Seen That? phenomenon—about the peer pressure to absorb an unmanageable amount of culture—I’ve gotten a number of responses from people who know me. These range from the subtly nuanced—the thoughtful comments on the post itself—to the extremely simple—an email with the subject line “YOU HAVEN’T SEEN GONE WITH THE WIND?!“.
Now I haven’t, I felt I should respond, and frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.
When I first got that particular email—it was one of several on the subject—I was a little blown away. Had my friend (who, by the way, just wanted to drop a line, and did so rather fondly) not grasped the eventual point of the post, which was to question that we aren’t a bit kinder with one another about each others’ inevitable gaps in cultural consumption? Had my writing been unclear? It seems to me that there is simply more cultural output to be absorbed, and more high-quality cultural output to be absorbed, than there are conscious minutes in the day. And since we’ve all been on the uncomfortable end of the Wait—You Actually Haven’t Seen That? phenomenon it seemed to me there was some Golden Rule potential here. How could someone as thoughtful as this particular friend read the post and still lead with a subject line that was such a paradigmatic example of such needless shaming?
I got my answer the next day.
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