The most perfect example was when I saw The Wall in Washington, D.C. I was there on a business trip in the early 80’s, and I was alone. In my free time I took in some of the usual sights but one day I felt like walking without a purpose. I was right there in the heart of all the monuments and government buildings: grand, white buildings rising assertively above the traffic. They speak of victory and order.
It felt good to get away from the chaotic traffic and into a park. I didn’t know where I was but figured I could hail a cab to get back to familiar territory. Then I noticed something odd. Among all the gleaming things rising up, there was something going down, something dark. The grass was tilting down towards something that ran like a scar, black and angry, a slash through the park. I didn’t recognize at first what it was. Was the park torn apart? An excavation that collapsed? There were perhaps fifteen people looking at it. I joined them. It wasn’t until I saw the names that I suddenly recognized what I was looking at. In my defense I had been on business trips almost non-stop for the preceding three years, and had not paid much attention to the Vietnam War Memorial.
The way The Wall is situated its high gloss acts like an almost perfect mirror. The
whole time you’re looking at the names, tracing them with your fingers as everyone does, you’re seeing yourself and everyone else around you, and life is going on, but the faces are sorrowful. As I turned to leave I noticed a couple of shabby men standing back from the crowd. My first thought was that they were homeless men, and they may have been, but I soon realized they were Vietnam vets who were stuck there like living ghosts.I blundered into something a lot happier on a different business trip. I was in Memphis by myself over a weekend and ran out of things to do. I went to the zoo. They have a pretty good zoo. On the way back to the hotel I kept noticing little road signs shaped like guitars and thought, I’ll follow those strange little signs and see where they go. They led to Graceland.
There was a muddy parking lot across the street so I pulled over to get a look at it. I was never a big Elvis fan but I recognized the place. A tour bus pulled into the parking lot and a bunch of mostly middle-aged women got out and went over to what I then saw was a ticket booth. I thought, why not, and got in line with them and purchased a ticket. A guide came and put us in groups of about a dozen. My group was the second group to go in.
We were told we had to keep our voices down because Elvis’ Aunt Somebody still lived
there, upstairs. So our little group walked through and looked at that house. It is one oddly decorated place. Elvis mostly lived in the basement so nobody could look in the windows at him. There’s a room with multiple televisions so he could watch everything at once. The furnishings look like a mashup between a San Francisco Gold Rush bordello, the Starship Enterprise, and the Disneyland jungle ride. I know a few incredulous “wows” escaped my lips. I had never seen pictures of it or anything. Everyone else in my group was dead silent the whole time.When I got back to the hotel I put on the local news and saw a story about that day being the grand public opening of Graceland. There were interviews with people who had been in a lottery to get their tickets, and people who couldn’t get a reservation for several more months and were heartbroken. Apparently the people on the bus had come from Arkansas, Nebraska … they were presidents of Elvis fan clubs. So I felt like a real jerk for just waltzing right in there but there was absolutely no way I could have known. There were no signs, nothing. I guess in Memphis it was such a big deal they didn’t need signs. And I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t known what to expect from the decor. Everyone was seeing it for the first time.
I sold my ticket stub for the opening day of Graceland on Ebay last year.
I’ve seen a lot of movies the completely-unprepared way and enjoyed them more because of it. You know the beginning of Night of the Living Dead where the brother is teasing his sister about being nervous in a cemetery and draws her attention to a man walking towards them? “He’s coming to get you, Barbara!” And he is! I turned the TV on one time and saw that scene not knowing what the name of the movie was, so I was completely unprepared for what came next. Scared the life out of me.
I was on a first date in high school with a guy who took me to see a Western movie. I had no interest in seeing a Western but kept my mouth shut since I didn’t know him that well. Meanwhile I was laughing inside. From the moment it started little things made me laugh more and more. The music was completely inappropriate for a Western. I was dying. By the time we saw the jazz band sitting in the desert I realized it was meant to be a comedy. That was how I saw Blazing Saddles. If I had known going in it was meant to be funny my attitude would have been completely different: we paid money for this, now make me laugh.
