Discovering Solitude

There’s no default magic in an empty movie theater. From some angles — the most obvious ones, really — it’s a kind of pitiful thing to imagine. What if we put on a show and no one came to see it? But context matters. So, without going into all the tedious details of how I found myself there, let me give you the context for the last time I was in an empty movie theater.

It was a few weeks before Thanksgiving, the days ramping up to peak shopping season. It had taken me so long to park at The Grove that I missed my Genius Bar appointment and was asked to  come back 45 minutes later. The Grove (for the uninitiated) is an outdoor shopping center right in the middle of Los Angeles, touched with just enough of that Disney magic (or Vegas magic, or whatever kind of commercialist fantasy charm you want to call it) to be a magnet for tourists and locals alike. It is a cavalcade of humanity, with a Frank Sinatra holiday soundtrack blasting too-soon above the din of the crowd.

I didn’t really need a break from the crowd — at least, not consciously. What I needed was a parking validation. I already sensed that the technical issue I’d come to address was unresolvable, but I’d raced all the way over here and hunted down that damn parking spot. I wanted to see this thing though, to prove myself right or wrong. I just didn’t want to pay $12 for the privilege. So, I used my movie theater subscription pass to buy a ticket to the next screening of Spencer — a film I’d seen the week before. I entered the theater building, already much quieter on this weekday afternoon than the mall outside. I stamped my parking stub at the validation machine. Then I hesitated. If I left again right away, would someone ask me what I was doing? Would the jig be up?

It see now how ridiculous this line of reasoning was — really, who cares? But such is the true story of how I found myself in one particular empty movie theater, well before Spencer’s scheduled showtime.

As soon as the doors swung shut behind me, I realized that this should have been the plan all along. To find a huge expanse of quiet in the middle of the crowded mall in the middle of the city. It was peaceful, yes. But it was more than that. It felt…impossible?

I’d had the sensation before. Some 5 or 6 years ago, on a trip back to Chicago, I followed some advertisements at Fourth Presbyterian Church directing all comers to walk an indoor labyrinth in their attached office building. Fourth Pres (for the uninitiated) is smack dab on Michigan Avenue, across the street from the John Hancock building. One huge (indoor) shopping center flanks it to the north . Yet another (also indoors, because: Chicago) sits directly to the Southeast. But when I found the room where the labyrinth was printed neatly on the floor, I found it empty. I walked the entire, circuitous-by-design path of the thing, and no one joined me there. No one even peeked in. The closer I got to the labyrinth’s center, the more this solitude felt like a miracle. How could it be possible? In the middle of the middle of the bustling city, a whole cavernous room of quiet?

It feels a bit strange to be lauding the miracle of solitude at a time when I’m often sick or bored to tears of being stuck by myself. But there’s a fine line between solitude and isolation. And I think these experiences — of finding an unexpected pocket, the eye in a storm of human noise — define the difference. Isolation feels forced upon us against our will; solitude feels like a discovery. Like a gift.

This weekend, I took a hike with my nearly-6-year-old nephew and his mom. We were in the Angeles National Forest, in Altadena. As we approached the trailhead, we could see for miles southward — houses, laboratories, skyscrapers, even as far as the Pacific Ocean. “How many cities are in that Valley?” my nephew asked.

“A bunch,” his mom said.

“How much is a bunch?”

I guessed ten. He guessed 100.

We hiked gradually down the mountain for a mile or so, skipping back and forth over a shallow but briskly flowing stream. Eventually, we stopped and sat on some boulders near the water. I like sharing my deepest, most philosophical thoughts with almost-six-year olds, so I announced a thought much like what I’ve presented to you here. “It seems impossible that we could be right here, so close to this huge, busy city. And yet, somehow, we’ve found this spot where no one else is. I just think that’s amazing.”

Kids still say the darnedest things. This kid summed up what I was struggling to put into words.

“Because you can hear God?” he offered.

And of course, I told him that he’d understood exactly what I’d meant.