Robin Abrahams's Blog, page 12

How do you make it special, not scary?

Arts marketers and party hosts face a similar dilemma: How do you make a special occasion feel truly special, without intimidating people?

Everyone wants moments, artifacts, that are special, above and apart from the normal humdrum of life. All week we drink water from a glass; on Shabbat we drink wine from a goblet. It’s human nature, it’s what parties and art and religion are for. All cultures have special events.

And then, for some reason, in the US in the 21st century, we have that basic human need but we hate it. We worry. What if I don’t know how to eat the special food? What if I don’t know the steps to the special dance? What if I don’t have enough money for the special clothes? What if I don’t even know what the special clothes should be? Performance anxiety around special events is natural–all the world’s a stage, but during a wedding or fancy dinner party the spotlights get turned up all the way. That natural performance anxiety is intensified, here and now, by all the usual culprits: increasing diversity, which means a breakdown of commonly held social customs; increasing inequality and economic doldrums that make people insecure about their social status; the unflattering contrast between one’s performance in meatspace and the carefully filtered and curated image one can project on social media; and probably ever so many more reasons.

We need special events, we love special events, but we hate them because they make us feel afraid of failure, and failure in 21st century America is not an option.

Do you see the position this puts hosts, and arts marketers into?

Parties are special events. Art is a special event. How do you get guests and clients to join you on that elevated plane?

I was walking around Newbury Street with a friend one day and wanted to stop in one of my favorite art galleries. My friend–whose scientific and literary accomplishments are so impressive she can admit to virtually any other ignorance with no shame–said that she had never been in an art gallery, and was therefore vaguely intimidated to go into this one. I told her it was just like a museum except you get treated like a potential customer instead of a potential vandal–and that if you see something you truly love you could actually buy it–which convinced her to join me.

This wasn’t some underserved urban youth, you understand, this is a woman with a PhD who grew up on the Upper West Side. The fact that she’d never been in an art gallery isn’t a problem. The fact that she felt put off by the idea of entering one really, really is.

Some gallery owners have found a fascinating way around the special-is-scary dilemma–art trucks:

[M]obile owners say they are trying to avoid the confines — and politics — of the gallery system; to help people think about art in different ways; or to reach more communities, especially those with young and old people who tend not to visit art districts. That was what motivated Berge Zobian of Providence, R.I., to create his truck in 2012, equipped with 44 linear feet of exhibition space, a stereo system, security cameras, projection monitors and even a bar for making coffee. On one occasion he took 40 paintings to a church, one priced at $35,000.

Look at this picture, also from the NYT article.

You want to go in there. Of course you do. How could you not? It looks like a doorway to Narnia. It looks like a gypsy caravan. It looks magical.

Magic.

Is that it? How do we make things magical? How do we bust people out of their self-consciousness about etiquette and appearance and get them to focus on the magic of the moment?

I like the art trucks, I like them very much. I like the gothic-themed party I threw a few winters ago, when people were asked to wear “Formal dress … from any era, in any state of repair.” One way of keeping things special-but-not-scary would be introducing this kind of ironic distance. Yes, we’re dressing up, but we’re playing dress-up. Everyone knows those aren’t your real clothes. Art trucks are inherently ironic–it’s art! In a truck!

But irony can’t be the entire answer. It’s reactive–the art trucks wouldn’t be ironic if we didn’t have knowledge and expectations about art galleries to upend. A razor-slashed prom gown and ratted hair (I looked amazing at my Midwinter Macabre!) needs a vision of formal dress to contrast itself to. And irony always holds something back, which ultimately is antithetical to creating a truly special occasion. You can’t always play dress-up. Sometimes you need to actually dress up.

Information helps. I subscribe to Central Square Theater, and before shows, you get an email reminder with information about parking and restaurants. The theater lobby and restrooms are papered with signs telling the audience the show’s running time per act and how long the intermission is. This weekend I attended a wedding at which a large board with the day’s schedule of events painted on it was propped up where everyone could see. These things are helpful, and beyond that, they set a tone. In addition to the facts the convey, such signs say, “There is relevant information about this event that you may not have known when you walked in. That is perfectly understandable. Feel free to ask if you need more help.”

Irony and information–two ways you can make an event special without being scary. But those aren’t full solutions to the dilemma, just the tools I happen to have in my kit. What’s in yours?

Costumes! Props! Action!

A friend triumphantly posted the below on Facebook:

“Found! At Bob Slate’s in Harvard Square, a relic of the old ways, specially ordered because so many folks asked them to bring it back.”

Her post was followed by this comment from a former Globe reporter: “There is something special about a reporter’s pad. When I started out in newspapers, I was very shy and apprehensive about talking to strangers. The pad was like a piece of armor that helped me overcome that. I always give my students reporter’s pads at the beginning of the year. You should see how they perk up and stand straighter and feel ‘professional.’”

Their conversation reminded me of the report that came out last year showing that people are more precise and attentive at tasks if they are wearing a doctor’s coat. The researchers called the effect “enclothed cognition,” the “systematic influence that clothes have on the wearer’s psychological processes.” You wear a lab coat, you feel on point and focused—as long as you think it’s a lab coat. If you think it’s a painter’s coat, the same effect doesn’t apply.

Costumes are important, and so are props—I wonder how the experimental subjects would have fared if they had been given stethoscopes to go along with their lab coats? How many of you have a talismanic tool-of-the-trade that makes you feel authoritative? I’ve been wearing reading glasses for a couple of years now, after a lifetime in contact lenses, and I find that even now, putting on glasses to read makes me feel committed and professorial.

What are your props? Have any of you had to renounce one of modern life’s best props—cigarettes? What was it like not having your smokes to pose and play with anymore?

Blogging returns!

