Saturday, December 26th, 2020

An alert tells me that the dance center is livestreaming. I open a window to watch. So do a couple of dozen other people. The screen shows an unmoving image of one of the walkways. The image is vertical. It’s probably coming from someone’s phone. Eventually the image moves. The person with the camera wanders through the walkway, turns around, and sets it down. We watch the walkway from the other side. Someone else goes through and past the camera. People in the chat stream ask what is going on. The website says that nothing is scheduled. The camera goes back through the walkway and across the plaza. Several large equipment cases sit evenly spaced across the plaza in a straight line. Phones set up on two of them also show live images. People sit on the low stone walls. Some talk. Some drink coffee. A dog runs through. People offscreen discuss something in French. I don’t speak enough French to understand. After almost an hour, someone picks up the camera and shuts the stream down. A new lockdown starts tomorrow. That is as close as I’ll get to spending quiet time outside the dance center. It’s been a pleasant hour. Later, someone official tells the chatstream that it was part of a worldwide demonstration by shut-down cultural centers. Oh. I go back to the page and pop it open to full screen. While I do other things, I let it play again.