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The Dance at the Marienplatz
For the last 107 years, if one stands in Munich in the Marienplatz beneath the New Town Hall at the late-morning hour of eleven o’clock, they will be treated to a performance by clockwork figurines in two parts. The first is a marriage banquet with jesters and jousting and general merriment. The second bit is the Coopers Dance, said to be a performance by men in the streets to instill a sense of peace in harsh times, specifically a time when the city was beset by plague in 1517. I have stood in Marienplatz and seen the clockwork figurines play out their dance in two parts, and the display was bizarre. Everyone stands and watches the figures move, transfixed despite the fact that we could all watch the very same display on our phone or computer. To be clear, the glockenspiel is nothing amazing by today’s standards, but like all rituals it must be observed, it must be watched because it has been watched before by so many others. I remember finding it rather quaint, while still realizing that an individual with the novel eyes of the year 1909 might find it to be quite breathtaking. I imagine that those in years long past may have found the moment far more electric than I. This is the nature of spectacle and time.
Now we move quickly along to the year 2015 on the day of October 1st. It is morning in the pacific region and early afternoon in the East. The first hints of unrest arrive on social media with tweets about a lockdown in Umpqua community College in Roseburg Oregon. Everyone watching sees the words “active shooter” and takes in that slight breath of acknowledgement. It is a term we have been taught to dread and love at the same time. Through narrowed eyes we scan the news-feeds looking for numbers and cultural categorizations. How many did this one kill? Is he still active? What was his race or his creed? All these questions pass through our minds because, much like the glockenspiel figurines, we recognize the dance. We have done it before. We have been given the steps and the tune. It was no surprise when the first bits of information surfaced regarding the shooter Chris Mercer, that he was a loner, had infrequent human contact and that he did most of his socializing on the internet, but I will return to him in a moment.
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