That Image
The Peabody and me: it was not love at first sight.
It was dark. Brooding even, and I had not expected it. Dark wood bearing up the floors. dark panelling, as if the heavyset ambience was to keep the heat and sun in its place: outside, in the empty streets of downtown Memphis.
It's a dark hotel and the website does not convey it. Perhaps the smokes of history have darkened it because it does bear a lot of history. Compared to the bogus brash loud extravaganza of Vegas, this hotel was real. Well, except for the player piano anonymously tinkling, at one point, Bronski Beat. The ducks were plenty real if their march was hyperbole, too and the drinks were real if not the cleavages of the servers. Nonetheless. Julie was loooking at Memphis thru the eyes of Baudrillard that she had recently discovered, so now that I think, Peabody was real even though it was not the original Peabody.
That room I imaged, Ben Hollander, is one of several tucked away behind a block of rooms, the bathroom and Frank Schutte room. It is closed though I know there is a session in it, Rethinking Rhetorical Artifacts, but a hotel person swipes her card and I am in. I slide in the last row and watch Janice Lauer of Purdue and then see the person that I really want to see who would speak on aviation artfacts, is not there. Ok, I will sit and sift through what is there then.
The light of the day streaming through the panelled windows behind the speakers backlights them fiercely, so that their faces are in shadow and I have to peer to focus on them. I get used to their lighting and note their name tags, glasses of water, papers. They are framed by the dark panelling around and from where I sit I hear the voice of the next door speaker and occasional applause. It's dark with a blast of light that the speakers sit with their backs to. Plato's cavern with a twist.
This too is a no-place as they all sit waiting to say their bit and when it comes to Q and A they always repeat their bit without branching out because this is almost it, casting their argument among their peers, and next stop publication. This is an academic conference where we come out of the dark of our involvement with a project into the light, into the light of the readers, but not quite into the light, not quite. It's right behind us where we cannot see it, and we see the audience and we can also hear the muted voices of others pursuing their points just within reach. They applaud, but for us? And when they do applaud for us, those that do applaud our courage to reach out with our "shabby equipment always deteriorating". This is where we wait to see if it sounds right when others are in the room, do they nod, do they wonder, do they ask questions, do they mock. This is where the academic meets some of the readers and perhaps the only time she will. This is a rare moment in time when writers climb blinking out of their caves, into another cave it seems.
This is not a place for bell hooks.
Always at moments like this I snicker at the relevance of the enterprise, though I am certainly no one who should question it, I who has nothing to show even in this ironic light.
That is the image I remember, Memphis daylight so bright, the contrast between the dark and the light and the talking heads blocking the light and the light dimming their faces and the papers, delivered. And politely applauded.
It was dark. Brooding even, and I had not expected it. Dark wood bearing up the floors. dark panelling, as if the heavyset ambience was to keep the heat and sun in its place: outside, in the empty streets of downtown Memphis.
It's a dark hotel and the website does not convey it. Perhaps the smokes of history have darkened it because it does bear a lot of history. Compared to the bogus brash loud extravaganza of Vegas, this hotel was real. Well, except for the player piano anonymously tinkling, at one point, Bronski Beat. The ducks were plenty real if their march was hyperbole, too and the drinks were real if not the cleavages of the servers. Nonetheless. Julie was loooking at Memphis thru the eyes of Baudrillard that she had recently discovered, so now that I think, Peabody was real even though it was not the original Peabody.
That room I imaged, Ben Hollander, is one of several tucked away behind a block of rooms, the bathroom and Frank Schutte room. It is closed though I know there is a session in it, Rethinking Rhetorical Artifacts, but a hotel person swipes her card and I am in. I slide in the last row and watch Janice Lauer of Purdue and then see the person that I really want to see who would speak on aviation artfacts, is not there. Ok, I will sit and sift through what is there then.
The light of the day streaming through the panelled windows behind the speakers backlights them fiercely, so that their faces are in shadow and I have to peer to focus on them. I get used to their lighting and note their name tags, glasses of water, papers. They are framed by the dark panelling around and from where I sit I hear the voice of the next door speaker and occasional applause. It's dark with a blast of light that the speakers sit with their backs to. Plato's cavern with a twist.
This too is a no-place as they all sit waiting to say their bit and when it comes to Q and A they always repeat their bit without branching out because this is almost it, casting their argument among their peers, and next stop publication. This is an academic conference where we come out of the dark of our involvement with a project into the light, into the light of the readers, but not quite into the light, not quite. It's right behind us where we cannot see it, and we see the audience and we can also hear the muted voices of others pursuing their points just within reach. They applaud, but for us? And when they do applaud for us, those that do applaud our courage to reach out with our "shabby equipment always deteriorating". This is where we wait to see if it sounds right when others are in the room, do they nod, do they wonder, do they ask questions, do they mock. This is where the academic meets some of the readers and perhaps the only time she will. This is a rare moment in time when writers climb blinking out of their caves, into another cave it seems.
This is not a place for bell hooks.
Always at moments like this I snicker at the relevance of the enterprise, though I am certainly no one who should question it, I who has nothing to show even in this ironic light.
That is the image I remember, Memphis daylight so bright, the contrast between the dark and the light and the talking heads blocking the light and the light dimming their faces and the papers, delivered. And politely applauded.
posted by EvaB at 1:23 PM
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