In Search of Fun
Friday was a most intriguing evening as they usually are. I was sitting in my room being amused those experts of all things fantastic while doing some light reading on democratic theory and religious-political mobilization when I glanced at the clock and noticed that 'Tails had started 30 minutes prior. This isn't actually a problem for me since I really haven't "Å“attended" 'tails like I used to since mid- to late spring.
(Parenthetical paragraphs, interesting not related to the point of this post) Some of my peers having jokingly told me that they think I hate tails. Of course, being in America, the joke is, perhaps, the best way to communicate a controversial opinion in a non-confrontational way. It's not so much that I hate 'tails, I really could care less, it's that there is a certain quality of interaction that I desire from my interlocutors that one cannot find among the pop music and jiggling bodies on the dance floor. The other reason is that there are people that I wish to hang out with and these persons are most often not found in the basement. As elitist as it might sound, I don't really have time to fake the pretenses of fun with people with whom I am not as close.
Now I usually do wander through the basement during our Friday night events because most people party instead of doing laundry and I seek to do laundry rather than party? I was doing so this Friday night when the Chemist, offering loudly (as he prone to do during one of his chemically-enhanced phases of boisterousness), that there has been a 'Stevenson-sighting' in the basement suggesting that I had descended to frolic among the basement-dwellers for a time. He offered it as a half-joke; I took it as such. His volume and quantity of words may vary directly with his chemical composition (he is after all the embodiment of the principle of chemistry), but the Chemist is ever the apt observing of peoples (unless of course it involves romance or flirting or something like that, but then, like most of us Rationals, we are utterly clueless to its presence). He is very good at appearing non-judgmental, but my sense is that he is a hard person to please and, like myself, a checklist exists in his mind whereby everyone is continually being rated, and their respect status, adjusted. But I must digress farther.
Before coming to back to the House, and I throw this in only to play with the space-time continuum in my retelling of the events of Friday, I had paused a moment (where a moment here means a period of time, not necessarily short) to greet Arithmetic who was working at the desk. Now Arithmetic is the embodiment of an aspect of the principle of Math; she is quick to point out when things don't add up, oftentimes speaks in her own language, and is utterly inaccessible unless she gives you tips on understanding her. We were chatting, or more correctly I was being embarrassingly loud while she was trying not to look embarrassed, when the Composer and his parents came by. Everything that is wrong with my inability to phrase things simply, an observation that was first offered by the Chemist and quickly caught on as a law of the universe* (see post entitled the laws of the universe), manifested itself in this simple conversation.
Composer: "Hey, these are my parents whom you met at the concert. I was just showing them the library." (Arithmetic and Stevenson glance at each other then at the Composer, his brother, and his mother and father.) (Some conversation occurs here, barely.)
Stevenson: "I must say that hearing the actual instrumentation is much better than the midi file. You miss things like crescendos and emphasis in the midi file."
Father of Music to Stevenson: "Are you a music major/minor?"
Stevenson: "No, I can only say that I have the pretenses of a musical education through the listening and appreciation of good music."
Who says things like that? ::slaps self in forehead:: Why couldn't I say something like "No, I am a Govy major with a focus on international relations?!" The "pretenses of a musical education" (Parenthetical paragraphs at an end)
So I went down to 'tails, found the washer going and went to read a book. Sometime later I desired to go bother Mr. Dexterity at the bar. At the bar I discovered, Dexterity with an unlit cigarette in his mouth. Now this is very amusing because he has to be the most asthmatic person I know. Then I ran into Composer (again) for the third time that evening and we compared various philosophies of art and music before he ran off to play pong.
I have more to say regarding this evening but I am not quite sure how I want to phrase it. I have to do it a manner that mentions the most important details minimally while elevating the peripheral and mundane. Somehow we must communicate the tensions of a square becoming squiggly (or at least trying). When the analytic becomes expressive: the loss of the poker face... And at some point I have to tell the story of that dreadful Friday in the long, long ago...