I’m back!

And so is the blog. For a year. We’ll see after that.

The Boston Globe and the Boston.com website got divorced this spring, and the Globe got custody of me, which means that Miss Conduct doesn’t have a blog on Boston.com anymore. (My column still runs in the newspaper, both print and online.)

The thing about blogging is that it’s such an open-ended endeavor. Are you posting too much? Not enough? Being interestingly varied? Yet staying on topic? What’s the end goal of any blog, besides a large number of readers to be disappointed when the blogger quits? Which almost everyone who blogs does, sooner or later, unless they’re getting paid.

And when people quit blogging, they tend to abandon their blogs for long stretches of time first, or start re-running old material, or generally behaving not like people who are bringing it home to a triumphant conclusion, but people desperately trying to gun an engine intent on sputtering to its death. I’ve done it myself. I think if we’re ending our blogs like that, maybe we somehow didn’t start them right.

So here’s my new idea: I’m going to blog in this space until next June, when I’ll decide whether or not to keep going. I’d like to get picked up as a blogger by another publication by then, or find some other way of supporting the blog. If not, I’ll re-evaluate, but having an end date in mind will, I think, help keep me focused and energetic.

The blog’s new tagline will be, “The Art & Science of Social Behavior,” and that’s what it will be about: the intersection of the arts, the social sciences, and everyday life. I hope you’ll enjoy it, and read and comment often. Coming up this week:

- Do the right clothes and props make you better at your job?

- “Mad Men” explains everything about my other job

- Why your parents buy your kids too many presents

Also, today’s “Miss Conduct” column is online here—a threefer, this week—and you can catch up on past ones here, now without a paywall to worry about (here’s information on subscribing to the Globe). I hid a little Easter egg in the column for Monty Python fans.

Welcome back! We’re going to have fun.

Closed for Renovations

Hello! This website is currently shut down for renovations, although you may feel free to browse its cobwebbed shelves and peek into its nooks and crannies. Sometime, probably summer 2013, I will be reviving it as a general website and archive of my work. In the meantime, check out my blog at Boston.com.

Because I cannot get this off my mind

I am not one to succumb to the delusion that I am a hero.

I have no tolerance for the kind of self-aggrandizing fantasies that many people engage in when they hear of a shocking public accident or act of violence. Please. You wouldn't take down the shooter. Even with the purest will, even with the bravest heart, the average person is far too paralyzed by horror to take effective action in the moment. I mean, good God, people write me every day because they didn't know how to respond appropriately to a racist joke or a financially intrusive question. It's a good bet if you're standing there gobsmacked because your sister-in-law used "jew" as a verb, you won't suddenly morph into Liz Salander and break the fingers of a subway groper.

Most people are not heroes. I know I'm not. I am often paralyzed in the moment. And I would not risk my own safety for the sake of a person I didn't know.

But I have been searching every corner of my soul, and being as harsh on myself as I can be, and I still cannot conceive that I could witness a man raping a child and not act. Immediately. Whatever I did would be graceless and loud and possibly dangerous to myself and others. But I know I would do something, that every part of me would instantly turn to the imperative stop this now.

And I cannot imagine how anyone could do otherwise.

Open thread on Penn State, readers. I can't get my mind around this. I feel as though I'm looking into the face of evil.

Talk to me.

(cross-posted at "Miss Conduct")

Fringe theater

Didn't I just say that I never wear patterns of things — martini glasses, poodles, flamingos? Well, take a look at this scarf. It's a pattern of lipsticks, necklaces, and similar girly things. Something about the color and irregularity of the pattern, however, make it less obviously representational than it really is. It's a gorgeous scarf of a thick, heavy silk, and I always get compliments on it, and I can't for the life of me remember where I got it.

I wore this to the theater with a black leather skirt and a sage sweater.

Skirt: eBay

Sweater: Eileen Fisher, eBay

Pearls: bought while traveling

Scarf: ???

Rhinestone hoop earrings: eBay

Spooky style

If you aren't the costume type, it's easy to dress "up" for Halloween without dressing "as." One way to do this is to start with a black base and add accessories in appropriately Halloween-y colors. On Friday I did a segment for NECN on tips for appropriate Halloween style, wearing a little black dress, orange tights, and an orange ruffle scarf:

Poison-green tights would also work beautifully with a black dress or skirt, particularly if you have pointy black shoes to go with them. (A similar look can work for men: a dark suit with green or orange socks and tie. Modified, the style can work year-round: check out this sharp dresser caught on camera by PeaceBang.)

Color-blocking on a black base also works. NECN morning host Bridget Blythe's gold jacket is festively autumnal. Orange isn't your only option: fall colors, like Bridget's, work, as do "evil" colors like dark or vivid green, red, or purple. Mrs. Obama wore glowing fall colors to dress up-but-not-as for White House trick-or-treaters:

Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP Images

Another option is to add a touch of punk or goth to your usual look. I scored a grey cashmere hoodie at Found in Davis Square last week. It's got a rhinestone skull on the back. I plan to wear it tonight with a long-sleeved lace t-shirt, leather skirt, fishnets and short boots.

I do love gothic and spooky jewelry, from antique cameos to steampunk inventions to more directly evocative pieces. This necklace is called "Scar" and was designed by my friend Yleana Martinez:

Happy Halloween! Be spookyfabulous!

Happy Halloween from me and my little friend

“It’s a Sweeney Todd Thanksgiving, Charlie Brown!”

Signs from my neighborhood:

Let’s take a closer look at that …

… brought to you by our friendly Community Savings.

"It's a Sweeney Todd Thanksgiving, Charlie Brown!"

Signs from my neighborhood:

Let's take a closer look at that …

… brought to you by our friendly Community Savings.