I’ve not been writing anything
lately. Life has got hold of me and right now there is a lot going on in my
life. I’ve got someone sharing my house, which is a new experience for me. I’m
doing the advanced photoshop course. I’m going to be doing a Self Defence for
Women course starting this Friday. And I started my own miniature group – a
group of miniaturists who get together every fortnight to make little things.
This group has taken up much more of my time than I expected. I thought other
people would help me organise the projects. What’s happened is that only one
other person is game to give it a go, so between us, we have the brunt of
making something, getting all the bits and pieces needed for the project,
learning how to make it ourselves and then teaching the others. As a result,
I’ve not been writing as much as usual. I appreciate everyone who has been
visiting and leaving their comments. I’ve not forgotten y’all.
Anyway, I was looking through my unpublished blog writings. I’ve
got heaps of them and came across this one. I did an article on it at the time,
about the first impression “How not to give a talk”. This was the second one I
wrote and never published. So here it is !!
Tuesday, 27 February 2007
I went to a talk last night. I
came out with a couple of impressions. One was how not to give a talk, and the
other one was about pretension.
In the past, I would have
attended this talk, not understood anything, and come out feeling as if there
was something wrong with me. Everyone else seemed to find him interesting and
thoughtful. Me, I had no idea what he was talking about. Everyone was nodding
wisely. Me, I was wondering what was so wise about what he was saying. Maybe
they were just being polite. I didn’t talk to many people afterwards to find
out what they thought. The person I went with, agreed with me. This speaker had
said lots of words, but there was no structure to what he was saying. So in
this instance, I had the feedback from my friend.
I can remember being in
situations like this in the past and thinking there was something wrong with
me. I didn’t understand a word of what people were saying. I would come out of
the play, talk, movie, whatever, and feel less than. Stupid. I talked to people who say “I NEVER watch
commercial television. I only watch the ABC and SBS”, and I would feel less
than for enjoying my commercial television, and my weekly crime show. I
remember someone, somewhere saying “I’ve never read a novel in my life” as I
waded my way through as many as I could, loving every minute of the imagination
and the escapism. People would say: “Novels are escapism”, “Commercial movies
are just escapist trash”, and I loved them. I would go to movies that were
supposed to be”high brow” and feel less than and stupid because I didn’t
understand a word of what was going on.
Over the years I have realised
that often when people go to these events, these “high brow” shows, they often
don’t really understand what is going on either. But…. They would never say so
for fear of feeling less than or stupid.
Now, I come out feeling
different. This is not my “thing”. I like events that say something clearly. I
don’t work well with inuendo and I believe that these sorts of situations are
often ego boosters for people who need to feel important in some way. They can
then look down on people like me, who don’t understand, and feel as if they are
more intelligent and therefore in some way better than me. They aren’t. It’s
okay for me to enjoy my novels, my escapism and my commercial television. I use
tv and reading for relaxation. If I want to learn something, I will read about
it, or research it. My likes as far as movies, radio, television, books, talks
etc is really fine. I am a very intelligent woman. I know that.
The other night, I’m afraid I
found myself in a group of what I consider pretentious people. People who go to
plays that say nothing, but are very “meaningful”. Individually they are all
probably very nice people. But as a group, I find them quite pretentious.
Madeleine
Saturday, 29 April 2006
