I was thinking about uni today, the first time, how I worked to cultivate the illusion of 'still waters run deep', and how for the most part, it worked for me...

The Tall Guy had that down pat, but I believed it of him. He was so quiet, always, and I remember too many times when I was working hard, exhausting myself with some passionate argument about whatever was on my mind... he would patiently listen to my ranting and when I finally paused for breath he might say a single sentence, and more often than not it would completely blow me out of the water. An adamant soliloquy of half an hour could be destroyed by him with a handful of words, his characteristic succinctness and crystal clarity. It would frustrate the hell out of me... could he not have said it sooner, before I wore myself out, before my impassioned defence had caused me to look so stupid – because he generally did make more sense than I did – could he not have saved me the trouble? But truth be told, he probably couldn't get a word in... or perhaps it took him that long to compose that one perfect sentence. Oh yeah, it frustrated me, but it was also something that I fiercely admired about him, this little trick of his. I adored it, actually.

At the same time I was studying dance at uni, doing lots of wanky contemporary performance units and spending far too much time stringing together fifty cent words, like the dominant paradigm of post-postmodern aesthetic philosophy or some such shit... oh yeah. Alone with the Tall Guy, I was forced to be the talkative one because he was soooo closed off in general... and I think when you feel you have to talk, typically what comes out is bullshit anyway. On the other hand, at uni I drowned in a sea of overly-vocal hippies with too many ideas and ideals. It happened quite by accident, that one day I said something that was apparently earth shattering, in the tiny voice that was how I spoke in those days because I was afraid of it. Everyone had been talking over the top of one another, and when I spoke they had to stop in order to hear me at all... I think perhaps the unusual hush in the room caused everyone to think that what I was saying was precious and ground-breaking... but really I'd just been listening to their bullshit instead of spouting half formed ideas of my own and had plenty of time to compose the one perfect sentence.

If you do it enough times, you build an aura about yourself. Or sometimes just once, the first time, is enough - like in high school, I got straight As for the first term of grade 8, and I never managed to do that again but that was everyone's impression of me for the rest of high school, everyone's assumption that was what I did. More often than not at uni I was just awash in a sea of grey and did not have a great deal to say until the dust in my own mind settled, especially since I was literally afraid of my voice and I would cringe if I spoke too loud, or clumsily... but for the duration of my degree it didn’t matter if I had nothing to say, because of the handful of times when I had managed to hit the nail on the head. My lecturers would smile knowingly at me and say, you've been quiet today, I guess you've been thinking really hard about this, haven't you? A solemn nod and an expression of serious inquiry, a wry smile... all that was necessary. And then, my assignments apparently proved their point, but that was only because words on paper seem more tangible than these transient, spoken words and thus make more sense to me. My composition lecturer loved the persona and constantly found unintended meaning in my pieces... I can't remember anything that I composed now because you don't write a dance down.

I was thinking about this today because I said to someone last night that I thought I was only intelligent enough to know that I am not that intelligent. It is a bitter place to be, I think, to have an awareness of your limitations... if I were only a little bit dumber, I could live in ignorant bliss. If I were only a little bit smarter, I could probably make more sense of random thoughts that captivate me for a moment but never go anywhere. I can't even follow my own train of thought at the best of times (another reason why I enjoy writing – you can always re-read for extra clarity, while you can't rewind and review a conversation... does that make conversation worth more, you think?).

I am not so afraid of my own voice anymore, because I am not quite so afraid of what other people think of me anymore. True, I think it is still a rare person who can get me to talk about anything meaningful with any degree of fluency but it occurred to me how strange my behaviour was in uni, that I mostly thought these people were dickheads but I still cared what they thought of me. Maybe when you are surrounded by dickheads it becomes more important that you are recognised not to be one of them... but let's face it, I probably am. Aren't we all? :)

What the hell is it that I am trying to say here anyway? Here I am, doing the passionate argument thing, and it shall sit here waiting for someone to compose the single perfect sentence to blow it out of the water... but fucked if I care anymore. I am not so afraid of people, now that I have accepted the fact that I am one of them. I still think I have a pretty good level of awareness of how people might view me (which is insane anyway, since that's something I can never really know) but I'm not so preoccupied by it, and I think what people see these days is a lot less contrived, a lot closer to what is actually there. I am not so afraid of being thought a fool, and ready to open my mouth and remove all doubt at any available opportunity... because everyone does on a pretty much daily basis. And there's no such thing as perfect anyway.

I don't believe that last sentence at all.

Before After

© Blueshoe 1999-2005