In Which an Innocently Friendly Comment is considered to within an inch of its Life.

So, today I was talking to someone at uni (at one of those casual social events that happens on a Friday evening, which I attend because of being Cool. That special sort of Cool where you go to casual outdoor pub-based events but nonetheless apparently do not have anything better to do with your Fridays) to someone whom I'd met once before, 3 weeks previously, (and hello if you remembered the this URL and are reading, Easily-Amused-Matt) (Good Lord, I hope his name is Matt, otherwise how embarrassing. But you really can't refer to someone as "The Easily Amused Guy Who Was There That Friday That Time Wearing An Icebreaker Shirt And A Hamas Scarf, Presumably Not Politically, Who Said It Was A Good Thing That He And I Were At Different Clinical Scools Because I Would Be Tiring To Talk To More Often Than Weekly Or Whatever, You Know The Guy, I Think He Had Glasses"; it's not snappy at all, and it would be tiring to hyphenate, and also it totally wouldn't work in the vocative. Plus I'm really pretty sure his name was Matt). Anyway, he said that he remembered me, which is nice, if sometimes a smidgin unconvincing, and then said "so I hear you have a blog which is hilarious?".

Leaving aside the "Gosh! How nice! How flatteringly hyperbolic!" and the instant urge to disclaim any pretentions to hilariousness, this... this always surprises me. Firstly, because, seriously, you mean you actually do remember me? A part of me is always surprised, possibly because it so often fails to happen, especially among the Uni Folks, who are often hampered in their attempts to remember who I am by their own overwhelming indifference on the question of my existance. (Possibly this is unfair, and this is actually a thin veneer of Faux-Indifference masking a core of Really-Caring-A-Lot-ness, or something. Possibly this is just how they roll, sort of barring people until it's been over a year so that they've proved themselves worthy by virtue of persistence. Most likely, of course, is that this, like so many things, is all in my mind, and that people are actually being perfectly friendly and I'm merely failing to process that. I bet that happens some of the time, if not most. A bit of unfair prejudice, a bit of shyness on my and or their parts, a soupçon of misinterpretation, and before you notice it's all "huh, that chick, she has no idea who I even am, and we've totally spoken a bunch of times". In my defence, in my undergrad, I was often exposed to the ravages that are social occasions with SUDS people (Sydney Uni Drama Society! Solipsism for all!), so I'm probably overinclined to think that people are deliberately not seeing folks, because man, that was definitely the de rigeur way to interact with the non-thespians.) Anyway, when someone really remembers me when we've only met once, it always seems nice. Maybe this is odd in me, since obviously I remember meeting him (possibly mainly on account of that slightly odd remark about me being tiring), but to be honest, that's largely random, sometimes I remember meeting people with crystal clarity (that sort of crystal clarity where you remember that someone likes Thing X and would notice if they'd changed their hair, but have not the faintest idea what their name is), other times, I just fail absolutely to remember people at all.

Secondly, it's always awfully flattering to be discussed in your absence. Like, it's already pretty neat when people remember you and talk to you and give the impression of thinking you reasonably likeable when you're there, but it's another thing entirely to have people discussing you when you aren't there to remind them that you exist. My Ever-Flattering-If-Occasionally-Inclined-To-Overdo-It Friend James said the other day that someone else had mentioned that I was a fan of the band Broken Social Scene on Saturday. Which, now I come to think of it, was a bit of a non sequitur anyway, given that I don't know what context there was for him to be all "we were discussing your music tastes the other day!", and also that I would describe my relationship with that band as being more towards the "Oh, I think I've heard of them, that's a band, right? They, uh, they sound... good?" end of the spectrum than otherwise. Nonetheless, the important point is that it somehow seems disproportionately flattering. Sort of "aw, you guys thought about me when I wasn't there? That's so nice!" Which, well, may be a little bit tragic, but hey, it's victimless tragicness, more or less. (Except for those of you who've been around for long enough that you've read blog posts about this same concept 3 times already. Sorry dudes.)

