Thursday, April 21, 2011

Sophisticated

My new work space makes me feel so sophisticated and grown up that I even got myself a glass of wine (which I never do on weeknights) and now I'm sipping it feeling like a real professor. Maybe I'm going to read some Baudrillard before going to bed.

Back in grad school, our department of Spanish was a party-till-you-drop place. We had the greatest parties ever. We drank, talked, argued, danced, sang, and generally had a really crazy good time. So once, at about 2 am, we decided to drop by a party of our colleagues at the Department of French. When we got there, we realized that cultural differences run deep. The lights were dimmed, there was quiet classical music playing in the background, some candles. Our colleagues, all dressed in black, sat around with small glasses of wine and quitely discussed Guattari and Baudrillard.

I never went back to one of their parties.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Was it the same "party" where French students listen to Jacques Brel (or Charles Aznavour) drinking Grand Marnier in complete silence?

Ol.

Anonymous said...

You're lucky to be able to work at home. I simply cannot. I have to work in a noisy public spaces with or in my office. I have an office at home, and it's always empty.

Ol.

Spanish prof said...

I guess that was the same reason why the smartest and less pompous English grad students kept crashing our parties when I was in grad school.

J. said...

Your parties sounded like more fun.

In grad school, the parties thrown by students in the choral department usually involved copious amounts of cheap wine and English Madrigal singalongs. The more we drank, the better we (thought we) sounded. When the opera majors were invited (which was often, because we all hung out togehter), there was also a huge amount of food, because especially after performances singers tend to eat a LOT.

Actually, that's probably a situation pretty close to what those madrigals were originally written for. One doesn't detect the hidden double entendre bawdiness in the texts until one is fairly well pickled...