My city of ruins - Shawn's Sense with Shawn Loughlin

Having attended a number of concerts at Toronto’s fabled Massey Hall over the years - even seeing one semi-recently after the years-long renovation process - there is something that sometimes happens when you’re seeing someone who is certain in their vocal ability: they unplug. A Jeff Tweedy or a Glen Hansard will turn off all of their band’s instruments and play a simple acoustic guitar, sans amplification, and sing one of their songs as just another person in a room with a few thousands of their most devoted fans.

 

And, as I implied, there is a sense to this kind of experiment that everyone is in it together. A musician can unplug and sing a song until he or she is blue in the face (literally), but, without the audience shutting down entirely and keeping as quiet as it can, the experiment is doomed to fail because no one can hear the delicate, intimate sounds. If even one person shouts, hoots, hollers or claps during the performance, it ruins it. And you’ll never guess what - someone always does.

 

That’s right - this week we’ll be tackling, with hard-hitting facts and figures, the person who ruins it for everyone. The person who is always referenced when someone opines that that is why the world cannot have nice things.

 

The person who yells at a quiet concert. The person who rips down a trail made for walking and cycling on an ATV. The person who files a frivolous lawsuit, hoping for a settlement, instead of taking responsibility for their wrongdoing. The person who always has to start a fight at a party. The person whose phone rings during a play. The person who steals art from a small gallery. This deficient sub-genre of people is known, collectively, as the people who ruin it for the rest of us. And the business of ruining it for the rest of us is a-boomin’.

 

In this week’s issue of The Citizen, Scott Stephenson has a report on a case of both theft and vandalism at the Blyth Festival Art Gallery that comes just weeks before founders of the gallery, Ron and Bev Walker, will be feted and memorialized in the gallery with a celebration of life after their recent deaths. 

 

Who would do such a thing? This is what you might be asking - and you’d be right to do so. While the person’s identity has yet to be officially uncovered, I feel confident as both the secretary of the gallery committee and an award-winning journalist of some repute in this area as identifying the person as being someone who sucks and, furthermore, someone who ruins it for the rest of us. 

 

Hearing this news was disheartening to say the least. Blyth has spent a half-century turning itself into a safe haven for artists. Whether it’s someone who puts their work up on the walls of the Blyth Festival Art Gallery or on the stage of Memorial Hall, there is a vulnerability to the process. These people put themselves out there in a way that others do not. To be spat in the face in such a way after putting yourself out there has to hurt and the person who goes out of their way to do something like that has engaged in scumbaggery of the highest order.

 

The urge to inject yourself into the lives and pursuits of others is growing and unwelcome. If you don’t like plays, don’t go see them. If you don’t like art, don’t bother with a gallery. If you go to a concert, listen to the performer. Don’t ruin it for the rest of the well-behaving world and for the artists themselves.

 

Whatever the reason, whatever the mood that struck, whatever the circumstances, monkeying with someone’s hard work is never the right thing to do. I volunteered with the gallery to help preserve the Walkers’ legacy - I can’t think of anything more at odds with it.