Does living in a capital city kill our sense of wonder?

Last Friday I headed over to the Southbank Centre to watch what had been billed as a innovative performance taking in dance, theatre and parkour no less across the rooftops of the surrounding buildings.

I stood there for about half an hour mouth agape. Not at the performance but at the impact said performance was having upon the other three hundred or so gathered spectators. The company was called 'Stan Won't Dance', but 'Stan Shouldn't Dance' might perhaps have been more apt.

I watched 20 or so dancers (in the loosest sense of the word) run about for a bit, jump up and down for a bit then wave their arms about in what can only be described as first year drama school interpretive dance....you know the type- jerky intersecting arm movements that look as though someone has tried to teach Madonna's Vogue to an enthusiastic middle aged vicar. In between this pitiful expressionism the audience's attention was briefly distracted by couple of random abseilers who descended a wall (for no other reason than they could), some people doing handstands in the windows of a nearby building and a few dickheads on stilts dressed like second rate baddies from Lord of the Rings. The only parkour I saw involved one man dropping off a wall at least 6 foot off the ground. So yeah, I thought it was a dreadful fractured performance...something I've seen done inumerable times before only much much better.

What I found incredible was the seeming awe of my fellow audience members. Sporadic clapping, the odd "isn't that beautiful" uttered from behind me. I found myself getting quite annoyed in fact, I wanted to scream out "are you watching what I'm watching??" was this some emperor's new clothes conspiracy I had unwittingly stumbled into? I found it incredible that anyone could enjoy what was visibly art sputum. This got me thinking. Does living in a capital city where we're spoiled for cultural choice ultimately deaden one's sense of wonder? Is the curse of seeing great stuff on a regular basis that mediocrity is elevated to the level of offense? I can only deduce that for the majority of the audience this was genuinely experienced as NEW and SPECTACULAR performance. Unfortunately for me it was not.

As I contemplate a new chapter in my life where I will be living and working in a small provincial town in middle America I find myself speculating on where I'll find my 'wonder' or more worryingly still what I'll do without it?

It is of course also entirely possible that I'm just a cynical media tosser who's never satisfied. Perhaps also in light of the fact it was free I shouldn't whine quite so much either?

I also passed this tank yesterday on the way to the Post Office. It was overgrown and abandoned at the end of a street. The saddest thing of all is that my reaction upon seeing it was "hmm that graffiti is pretty average, a bit post-Banksy in style". I wish my reaction had been "fucking hell a tank...WOAHH!"