Don't you love these people?

Yes, the candles on the table are lit. They are from New Jersey, but they were at Tanglewood in the Berkshires last Sunday, to see Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble, and having a helluva time. They had also been at Tanglewood the night before, and had visited the Norman Rockwell Museum and The Clark Art Institute during the weekend.

They did what you should be doing, which is this: take a little time, turn off your computer and go look at some pictures. Or see a live performance. Or as the pithy and wry Gail Collins advises here, take a little vacation.

Get out of your head and go find anything: Music, art, theater. Just go do it. It will clear your brain, make you feel good and give you a new outlook.

That's what happened to me last week when I was in New York for a conference and decided at the last minute to see Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch in A Little Night Music at the Walter Kerr Theater. What an experience. I finally understood why people love the theater. The setting was so  intimate that it was like watching a show in your living room.

At the end, when the cast came out for curtain calls, you felt like you were part of something really special.

The experience begins at TKTS in Times Square, where you get half-price tickets on the day of the show. (Mine was 50 percent off.) The windows open for evening shows  at 3, but get there by 2:15.) It's a long line, but it moves fast, and while you wait, you're meeting people from all over the world. They're coming to see Mama Mia with their kids, or Billy Elliott, or anything. They just want to see a show. In New York.

Then the show. Sondheim, Stritch, Peters. Lovely.

Then, Playbill in hand, you just have to hang at the stage door with all the fans. As the extras and bit part players come out and chat while they autograph everybody's Playbills, you feel so connected with the performance and the actors.

Then comes Bernadette. Who, at age 62,  has the skin of an Amish toddler. Duly noted in Playbill that she never goes out in the sun. I'm officially now a fan.