I live in a mansion. We call it the Kedzie Castle, because it's on Kedzie Ave and looks like, well, a castle. Not a super-fortified mofo from the before times, but something in ornate limestone. Like Neuschwanstein if it were made 200 years earlier by an anarcho-syndicalist band of itinerant farmers.
Like attracts like, I guess. While most of my housemates aren't tilling the earth, per se, they would gladly start growing a certain ilk of plants indoors, using sunlamps and what not - if it were legal.
I get along pretty well with most of them, but there's always one...
Let's call him Stan - a pathetic attempt to dissemble his identity.
Most "discussions" I have had with him - there have been about 3 or 4 I can firmly recall - end up with him pontificating passionately, a tirade of fuzzy logic and empty statements. They start out innocent enough - I'm a sucker for debate, especially when someone says something that needs to be challenged - but then quickly become one-sided, vapid, foaming-at-the-mouth statements of fact like "Everything is language!"
Yes, usually fueled by alcohol, though I never think he's drunk enough to just excuse it like that.
While trying to watch the Bulls and Hawks games - the end of one, beginning of other, simultaneously at the bar - he launched into it. It started innocently enough; he comes up and says "rrr-rrr-rrr" [grumble] and then "tee-hee" [giggle], and then says "ha, it's all the same."
I was confused. Whence grumble? Whence giggle? Wherefore equation of the two?
I said: "Context?" A simple word, a simple question, a request to which most would comply. Not Stan. "No. No context. You shouldn't need a context. [grumble], [giggle], it's all the same. You wouldn't need context if you read more Jane Austin. Charles Dickens."
Me: "I don't read Jane Austin. I would consider Charles Dickens."
Stan: "Wha? No Jane Austin? That's a crime. It may be a hundred years old but people are the same." And then something about class conflicts and people saying one thing and meaning another - totally profound.
Oh man, it wouldn't end. From class conflicts, it turned to sports, which was all around us on 3 big screens, to which most of the eyes in the packed bar were glued. He said something about wanting to play hockey and/or basketball but not watch them.
I can appreciate that, but he missed my point about why people really watch sports. It's not necessarily about gladiators galavanting for our amusement; it's about building community around a team.
But it was only later that I really understood his point: he doesn't like to spectate, preferring to be the center of attention. He doesn't like to listen but likes to be heard. He also happens to be an actor, working in the theater. So was it all just a big, lip-flapping performance? [And by "lips", I mean "anus."]
Certainly, ass-flapping. [And by "ass" I mean "donkey."] But I think he really meant it when he said: "Language is everything, and music is language. And it's not what you're saying but what you aren't saying." I think he was leaving out too much.
The people around us at the bar were either really impressed that we were having such a deep discussion or completely annoyed at how redundant it was getting. I felt really self-conscious and embarrassed to even be a part of it.
I finally found an out and went to a different bar, Revolution, to watch the rest of the hockey game.
