The Chronic Case of the Saddest Backstory One Can Imagine

Welcome to my theatre! Please, do have a seat. The plush red carpet on the floor is meant to make you quite forget you were ever standing here. Come, there are many, many tables, lit softly by chandeliers. Every seat has ample view of the spectacles about to mount my beautiful stage.

What is showing tonight? Funny you should ask, but only the bleakest, saddest, most distressing backstories you could possibly imagine! Tonight, you will enter the imagination of our resident artist (who will go on forever unnamed, we never give credit you know) and experience just how morbid the world can be!

A program? My dear, no! We do not want to spoil the show by giving it away! But after your appetites have been sufficiently grated by a mournful overture, you will witness a series of vignettes designed to make you ponder just how bad everybody else's lives might actually be. Oh! Hush now! The lights have dimmed, and the music is beginning. May I join you since you have no clue what is happening? Of course you would not mind, silly of me to ask in the first place.

The Maestro is the only head you can see poking out of the pit. Yes, it is truly, aptly named the pit. He commands his orchestra with frequent fits of rage and believes the ensemble belongs beneath the stage much like Atlas beneath the whole world. Tragic, truly. Anywho.

Ah, see how the curtains part swiftly and silently and cluster on the edges of your vision, framing everything in soft, pillowy red? Like depression!

This opening scene is entitled, "The Outback." No, it is not in Australia, it is in one of those imitation restaurants, see all the tables and various patrons strewn about haphazardly? Now pay close attention, see who has just entered? An elderly gentleman, a newspaper in hand, his jacket zipped a third of the way. Observe his face, consider his countenance. Why is he alone? Hmmm? Yes, perhaps he is waiting for someone, I suppose, but if he were, would he be ordering a blooming onion already? Goodness it would be cold no doubt, no matter how soon his comrade may arrive.

Now listen, the music gives us a clue. Hear the violin sliding down from screechingly high, indiscernible resonances? Watch! The old man is slowly bending his body down toward the table in tandem with the music (should we even call it that?). What is your interpretation of this? I will go first, since I have seen this performance countless times: this elderly gentleman is weighed down by his years and ought, by society's standards, to be surrounded by countless friends and relatives, never should he find himself alone, particularly at a restaurant designed for big parties with an appetizer intended to feed at least four people. No, this gentleman was not expecting anyone, he will not eat the blooming onion, he will sit there and stare at it and mourn all the possible people he could have shared it with were it not for the deeply rooted shadows that consume our everyday lives!

Oh, of course, we only get that small peak into his life, my apologies, the vignette is over and on we go to the next. This next one is particularly potent, I must say, prepare yourself to be amazed. And, if I may be so bold, I think my interpretation brings to it a true definition of all the missing bits and bobbles, if you understand my meaning. Ah, they have reset the stage, take a look!

This middle scene is called "Liminal Gate" and takes place in...you guessed it, the waiting area before boarding a flight. Of course, many people are bustling around finding their places, but can you guess who we are supposed to be observing and surmising about? Yes! Right before us, the family of four. What can you tell about them, beyond the basic appearances of a mother audaciously dressed in too much white and strange makeup, a father with a ball-cap and an upturned collar of a polo shirt most definitely intended for golf, and two boys wearing pants already too short for them with headphones and screens tuning out the world? Yes, they are travelling together, what could we possible suppose about them?

Might I suggest we compare their time waiting to what we might have done had we been those children? Ah, yes, you see, now it all becomes very sad. The mother's bossy remarks to the husband, the husband's passive aggressive sighs to the children, were our parents ever like that? The boys too engrossed in their phones to figure out on their own where the bathrooms might be and requiring escort by their parents though they are certainly old enough to manage by themselves, were we ever so dependent? No indeed. Now imagine (this is the real kicker, the moment you have been waiting for) that you were the third child. Imagine you were removed from your home and must accept these parents, these brothers, these screens in your face. Imagine losing all the home-feeling nostalgia of your childhood to be replaced by a family addicted to social status and quick thrills.

Ah! These are the thrills, are they not? Curtains close and you cannot help but feel hopelessly bad for everyone on that stage, and with almost no context at all! Nobody told you their lives were so dire, Nobody made it into a drama, but there it is! Why have scripts when you can just people watch?

Oh this next one is the most devastating of all, it is called "Cold Coffee." This vignette is interesting because it presents us with only two characters. Much of the storytelling weighs heavily on the lighting department, which is why they receive their own applause at the end. I mean, come on, look at that opulent sunrise! Here we have a young couple, do not they seem knew to one another? I feel that they are, and the light supports it. A sunrise, a new beginning, but look at her face. Though they are to be drinking coffee, eating donuts, reading books, sitting on the back porch of a home the day after Christmas, bundled up against the cool, she keeps looking up at him and her face is just so sad! You cannot see it? Well I tell you it is there. Why? No answer? I will tell you: the sunrise and the sunset are all but indistinguishable. Ends and beginnings bear the same colors, except one precedes absolute darkness.

Now for the only moment of silence from the orchestra, watch as the Maestro daintily cuts off the music. Hush, listen...

"We are the youngest we will ever be together," she says.

My friends, nothing compares, and the orchestra deafens us, the light blinds us, the curtain closes on the couple who will one day die in each other's arms, oh the mortality! oh the finality! oh the triumph!

Well, that is all there is to it, unless you stay for part two which is not very interesting. The artist simply changes the music to make it lighter and happier so that you realize as the audience that not everything has to have a bleak backstory after all, but you know...I only stayed for that once in my whole life and it made me morosely dizzy with optimism that I have been doggedly cynical ever since for good measure.

May I walk you out?