Friend-of-the-blog Ian Williams wrote a few days ago, of Zap Your PRAM and his reason for attending:
It may not always work, but just dipping your head into the cold, bracing water of other peoples’ obsessions can occasionally give you something you didn’t even know you needed.
If we unpacked our own rationale for organizing Zap, I think we’d come up with something quite similar. The danger of this, of course, is that when you discover things you didn’t even know you needed, these things can be inconvenient: “I need to enter the seminary,” for example, or “everything I’ve been thinking for the last 15 years is bullshit” (examples for demonstration purposes only).
And so burbling through my mind, along with the pride and accomplishment of having helped to create something so awesome, and the thrill of hybridizing so many brilliantisms into my genome, is the terror that comes from a mind opened wider than usual.
The effect has not been unlike a sort of weird fire-grilled acid trip: the colours are brighter, the music sounds like tangerines, it may well take three weeks to recover, and I’ll still be having flashbacks in February.
Time to sleep.
Comments
Mazel tov! Wish I’d been there.
Synesthesia could be a sign of something… I hope it’s not catching. Oh wait, maybe I do. Congratulations, anyway.
I hear what you’re saying. I’m still processing everything from this weekend and expect it will leave a bit of a mark on my brain for awhile. I hope it does as I left thinking I need to reprioritize a few things. Thanks!
I too was a little smitten with Ian’s words (and said as much during my panel). They’ll show up in a blog post of mine later today.
Makes you want to throw cold water (maybe hot coffee…) on higher learning !
Low broughs rule the world — Go Habs Go !
What I’m about to write only makes sense if you experienced it.
The thing about their food: amazing. And it came in, carried by the smiling man with the parting.
(Are you human? question could be phrased like: “Medieval weaponry that rhymes with snail?”)