Like all well-adjusted people, I keep a running list in my head of the organizations, corporations and individuals I am angry at and/or feuding with. Nurturing and sculpting this list, taking time each day to devise new paths to ultimate vengeance and writing and rewriting my quietly dignified victory speech is, I have found, the key to a healthy, balanced life.So it is with great sadness that I must add to this list the organizers and participants of something called the "Table of Free Voices," which is taking place in Berlin this very day. The event is being described as a kind of global thought summit. About 100 people -- filmmakers such as Terry Gilliam and Wim Wenders; artists such as Robbie Conal, the guerrilla poster guy; Willem Dafoe; Bianca Jagger; and a lot of people with hard-to-spell names from complicated organizations, like Hafsat Abiola, the founder of the Kudirat Initiative for Democracy, and Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas, executive director of the Kalinga Mission for Indigenous Children and Youth Development of the Philippines -- are gathering to, you know, talk and stuff.
A global thought summit? I don't think so
According to "dropping knowledge," the outfit responsible for the event -- and no, I didn't forget the capital letters, they did -- it's going to be a one-day talk fest. "Each dignitary," says the press release, referring, I guess, to dignitaries like Gilliam and Conal, "seated at the Table of Free Voices will have three minutes to articulate their thoughts on each of the 100 questions submitted through the 'What's Your Question?' campaign. They have the option to answer in any language they like."
I may not know anything about "dropping knowledge," but before senior year in high school, when I became an expert in "dropping math," I knew that 100 participants -- excuse me, dignitaries -- and 100 questions means 10,000 answers, which, at three minutes an answer (in any language they like, so add a minute or two if it's French), adds up to a sprightly 30,000-minute event. Or, to put it another way, a brisk 500 hours of Wim Wenders and Robbie Conal and Donato Bayu Bay Bumacas and Bianca Jagger and Laurie Anderson, with a special appearance by Die Fantastischen Vier, who I happen to know are German hip-hop pioneers. Is it just me or does this sound like fun?
It is inexcusable that I have not been invited to sit at the Table of Free Voices. And for that reason, unfortunately, I must add the entire enterprise and its associated entities to my Dark List.
