London film festival

I am usually on the peripheries of entertaining activities; hanging around outside or wandering off. I find it impossibly boring to commit myself to more than half an hour of sustained concentration in a controlled environment. I will get to a gig as the headlining act begins so that I won’t want to leave before; otherwise I require a bar which I can escape to; better still is a gig in a bar so that the stage doesn't require my full attention. Poetry readings make me cringe, but if the point is to dance or to talk, I'm happy. The cinema involves a full couple of hours in a small chair in the dark, looking in one direction. Not that I dislike film; I would just rather watch shorts at home. The theatre is desperately more trapping once I want to leave at an inconvenient moment, but they comfortingly give me the opporuntiy to run away halfway through. Undecided, fickle, and impatient. Yes, I know.

On the last night of the London Film Festival, I decided that these oddities of mine needed to be ignored, because I was sure that I'd get something out of this art once I managed to force myself beyond the heavy doors and into a pew. Finding myself on the Embankment outside the National with a plastic cup of wine in hand, I was very proud of my initiative. It was one of those late summer evenings which defies autumn; despite being October, there was a casual positivity in the air as the sun set. An energy brimmed as the London lights reflected brighter on the blackening Thames, and glittering taxis trundled past on the other side. I sat under the bridge watching people in blazers finger a record and book stall as I eavesdropped on the conversations around me, and let the last moments of tickets to a film pass me by. Why would I be trapped in a theatre when I could be outside, breathing in sweet autumn air watching passers-by. My wine made me smiling and chatty, and the last thing I would do is lock myself away from all that hum, in a dark pixilated room. But I dutifully feigned disappointment to myself, so that I felt cultured. Atmosphere and people-watching is far more pleasing to me than performance. I had a sneaking suspicion the potential audiences were also here partly for the quiet din, and I was part of the festival even if I had never had any intention of watching a film. One has to pretend direction in order to reach such aimless freedom and be gifted with such viewing material.