We recently had our first seminar. I dread seminars because you actively have to engage with your colleagues or at least convincingly pretend to do so. Also, they are the most horrible waste of time because I don’t think that I have ever learned anything useful in a seminar. For many students, they are nothing but the self-help group they should have joined months ago but were too embarrassed to attend. When I think back to all the seminars I have been forced to sit through in the course of a lifetime, my eyes begin to water. And this one was no better until it all of a sudden became really good. After that, it became really bad again. Then it was suddenly over. But let’s start the story from the beginning.
Our seminar started the way all seminars start: with me being unable to find the room. I would still be roaming the campus had I not secretly followed a colleague (I really was not stalking you!) who seemed to be more knowledgeable about the layout of our campus. Unsurprisingly, the seminar room was stuffy and when we opened the windows, it got very cold so that it was then both cold and stuffy. At the beginning came the obligatory introductions and I really do feel that I should point out that having to pretend to enjoy introducing myself to the same people over and over again causes more cognitive dissonance than I can stomach on a normal day, especially if I am stuck in a room that is both stuffy and cold. However, being a good sport, I pointed out for the umptieth time that my name was Gabriele (Austrian pronunciation), but that people in the UK usually referred to me as Gabriele (UK pronunciation) or Gabi, which was fine with me. And one thing I really enjoy is ballroom dancing.
After having been so good, I expected Karma to reward me handsomely. To no avail. Apparently, there was no set agenda for the seminar, but we had to tell the seminar leader what we wanted to discuss. I dutifully jump-started my brain, came up with some topic I was at least mildly interested in and made it known to the group. By that point, I was barely keeping it together. My left-hand neighbour left because she was feeling poorly. I seized the chance and tried to accompany her. She would not let me. Tough luck. Then, we had to pair up (oh, the misery, the misery) and come up with three specific questions relating to all the topics we had previously collected. We wrote down three questions. I considered announcing that I was also poorly and excusing myself from class. We had to give our sheet to another couple and take theirs and answer their questions. I mentally calculated how baldly it would impact my mark if I just got up and left.
Try as I might, I absolutely cannot remember any of the questions my partner and I had to answer, but I do remember that we did our very best to keep up the pretence that we were still awake. But what I remember best is that the couple we gave our questions to consisted of the kind of people who fervently refuse to answer the question you have asked them and answer a question they are more interested in instead. They are the kind of people particularly suited to a career in politics. I distinctly recall one of our questions being if the cuts to arts education in schools could be seen as a chance for arts organisations to broaden their portfolio so as to fill that niche. Instead of an answer to the question I had wrangled from my brain with the utmost effort, I got a lengthy lecture on why it was wrong to cut arts classes in schools. I mentally calculated if telling a fellow colleague that this had not been my f*cking question and could she please learn to read would get me expelled. And then came the point at which I completely lost it. Another person asked a question and instead of getting an answer to her question, she got a lecture on the tradition vs. innovation dilemma.
In what was an unusually confident voice, I announced before the class that I was more that sick of the never-ending debate about tradition vs. innovation. I believed that seeing those two things as polar opposites was completely wrong. Innovation was the life-blood of artistic expression, but that did not mean that innovation disrespected tradition. Sometimes, you needed innovation in order to be able to honour the tradition of the form as was evidenced in the fact that it was only through new playing techniques, improved training of musicians and a leaner string sections that symphony orchestras were nowadays able to play Beethoven’s symphonies at his originally proposed tempos.
People were stunned, and as much as I would like to attribute everyone’s astonishment to the fact that the argument sounded unusually competent by my standards, I think my colleagues’ awe was due to them being surprised that I was still alive. I was surprised myself, mostly because I had been unaware that I even had so much as an opinion about innovation vs. tradition and even the tiniest bit of knowledge about Beethoven’s symphonies, let alone their orchestration and the tempo that the movements needed to be played at. I wrecked my brain to find out where I had gathered this precious knowledge and finally discovered a video by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra about Beethoven’s symphonies that I had watched repeatedly. And now comes the most absurd bit: I had not watched said video because I was so very keen to find out more about the symphonies, but for all kinds of other, more nonsensical reasons. These included:
- I had been in the hall on the day the footage was shot and wanted to see if I could see myself in the video
- The person I believe made the video had snatched my dream job from me and I was secretly hoping he had done a shoddy job at making the video (he hadn’t – it was really good)
- There was this one musician I secretly fancy a tiny bit and that I was hoping to see in the video
- Have I already mentioned that I was there on the day the footage was shot and was really hoping that I could be seen in the video?
After my great contribution, the seminar went on for another half hour in a similarly boring fashion and then died quietly, as seminars do. However, it will go down in my personal biography as the first seminar in which I learned something. What I learned that day was that it doesn’t really matter why you watch a stupid two-minute video over and over again. What matters is that as long as you are passionate about a subject, you will always be able to make a contribution to it as your brain will magically figure out what to do. So, go out into the world, find the one thing you are passionate about and engage with it in whatever way seems right for you. The effects can be quite miraculous.
