VANGELIS / AND THEN THE BALLET

VANGELIS

I'm here talking to Christian, a friend of a friend, and he's saying something about space. He's comparing special and general relativity. I listen silently with one hand clutching my beer. I'm drinking much faster than he is in a dirty shit-hole bar. My eyes wander to a cute girl. Anyway he's comparing the various thought experiments that Einstein did with those of a more pre-Einsteinian flavor, it wasn't Newton but someone else if I remember, but my brain is wrecked right now and the phrase, or rather just jumbled grouping of semi-technical and moderately redundant words, “relativistic Minkowski spacetime” should never, ever be remembered, I deliberately think to myself, and my god the words are bringing something back to me that I don't want to remember, won't. So I drink and speak, nodding my head. He's speaking and he wants to speak, and my actual friends are away smoking cigarettes, and I asked the questions. You can't ask questions and not get responses: it doesn't work that way. So I nod, my god. I hear something about a doctorate in physics and lots of other things and I don't care, really don't care in the slightest, so I'm pouncing at the opportunity to leave. But there's no exit. For all the pennies, dollars, bills, everything in the world—My God!—a Vangelis song comes on the jukebox and I almost jump up, just catching myself, and I'm saved! Vangelis. I have no idea what song this is but the syncopated 1970's junk is delightful, truly a blessing, something I've wanted forever. I listen to this at home, I think. The electronica is beautiful, I think, while Christian is talking now about the twin paradox, which I will have nothing to do with; all I really—and now I'm being directly honest as opposed to every other time when I say I'm being directly honest but I'm really dodging-- Already before meeting someone we're almost always lying to their faces, directly to their eyes and brains; likewise they're lying to us in exactly the same way. But right now I'm being direct and honest. All I want is... All I want is to be at home listening to Vangelis. This is as close as I can get to direct honesty. And my god, the beauty of it. The arpeggios are so absurd and over the top I can't even describe them, and the song titles are—I think the song on the jukebox is called “CONCEPT SPECIES MAN 4” or something similar. I really have no idea but Christian is gone, passed away, dead, deceased. No longer in passing and not mourned. He's still talking, of course, but Vangelis saved me.

AND THEN THE BALLET

In all actuality the whole game of smalltalk is fun. And I think I'm skilled at it. But this is dependent on so many things, most importantly the person I'm speaking at. I can usually find common ground quite easily and fake my way through a conversation. It happens all the time. At work, to bring in a directly applicable example, depending on our jobs, we all fake our way through multiple conversations everyday without the slightest trouble. Really we're all ballet dancers dancing in a minefield. We wonder what's ok to say; what's not ok to say we hold back, and when we need to ask for something from a superior we hold back again, hesitate, meditate, and half-think our way through the request. I say “half-think our way through the request” because nobody fully thinks through these things; this wondering of what's acceptable is always on the fringe of our awareness. Our comfort zones are somewhere else. But this isn't to say that the nuances of work conversations are dishonest or somehow degenerate just because they're only half thought. On the contrary, they might be our most honest and authentic conversations, I think. We're always slightly on our toes and by being on our toes we're forced to become honest with ourselves: we become aware of our motives and our desires for the conversation and this awareness forces upon us our real goals, desires, and acts. When I ask for a favor from a boss I have to phrase it in such a way that I can get the favor, but naturally we're all half-naturals at doing this and so, again naturally, we can't think completely consciously about how to say it. We half-know what to say. This half-knowing keeps us honest in our conversations by making us aware of our real intentions and our own real positions. But then I have a natural aversion to these nuances, I think; I have a habit of tripping up these ballets and actually speaking without even half-thinking. I think I do this deliberately. And so perhaps I'm either totally honest or totally dishonest in these situations, I'm not sure either label works. This is an open question, I think, whether I would call myself “honest” or “dishonest” during these conversations. Whereas I could consider myself honest because I don't half-think my way through these conversations and say only what I really mean, precisely that's what would make me dishonest because honesty in such a situation involves such a half-thinking-through, an actual person-to-person conversation within the game of work, and that's precisely what's lacking. And that's lacking because I don't half-think-through my conversations, I think again. So I can't be considered honest. I'm too naturally averse to these nuances. I refuse to play the game; something inside of me is laughing when it shouldn't be, I think as Vangelis ends. I've been thinking at this shit-hole bar about this, talking about this, and nobody understands what I'm saying and I'm not even drunk. Everybody understood everything until the switch from me being honest to being dishonest. I'm too honest and therefore I'm completely dishonest, I say as I pound my beer. To be honest at work involves at least an awareness of the ballet dance between coworkers—even a minimal, half-thinking awareness. In fact such a half-thinking might be preferable to a full-thinking, I think, because a full-thinking would be a pure awkwardness and a losing of all honesty (because a full-thinking would make us lose the ability to be honest or dishonest by making us question what our real intentions and acts actually are, therefore making them questionable and no longer justifiable). A full-thinking is like quitting the game when we need to keep playing—and then I think that I'm giving this whole line of thought quite the full-thinking it shouldn't be getting. But non-thinking, which is what I do by nature or through choice in these specific work situations, is likewise just as bad as full-thinking, because I might as well be an automaton who can't play the game. And that's my problem. The dance is important, I tell myself, sipping my beer.  I almost convince myself I need to change. The dance is real and makes both ourselves and the other real, I think, within the given situation. But somehow I don't want to dance. I'd rather play the wallflower. I think I'd rather sit this one out. I think this is a problem.