The night of Saturday, December 10th was, with temperatures hovering around 25 degrees Fahrenheit, the first truly snowy night in Chicago this winter. Usually when this happens, I bundle myself up in my fuzziest sweaters and blankets and eat soup, which is why it was odd that instead I found myself waiting in line out in the cold for three hours.
I stood waiting because the Neo-Futurists’ famous show, Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind, was ending its 28-year-long run, and I needed to see it one last time before it closed. For those who do not know, Too Much Light is a show that attempts to fit 30 micro-plays in 60 minutes, all written by and in the voices of the people performing it. Every week, a certain number of the micro-plays are taken out of rotation and new ones are written. The result: an entirely new performance every month or so.
I love this show deeply, as a maker and consumer of art. It is funny, sad, relatable, and bizarre. The first skit could be a silly song about why one side of the audience is arbitrarily better than the other, the second could be a reaction by a gay cast member to the shooting at Pulse in Orlando, and the other 28 could be anything between. There is something for everyone. There is warmth and openness and a true dialogue between performer and audience. It’s beautiful. And it’s worth waiting in line for three hours in the snow to see it one last time. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who thought so, for the line stretched down the street and around the corner.
It inspired the question: what’s worth waiting for?
Off the top of my head I have waited in stupidly long lines for:
- Too Much Light, as stated before (3 hours)
- Hot Doug’s, my favorite place for specialty sausages, in the last week it was open (~5-6 hours, but the weather was nice)
- Harry Potter book releases (too many, who knows)
- A talk featuring Jessica Williams (formerly of The Daily Show) (~1.5 hours)
- Talks and panels with my favorite writers and performers at conventions (too many, who knows)
There is a common trend: these are all things, events, or people that I and other people love so much that we are determined to partake of them no matter how much time we waste standing around. In fact, it’s almost sort of fun. You’re surrounded by other people who are as passionate and excited as you are. You make new friends, even if only until the line starts moving, because everyone has a common interest. It’s okay to geek out -- everyone else is, too. Collective effervescence, if you will.
I think that’s why waiting in such a long line is manageable. The line becomes its own little community of individuals who love something and don’t care who knows it. Other people may shake their heads and say it’s not worth it, but I think the wait makes it worth it. The denizens of the line have invested their time in waiting for something that means a lot to them, something which imbues the waiting with meaning. I love Too Much Light so much that I waited three hours in the snow for it.
In Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, Rory spends a day trying to interview people who wait in lines for an article in GQ. She is not very successful and mostly characterizes these people as weirdos and fanatics. Maybe we are weirdos and fanatics, but we are also people who care deeply enough about something to go out after it, even if it takes all day.
