EANWHILE, balconies of expensive apartments not far from neighbors who would be in awe of such immoderation . . . have been touted by real estate brochures as spaces for their viewers to envy and for their owners to flaunt, advertently or not, as these spaces may intrinsically or readily or logically reflect an occupant’s high status in life, but high status their bearer may or may not choose to practice the flaunting of, or may choose to only intermittently flaunt this balconic value.
  The luxury of being perched on one of these open areas would be deemed similar to, although far more than, being on an outdoor table of a coffeehouse offering expensive coffee in an area where passersby workers would mostly be in awe of the high price of the house's brew and, needless to say, would naturally be envious of all persons having a sip there. Now, this expensive-café quality to a balcony could compare to the opera box in some theaters, that platform often reserved for dignitaries (towards whom the occupants in the gallery of that theater would every now and then be raising their gaze).
  But, again, understand that not all wealthy people want to flaunt their identities as wealthy elements of society, especially to an impoverished set of viewers. To this sort of individuals wary of publicly exposing their faces for long on their balconies, those open areas during the isolation may however have turned themselves into a sort of coming-out platform for a sudden pandemic neighborliness. We are presently reminded of that Manet painting titled The Balcony, where the subjects of the painting seem to have found it necessary to dress up before exposing themselves to the surrounding public.
  But, again, during the pandemic quarantine, the essence of balconies as symbols of status was almost erased, as we said above. Not only because such balconies would rarely be facing those of a squatted-on dilapidated building. Nor because most of these balconies' viewers were on similarly-valued balconies. It's because, as it would happen in any sort of lockdown instructing all inhabitants to shelter in place, any association of a balcony with its owner's money here quickly gave way to the focus on that neighborhood's being together in avoiding a common enemy, notwithstanding that that enemy could be in any one of them or on a surface or two somewhere among them.
  In short, the gatherings in these suspended parks include people who have collectively become no more than refugees hiding from an invisible, roaming adversary. Fortunately, though, their common fight with this enemy does not require them to be quiet. It only requires them to stay apart, even while they're together, allowed and able to be noisy in a balcony-to-balcony scene.  Why not, indeed, own this new sole freedom?
  This does provide a sort of contrast to the movie theater that had been capturing our eyes and ears by darkening the hall and then asking everyone to be silent before the house's featured treat starts on its unpredictable journey. This year's pandemic-lockdown balcony concerts captured their audience's eyes and ears and hearts simply through a symbolic darkening of the earth with a featured threat carrying the narrative of the unpredictability of illness' and death's whims.
  As much as it has been the performers, it was Disease, Death too, toward which the occupants of our gallery were raising their gaze and turning their ears. Otherwise they wouldn't be so forgiving to the neighborhood's lousiest singers, or be enduring novel constrictions that don’t allow them to ask for either a lowly signature or some sort of direct artist-and-patron connection while enjoying the privilege of being performed to by (newly-discovered) awesome talents. [d]

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