I'm always ridiculously curious about in what context it occurred, this alleged discussion of me (or "mentioning me at all"). Was it good? Were you playing some kind of game called "who is the niftiest person you can think of"? Presumably it's more that the band (or whatever) has come up and someone's gone, "I think Angela likes them, a lot of people do!" or similar. Although now I come to write it down, even this seems strange. That example, for instance, reads as if my putative opinion were the terribly important last word on the matter. Like "well, Angela likes them, so I think we'll all just have to face facts: they are clearly objectively good. I defy you to gainsay that girl's opinion!". This is just my writing, though, and should not be allowed to cause you to think that this is how I really imagine my friends behave. And thank goodness, you would rapidly come to resent someone always referrred to like that. Those of you who really like sad books and movies about torture would always be all angsty, for one thing.

I guess it must happen to everyone a lot of the time (being discussed, not being angsty because someone questions the validity of your liking of the Saw movies). I mean, what is there to talk about, really, except the people one knows? Or, in the case of magazies and so on, doesn't know? Sure, you can discuss yourself (cf. this blog), your interlocutor, the weather, and maybe current affairs if you're really brave and foolish enough to open the can of worms that so often is, but after that, all that's left is other people. Because mainly the landscape and so on is not all that eventful, so you can really only address the topic of "check out those crazy rocks, and what nice trees we've been having recently!" once or twice before people start being all "dude, what is it with you and the rocks? They're rocks. More interestingly, have you heard that a girl in our year is pregnant? You know the one, the one with the hair!".

Obviously, that would be marginally less desirable, that particular sort of being discussed, but don't even pretend that you don't sort of love the idea of being discussed too. The Aforementioned James always gets excited when I even so much as mention him on here (remember that one time I called him On-The-Ball James? Yeah, of course not, but he sure does, it took him most of a week to come down after that one. Clearly the world-wide fame of being read about by possibly up to 10 people went to his head). Similarly, Lovely Jenny checked whether I had been talking about her (because if so, how exciting!) one time I made a veiled reference to her. Obviously there's a bit of a downside, in that when I say things which are foolishly hyperbolic and abstract like "you would have to be naive to be totally unambivalent about anything really important and complex", people tend to read that as "you, Reader, personally, are naive, ha!", which obviously was not how that was ever meant to sound.

This is reassuring, now I think about it, since these 'ideas of reference'(which is a symptom of schizophrenia, but also, one suspects, of "being alive") are apparently a not-just-me thing. People are always concerned about how others talk about them. Surely. I suspect that this is a lot of the appeal of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, which allow us to enjoy the excitement of being talked about, and talking about people, without the hassle of first having to have a shower and change into something other than your pyjamas. I would mention here that Oscar Wilde said that "A life unexamined is not worth living" and that "the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about", but Oscar Wilde said of lot of thing like that, I think he was just a fan of that sort of pithiness. Also it didn't work out all that well for him, what with the whole scandal/imprisonment/destitute-but-witty-death-in-exile thing.

Thirdly (yes, we are still talking about that original conversation), mysterious and flattering is a great combination. So "some unnamed person told me that you were funny" is sort of ideal, in a sense. Especially when people are all "no I don't think it was Hyphenatedly-Entitled James, I think it was someone else talking about your amusing blog". Because, seriously? Who else would be reading? It's kind of like the mystery around this time last year, about the time of the Incident, except, y'know, good. I could understand if any of the last few posts had been of particularly high calibre, or if, conversely, they had maybe been shorter than usual, but as it is, I just still have difficulty picturing the hypothetical person who goes "my, I don't talk to that Angela girl all that often, but I sure do want to read 1,000 words of her overanalysing something that someone said to her at a pub this evening!". The harder I try to imagine it; the reader (not you, Reader, we're like this, you and I, some other reader) maybe settling in with a tasty beverage and a couple of hours of their life they have no further need of, just whiling away some time with a little benevolent stalkiness, the less convincing the whole picture becomes. (Possibly this is because I went overboard and gave the Hypothetic Reader there a Hugh Hefner-style dressing gown in my mind, but that's perfectly legit, since I know that at least one of my readers (which is to say, about 15% of my total readship) totally owns one of those.

I know I write long things, you see, so I'm just always surprised at the idea of anyone getting so far into one routinely enough that they think of it to talk about.

It's awfully nice of you, whoever you were!