The conference went well… the presentation was basically semi-successful; I realized that I’d gone about it the wrong way round (must be inductive rather than deductive – there are few ways to annoy people more effectively than generalizing about things), but there were still some good moments, and I think that my instincts about the topic are on the whole good. Spurious got irritated with something that he (mis)understood in the presentation, and took out after me – I responded with equal irritation, convinced that he was about 10% right, about 50% unfair/unhelpful, and about 40% just plain wrong. Later discussion settled us with each other, and hopefully he’ll help me fix some aspects of the paper that need fixing.
More importantly, and more enjoyably: the ‘Stimmung’, or personal connection and intellectual discussion, was very successful indeed. People were relaxed, interested, and good at talking to each other, and about each other’s work. This despite the overwhelming heat. Always a good thing….
One disappointed moment, as I stole a siesta on the second day: the sense that this is a good process for an intellectual, and a good process for intellectual work – but that I won’t, nevertheless, be getting much more work done in my life. And that’s not, let face it, a matter of ill health and life difficulties – though I frequently, implicitly or explicitly, invoke those, or allow them to be invoked. It’s just a matter of patterns established at an early stage of my life: the laziness of lying around, the scattered pleasures of undirected reading, the fluidity of having ideas without developing or researching them…. oh well. Old story, with several dramatic episodes (me at the age of 17, me at the age of 21, me intermittently in the 1980s, then in the 1990s... you get the idea).
•••
Other fragments of the conference:
On the second night, there was a slightly exasperating presentation by a Respected Psychologist – last night he and I, and David, had talked/argued over wine, but in his presentation he pushed ideas that seemed to dismiss or process into flatness most of the possibilities brought up in the conference. (Mood manipulation, or putting people in a good mood – would you say that is the same as producing well-being? Ooh, I can’t go with that.) Ah well… thank goodness I didn't end up in the sciences; so many people and ideas must seem so opaque, so incomprehensibly wrongheaded, from a relatively technological/experimental point of view… at least I feel I have some idea of how the world works, at its best.
David: “As the cauliflower of discourse sinks into the gazpacho of time…”
Spent some time talking to a cute recent graduate… dark hair, dark eyes, very serious, Irish accent – hmm. As I get older, younger men become more interesting… but no, I’m no predator; I suppose that I just still hope that, perhaps someday, someone will be themselves interested in me. Aware, of course, that the probability of such things decreases over time....
Annoyingly, according to I–, it appears that I sway back and forth when giving presentations (rather autistic of me)…. hmm. Yet another thing to fuss about.
Comments