gawking/reading/theory

I have been called a people-watcher.

One main difference between people-watchers and stalkers is that the people-watchers have shorter attention spans. They don't get fixated on one person; they watch all of them. (Another difference, for the record, is that people-watchers usually are emotionally and psychologically sound.) They follow the conversations of many people instead of one, and can't be bothered to actually get up from their park benches and follow someone to find out more about them.

In school I often found it hard to eat with someone in the dining hall, since all I wanted to do was observe those around me and try to reconstruct their entire life stories. I think iit's some kind of obsessive/compulsive disorder. I suppose it's a bit rude to eat with someone and spend the whole meal trying to figure out whether the couple next to us are seriously dating.

No ring on her finger, but she stares into his eyes while he speaks, a big cheesy smile on her face. So probably dating. Wait...now they've moved into the cow-eyed stare while still talking--definitely dating. But that was a really stupid joke he told, and she laughed as if she were genuinely entertained by his lame puns, so they must still be in the early stages. When she's sure they're serious then maybe she'll let on that his jokes are inane. She, like any of us, can put up with stupid jokes if it keeps her from solitude. Anything to stave off the loneliness. Now, as for the...

And then my thoughts get interrupted by the conversation I've been carrying on with the person across from me. I turn my body sideways a little, away from the couple, so I can concentrate on the acquaintance who so kindly agreed to accompany me for dinner. Directly behind him is a shabbily-dressed young male, sitting along, reading.

Can see author--James Joyce--but not title. He shifts in his seat--title is Ul...--must be Ulysses. Is book a coverup, I wonder--he wants to make it look as if he could have found friends to eat with but instead wanted to eat alone? Is he pulling the age-old "I'm-so-smart-I-spend-meals-alone-contemplating-classic-works-that-are-difficult-for-the-average-Joe-but-are-brain-candy-for-literary-types-like-me" trick? Hmmm...looks like he's not really reading the book. Just staring blankly at the page and hasn't turned the page for a long while. Yep, it's a coverup. Huh? Oh, uh, yeah, I got a C. Yeah, she is a difficult teacher.

And that's how the coversations would go, nosy observation of complete strangers punctuated by occasional discourse with those friends who put up with my shenanigans.

I'm not entirely what I look for in my obsessive people-watching. Perhaps it's just a thirst for knowledge, any kind of knowledge. (I am, after all, obsessive/compulsive about the acquisition of random bits of knowledge, having spent many, many hours of my life leafing the encyclopedia and dictionary.) Maybe there's more to it, though.

I think people-watching accomplishes the same end as literature or film or poetry. It reminds us we're not alone, it uncovers the quiet desperation most live their lives in, it bares the soul of humanity.

Art is, basically, people-watching. At least that's one of the main facets of art.

To quote Richard Altick: "Literature preserves for us...the spiritual chiaroscuro of wasteland and earthly paradise, the bewildering series of shocks and discoveries, to which modern society has been subjected in the last two centuries.... [It] then is an eloquent artistic document, infintely varied, of mankind's journey: the autobiography of the race's soul."

I'm hammering out my thoughts on the purpose and the value of the arts. This is sort of the beginning of the formal statement of my theory. [Being profoundly lazy, I doubt I'll ever actually think up an actual formal statement of my theory.] I think that phrase, "The autobiography of the race's soul," pretty much sums up what I think re: the purpose and the value.

Thoughts?