The postmodern spectrum

I went to a 'party' last night for a program at the local public university called PIC. I found out too late that PIC stands for Philosophy, Interpretation and Culture. I would have known not to go. Or, at least I might have brushed up on my philosophers before going.

The thinkers these people were interested in were not the ones I learned about in my only college philosophy class: Ancient Philosophy. I have always wanted to take the second half of the introductory series, Modern Philosophy, but I just didn't have time to learn everything I wanted to learn in college. I never much like philosophy anyhow. I wanted to like it, desperately, but really I didn't.

It took me a while to understand what PIC was all about. The Philososphy seemed somewhat standard: names of dead white guys were flying from tongues in the kitchen, outside the bathroom, at the vegan table spread, around the bonfire. The Interpretation involves talking ad nauseum about a little known work of a particular philosopher. The Culture, as far as I can tell, is doing the interpreting with an accent. Where an accent is not possible, as in when, say, you are unfortunate enough to study philosophy in your native language, then culture seems to mean speaking very slowly, pushing extra wind out of your mouth as you do so and acting like you were on the verge of enlightenment when you were interrupted by the need to come back and show others 'the way.'

I thought it was great that there were so many people there that spoke English as a second or third language. This is until I realized how insane it must be to try and work out the fine details of one's world view with folks who were exhausting all their wine-inhibited attention on placing adjectives, verbs and nouns in the proper order when speaking in one subject, one action, one object sentences. Yikes.

A side note.

My best friend, Niko, dated a Greek Cypriot violinist for a while. There seem to be a milieu of college programs that attract predominantly international students. Luckily, with music, this doesn't inhibit learning because it is non-verbal, but I think in other cases these programs are deigned more to give a certain ilk of person the international experiences they need in order for them to have enough cache to be successful in their field.

Anyhow, the Cypriot was, to be fair, a real horse's ass. He would host these ridiculous parties at his cookie-cutter condo in Lawrence, Kansas. Everyone would drink wine, of course, then there would be some silly American drink they would all try and agree together that they disliked. Margarhitas (made from the cheapest mix and alcohol combination possible) - "ick." Sex on the Beach (the recipe was a guess because it was mixed in a blender and measuring cups were used instead of shot glasses) - "vulgar."

These parties would always culminate with a round or two of joke telling. It would go something like this.

Cypriot: Knock Knock
Everyone else: Who's there.
Cypriot: Turk
Everyone: Turk, who?
Cypriot: I have brain cancer.

The jokes would be followed by a round of fake laughter. This is the sort of laughter one hints at when they type LOL in an instant message, you don't want to laugh, but it is too socially awkward not to. All of the party guests, musicians from various regions of the world, could appreciate that each of their fellow virtuosos was from a place rife with racist jokes about folks from another place. When language and all else failed they had their hatred of the Turks, the Chinese, the Brazilians and of course, all of them, the blacks to endear them to one another.

It appears that the PIC kids were much more open-minded about race. Which is a plus. I am not sure if it was lack of cultural awareness, genuine open-mindedness, or that disgusting word, tolerance, that let them be very cool about my gender. No one batted an eye at my haircut or my mention of cute girls. This was sort of nice. But, I guess I just figured too that they weren't really sure what I was saying.

Me: "I like girls."
Her: "Ah, yesz, mees toos."

I tried with very limited success to befriend folks. I figured there had to be some great people here. Afterall, my friend did invite me to come.

I did manage to almost have a conversation with a gal from Brooklyn. She was a theoretical math major as an undergraduate. She talked unemotionally for a while about the lack of numbers in math, which I think had disappointed her younger self, but her sallow cheeks and anorexic philosopher complexion gave no hint of her current emotional state. She referenced how her new degree in philosophy would be just as useless as her degree in math. She offered to crochet a sweater for my dog. I complimented her on her jacket. ("I made it myself." Of course.)

She asked me if I was in PIC and I said no. Then I waited for her to walk away quickly like everyone else had to this answer. She asked me what I was doing instead of school. I figured the most appropriate answer I could give would be that I was writing a novel, so that is what I said. (I didn't mention that it was a 30-day novel.) She said she was writing a novel, too, and had been at it for 5 years.

Her novel, I think, was about nothingness. It was about three generations of beings (not people) that exist (whatever that means) in the void. She admitted, rather nobly, that it was a poor choice of settings for a first novel. I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt and assumed that there was something interesting in her diction that made up for the purposeful lack of characters, setting, action, plot or history.

She feigned interest in my writing, "So, where does your novel fall on the postmodern spectrum?" (There's a spectrum?)
"I'm not sure, I'm still in the process of figuring that out."

A few minutes later she got up and went over to dance, very chicly with her angular frame, jutting shoulders up and curling hip bones side-to-side to some ultra-intelligent hiphop music.

I am now, officially, frightened of going to graduate school.

Luckily, the night devolved. The intelligencia dispersed. I managed to corral a couple of lingering PIC students in the kitchen. I regaled them with a sexual fantasy I have involving two cowboys and a pickup truck. The one gal nodded curiously then apologized, "Ah, yes, Engleez is not my language." A dark-skinned expatriate gentleman (is there a politically correct way to say black person of unknown nationality, possibly a francophile?) who was celebrating his 31st birthday that night said, "Well, huhum, well, from my singular experience sexual intimacy is, uhm, rather unpleasant." It took me a moment to realize that by singular experience he meant he was one fuck away from being a virgin and was not talking about his own individual experience of the world. No wonder these kids are so into studying a very particular set of written works by dead people.

Living and breathing and speaking are not their bag.

At the end of the night a small crowd of Binghamtonians and recent converts sat smoking pot and playing guitars. We all sang Warren Zevon, the Who, Bright Eyes. We shook our fledgling intellectual insecurities out doing the twist and then we all drove home drunk as skunks daring oncoming traffic to come out of the dark nothingness of night and blot out our meager existences.