another rare check-in

Three times visiting the Geography Department at the Open University in three straight years, three great conversations. Only place I’ve been invited three separte times. (Well, I spoke at Goldsmiths three separate times, but in that case was not invited by the same people each time.)

Now I’m in total isolation in a good hotel at the edge of Milton Keynes, with sheep grazing in the field next door. