Social Dancing

Cultivating an audience is a daunting proposition. Peter Handke wrote Offending the Audience. The title is a little like playing hard to get. Sometimes a certain hauteur can create interest, but more often it ends up leaving the performer, who would otherwise be seeking the limelight, gasping for breath like the elusive figure Buster Keaton plays in Samuel Beckett’s single cinematic work, Film. But if you're interested in making friends and influencing people and you intend to go about such a project head on, you may not find the odds turned that much more in your favor by displays of honesty and good intention. The one key thing about appealing to an audience lies in the fact that the seducer has to be genuinely interested those whose attention he or she is seeking. Instinctually no one wants to give another person the right time of day. An actor is successful when he shares his talent with those who are watching. In fact it's not only sharing but actually employing the lives of the viewers in order to create his or her role. Those who attract large followings on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram are gifted with a preternatural anticipatory empathy. Social media is in fact like the old social dancing and man is a social animal.

Read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn