Run this town

One would not think so, but I don't like confrontation. I don't like fighting because people always seem to fight about silly things that in the end are meaningless. But the end of the year is nearing, everyone is busy and I've been feeling as though I have been spreading myself too thin. I think everyone is just slightly exhausted and waiting for December to come. New year, new start and what what. 

But, well, this past week, I've just been itching for someone to start a fight. Mister car guard? No, I assume he'd have a knife and no way in hell can I outrun him. I mean, my grandmother runs at a greater pace than I do, and she's had a hip replacement. So on Saturday I somehow managed to create a scene of pissed-off-ness within minutes of arriving at my friend's birthday. But the night was not ruined entirely and life moves on and all that. No fight. My knuckle rings stayed in my bag.  

But then, ahhh Monday rolled around. Monday was group presentation day. At 17.30. After a long day, you know, no one wants to stay longer than necessary. Everyone is slightly nervous and just wants to get this done. As luck would have it, this chick with constant verbal diarrhoea was in Group 1. Yay. Her butterfly-fluttering-arms looked like a strange epileptic dance. Not the cool choreographed Thom Yorke version in Lotus Flower, no no. The irritating, I-want-to-punch-you-in-the-face-to-make-it-stop-version. 

Her speech was slowed down to each word being drawn out, as though some invisible force had to go search for each sound before it can be pronounced. My eye started twitching. But all of this is was not yet really a problem. Not saying anything relevant to the topic, rambling on about how "the world looks to Japan for all the new trends, it is a fact" and essentially not answering any question pissed me off. And she'd been pissing everyone off all semester with the meaningless, irrelevant waffling that spews out of her. Also, they were four people in the group, not just her little stickfigure. Look, I am also guilty of detesting the group assignment. Mostly I'd just like to do it all on my own and must admit to imposing my ideas. But in the end it is a compromise, and everyone can contribute positively to a project. 

Not this enormous praying mantis though. Wasting our time. No no no. Something had to be done. Something had to be said. I wanted to go home. Everyone did. She would be my victim. In the middle of her ramblings my verbal fight rings came out, and I rudely interrupted her to say her arguments were not relevant to the topic, and that there were three other members in her team that had not spoken. She stopped speaking and folded her arms across her chest. Maybe she would consume her mate later on out of anger. 

But it did not matter. I had won the verbal throwdown. Hells yes. It was a knockout. We could go and present ours. And then, finally, we could go home.

Je m'en fou

You are reading. Not speaking, not presenting, just repeating words I don't understand and pronouncing names I have never heard of.

Before, there was another you, tracing words on paper with your index finger, like a child learning to read, although your beard is salt 'n pepper and your hair getting there. Dark hair, dark jeans, dark long-sleeved T-shirt and dark-rimmed glasses, everything is dark. You talk about the artist's book and heteroglossia and dialogism and Un coup de dès jamais n'abolira le hasard and synaesthesia and again, I don't understand what you want to say. Not even the French makes sense.

A third you follows, old and preachy, constantly scratching something behind your ear. An inability to go back a slide in Power Point makes me wonder who made the show. It is humorous and embarrassing, this inability to present what you should have prepared. Saying things like "Oi lurve dis gui", "dese old fuddyduddies" and "Aur fryend Nietzsche/Schiller/Schopehauer/Kant" (and, faux-pas, Hitler) whilst fumbling with the controls and the slides and the music makes you a figure of ridicule and not respect. I'd write 'weak' in red on your work with a permanent marker.

What is the point of conferences if all anyone does is out-quote another and aim to prove that they know more than the speaker. Networking and making new contacts is high on my hatred list because it is done not out of a genuine interest in meeting people, but out of an interest in personal profit. I watched my father network and skipping anyone who was of no gain to him. I watched the other diplomats do the same: "Oh, you are from (insert 3rd world country)? Excuse me, I have something to discuss with the American/French/Chinese ambassador". And today I watched the conference attendees to it, too. All this pretentious "it's who you know not what you know" stands diametrically opposed to a liberal, supportive, respectful exchange of information.    

Today was a spectacle of mutual ego-stroking, self-promotion and over-analysing art, not of Visual Dialogues: South Africa in conversation.