July 30, 2004
How Frightening Is This?
While we work to assemble the final two or three items from this week that still need posting (along with any other random things that occur to us as we do so), we'll pass along the latest media mention of PORTLAND COMMUNIQUE.
In the latest edition of Portland Monthly, they present their "Best of the City" picks. No, we're not expressly mentioned as "best" anything. But on page 54, they offer an item about the City Club of Portland's recent series dinner salons/fundraisers, of which we attended two. The relevance to us? Well, after mentioning "three tables seeded with Portland literati," they have this:
... (say, Oregonian architecture critic Randy Gragg, Pink Martini bandleader Thomas Lauderdale, Portland Center Stage artistic director Chris Coleman, Portland Communique's One True b!X) ...
Technically, this lumps us in with the officially-invited special guests, who had been deemed by the City Club as "literati," whereas we were there as media (we wrote an entry about the salon being referred to by the magazine). But even setting that aside, we can't help but wonder why we feel a vague sense of disquiet being deemed part of the literati. Perhaps that's because we're not much of a joiner, even if the so-called literati isn't any sort of real-world construct.
Not that we mind the press, of course. It's just that things are beginning to get a little bizarre around here.
Comments (5)
myrln on 30 Jul 2004
Stranger is that a bandleader and a theatre artistic director would be referred to as LITERati.
The One True b!X on 30 Jul 2004
I thought about that, but then I found a dictionary that defined it as "learned or literary" people, so I figured they counted as learned.
Justin on 30 Jul 2004
This doesn't surprise me. Increasingly, as our society has more data being generated, extracting useful information from the static is an art form. Journalism as a performance piece? Absolutely.
Are you uncomfortable with being known or noticed?
The One True b!X on 30 Jul 2004
Are you uncomfortable with being known or noticed?
It's a fairly classic double-edged sword, I suppose. On the one hand, recognition has made it far easier to gather information and have conversations with people in the course of doing my work. On the other hand, recognition also comes with a vague (albeit not neceesarily explicit) sense of people having expectations.
Since on the whole the only expectations I try to meet are my own, that latter elements makes me uncomfortable.
tiffany on 31 Jul 2004
you are having a nice cult rockstar moment & i'm sure there will be many more to come. it isn't your job to meet other people's vague expectations. relax & enjoy the attention...
(PS: i vote that we reserve the word "literati" for stuff having to do with, like, literature.)