Lately several colleagues are running Events, starring themselves, or guests... and looking to me expectantly to be in the audience. To be another warm body.
I'm unfortunately not very interested; and I've been avoiding their eyes when they start to hint that they want me to be an audient (or, as a sop to my vanity, a Discussant – oh thanks). Most of the topics aren't quite My Thing, as it were; and I've already done so many concerts, conferences, symposia, over the years, that I protect myself from anything that isn't either really interesting (interesting for me, I mean – I am perfectly willing to admit that all of these things are potentially interesting in the abstract, for someone, somewhere) or enjoyable.
The truth is, I work at a very polyvalent department: lots of stuff going on, in lots of directions – many very remarkable, many trendy directions. Unfortunately, because some of those intellectual/artistic directions get lots of participants and others simply don't, I remain, after five years, the kid on the playground nobody plays with very much, but who trails around after the various groups, asking to play – it's odd, because in other places and institutions (i.e. more metropolitan ones) I've been at the center of ideas, topics, activities. When I first came to the UK, at several conferences, I trailed postgraduates in swarms – they wanted to hear what I had to say about theories, about composers, about musics. But that was down in London, where I was a fascinating alternative to the weight of tradition: interested in semi-traditional topics, but with a sharp twist. Not here, though: because these are the boondocks, the topics are all populist, and I'm a mutant from another planet. All the groups were either attached when I got here, or have been blithely co-opted by one colleague or another; and I have instead been given a position as bureaucrat, the role of herding the students the others attract. It's a bit like being gelded, really.
I have spent a great deal of time and energy nagging others to remember that I exist: how can I play, how can I contribute? Over the years this has become distinctly embarrassing: we now have big chunks of money, new buildings, new playgrounds, but none of them are really associated with my kind of work (although I continue to think, mostly to myself, that some of them could be). And it doesn't seem to occur to anyone to include me in various groups; and it is regarded as a bit tacky, a bit shrill, of me to insist on being included, like a kid who is either too old or too young for all the parties, the one who should just know when he's not wanted. Except, of course, to be in the audience, to listen to others.
So, as I have since I arrived here, I go begging, mostly using my AIDS work, since that's the only thing that makes me unique (and separates me from my more successfully acquisitive colleagues), as opposed to a minor also-ran: and twice this coming month outside organizations have agreed – kindly – to allow me to contribute, for free of course and with no guarantees, to their event schedules. I know perfectly well that none of my colleagues will be at those events – not because they don't like me, just because none of these things are really Their Thing. Perfectly understandable, really.
You will say I'm being arrogant, standoffish: why don't I just go be a part of their audiences, if that's the only way to get into the game? Well, frankly, because I don't much want to. I've listened to many people do many things over the years, and there's nothing so exhausting as trying to focus on words and music you don't really care about. And of course in the 1990s, on an international scene, I got used to having people crowd around me because they wanted to hear what I had to say, because my opinion seemed to matter. It's been hard for me to be so demoted, to become a minor participant in other people's events, a supporting character in other people's stories – frankly, under those circumstances, I'd rather not bother.
It's that most deadly and unanswerable, most insoluble, of isolations: the kid who moves to a far-away country school where he just can't really make any close friends, where there's nobody who really shares his interests. I just wish he'd get out and find someone to play with...
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