One Friday evening at BAM this past summer, roughly twelve minutes into Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s four-and-a-half-hour-long avant-garde Gesamtkunstwerk, “Einstein on the Beach,” a man sitting a row ahead of me stole a glance at his watch. It seemed an eloquent gesture. Not as a verdict on the show—which has been rightly hailed and heralded across the world—but as a vignette of our contemporary busyness. Nowadays, encounters of the spirit must be scheduled long in advance…

Giles Harvey’s notes on being busy: http://nyr.kr/UcBGta

(Source: newyorker.com)