While observing in Madison Square Park, one of the first things I noticed was a type of stage setup in the north end of the park. I’ve sat in the steps of the area a few times in the past, and it always made me imagine having a performance in the park. This was the first thing that came to my mind when I read the article by Mumford, about the city a theater of social action. While I have not seen any performances at the park, there are always people sitting and eating and talking all over the park, even on the steps and fountain. This is a social action, and the conversations that you overhear from the groups congregating can definitely be used as a dramatic piece. I overheard two people, a man in a suit, and a woman in a very nice dress, eating salads and talking about a project they were working on at their job. It didn’t seem very important, just casual “To meet the November deadline we should be meeting next week sometime…” that to anyone else would not seem very important, and yet they spoke with a sense of urgency that I thought would be a good conflict for a performance.
At the park, I saw people of all ages; kids in strollers with their mothers, teenagers, college students on breaks, and adults taking a step away from the office. I also saw a lot of dogs mainly because there are areas of the park where dogs can play. I found it interesting mainly because there was not really any observable mixture between these types of groups. Dog walkers were with their dogs, college students were with their friends, moms were walking with kids walking with other moms walking with their own kids. It made me think about the organization that Mumford talked about, and how the city fosters social and economic groups. While there are many different groups of people, we are able to coexist in one park, and not provoke conflict, even if there is not necessarily any overlap or diffusion.
One of the most existential thoughts that often cross my mind is the idea that every person in the park that I saw and walked passed, had an entire life and world around them that may be very different than my own. I have my own thoughts, and so do all of these people. Everyone there has loved ones and has feelings that I may never know or experience, and yet we are all in the same spot at the same moment, out of all the possible places, and we are sharing very similar experiences and yet could have very different experiences as well, but I will never know that. For this reason, I connect that to Mumford’s reading because there is so much like experience in one park, and even more so in the entire city. Each and every one of us are unique and can spark social change, and the conglomeration of all of us together are able to create the significant collective drama that I believe Mumford is speaking of.
What you said about the realization you came to that every person had their own life that was just as large and deeply complicated as your own made me think of a word that defines that: sonder. Sonder is a word that is defined as the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. I think about sonder a lot, about how people I see at the park might spark a quick thought in my brain but then I might never think about them again and they will just go on continuing their own lives. It’s freaky and is a thought that I encounter often living in New York City.