Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and stalks of lavender. I'm a more worldly fellow as a result of seeing these things and
being able to describe them, though if I thought my high school French would improve
after ten days in France, I was wrong.
Okay, this is pessimistic hyperbole, but even though I'm probably better informed
than I was in 1993, I do feel a good deal less receptive and, as a result, relatively speak-
ing, less intelligent. But I digress. (Sorry, I do that.) The point is that as late middle
age encroaches on middle age, the impulse to absorb new things or to view old things
in a new way grows dormant and needs a jump start. Doesn't it? Just as you have to
work harder at the gym to stay in the same shape, you have to think harder to stay just
as smart. My last cross-country bicycle trip changed my perspective on things—I felt
smarter when I got back. Of course, that's mostly a sensation, a belief born of enlighten-
ing experience, but here's a tangible example of what I mean.
I spent more than a decade, from 1992 to 2003, writing about the theater, but at the
beginning of that time I was pretty much a novice, and when I took of across the coun-
try for the first time I'd been at it less than a year. During the trip I rode into Yellowstone
Park, my first ever visit there, so of course I wanted to see Old Faithful, the famous gey-
ser that erupts with such predictable regularity that the park posts a schedule. When I
arrived, it was about thirty minutes from an eruption, so I stood around with a gather-
ing crowd, curious tourists like me who had heard so much about a celebrated attraction
that they couldn't be nearby and not take it in—the natural world's equivalent of
Cats
.
Anyway, the thing went off, bubbling up slowly and eventually spewing an impressive
column of water and steam into the air, the wind sending a sheen of spray across the flat
rocks, and then gradually, over the course of a minute or so, dwindling to a gurgle before
it disappeared again underground.
Almost on cue, everyone watching began to applaud, and they applauded for a while,
twenty seconds or so. At the time I thought this was merely funny, a harmless illustra-
tion of human folly: Who are they applauding for? Do they expect a curtain call? But
later, when I was back in New York and going to the theater again every night, I realized
I had a new idea about the nature of applause and audiences, that applause is at least as
much a gesture of self-expression as it is of generosity or approval. People applaud for
themselves, in other words, to register their presence. Over the last several years, many
theater writers (and other theatergoers) have acknowledged that the standing ovation is
now such a common occurrence that it no longer confers extraordinary reward on a per-
formance; it merely signifies the end of the show. The geyser effect, I call it.
