Mister Hugh's World of Randomness

hi all,

Yesterday I was on the bus on the way to Aikido, and thinking to myself that nothing noteworthy had happened in the last day or so that I could write a post about.

Very shortly after this a bloke got on the bus who, shall we say, commanded one's attention straight away. He was noticable. It wasn't the long, dirty white beard, the communist t-shirt, or the mad look in his eyes (though obviously they left enough of an impression on me for me to remember them). No, it was more to do with the fact that he was maintaining a continuous monologue at a volume somewhere around shouting level. He was talking about capitalism and G8 and big business and so forth (and i'm fairly sure he was against all of them) At first I thought he was talking on a hands-free mobile, and just being a bit loud, but then I realised that he couldn't be having a conversation after all, or if he was the other person wasn't saying much. The fact that he didn't have an earpiece was also a bit of a clue.

Then, of course, he came and sat down next to me. You know that sinking feeling where you see someone you really don't want to spend the rest of your journey next to, and they start to choose a seat, and despite the fact that there's approximately a million other seats they could go to, you just know it's going to be the one next to you? Well, I got that feeling, and I was right to.

Except of course that I shouldn't have worried really. My initial reaction was one of extreme embarrasment, for some reason. I can only assume that, since this guy was clearly simply unable to feel embarrasment, the huge cloud of potential embarrassment created by all the onlookers was repelled from him and settled around me instead. But after a few seconds, I realised that the embarrassment had no right staying with me as none of this was my doing, and so presumably it either moved on to the rest of the passengers or dispersed harmlessly.

Anyway, I then started thinking, as i'm wont to do on such occasions. What was it that was so remarkable about this guy? He was obviously passionate about his subject (as proved by his renditions of "Do they know it's G8 time at all" which he needlessly explained was based on a certain charity song but with adapted lyrics - the new lyrics were best described as 'interesting'). He had something to say, and he was saying it (see my last post!). The only real difference between him and me was that he seemed to lack the internal censor which stops the everyday person expressing all their thoughts to the outside world. Being myself a person who has in the past had too strong a censor, to the extent that I was always quite shy, I found this hard to imagine. That was until I realised that i'm doing exactly the same as he was, except in written form. Blog or book, both are essentially a way to release your thoughts on an unsuspecting public, just as this guy was doing.

I suppose one way to look at it is that, to the guy himself, his monologue was obviously just his version of conversation. When he had something else to say, for example when buying his bus ticket, he would do so in a perfectly normal way, as if breaking off a conversation momentarily. The only differences were that he clearly did not need anyone to respond to him, and that he was not influenced by the reaction of his audience. Most of us, when conversing, naturally and unconsciously monitor the reaction of other people, and modify what we're going to say accordingly. Sometimes this stops us saying what we want or need to say. This guy said exactly what he wished, and didn't notice or care that the people he was talking to were mostly reacting by looking the other way as if to express that the guy was nothing to do with them.

I could go on, but i'm in danger of turning this blog into a monologue (or should that be mono-blog), when I actually do need the response and reaction of people occasionally, to avoid going insane.