Monday, May 16, 2011

Word Soup

It was a sunny spring day. The cotton candy clouds had dissipated into the clear baby blue sky. The smooth ruffles of my polka dotted mini skirt brushed against my skinny white legs. Briskly walking towards Raef hall with white pearls embedded in my ears playing Crimson and Clover by Tommy James and The Shondells, I couldn’t help but note the want-to-be gangsters and galactic star nerds dotting the dingy gray campus. I was late. I slowly pulled the monstrously heavy door open, praying I would not disrupt the event taking place. My eyes danced across the multicolored audience looking for a wee small chair to place my body. Lightly tip toeing down the stairs to the nearest seat, I began to listen to the deep monotone rumble of an ancient voice. A strikingly tall man, John Bell, the first speaker of the presentation was reading a selection of personal poems. Word soup was the correct label for this reading as everything was jumbled together, over cooked and forced fed to the helpless audience. Tales of meaningless nothings retold with such passion left my mind wondering how such dinosaurs are able to keep jobs in such an economy as which we live in. Fortunately for my feeble ears, a new speaker eventually took the stage. At first I mistook Michael Angelone for a quirky gay man, and was slightly amused when he spoke of a wife and kids. His work bashed politics, bible thumpers, terrorists and anything else that happened to crawl on the face of the earth. His brutally blunt battering of life’s issues was both compelling and interesting. As I sat with the cold hard seat cutting off my circulation, I wondered why people adore fluffy language. Angelone presented a beautifully blunt presentation. It was interesting, informative, and impelling. The College Hour eventually came to an end with an round of applause and a shuffling of feet. As I opened the monstrous door once more, I carried a slightly different perspective then beore. It is perfectly okay to be blunt. The key is simply to be beautifully blunt.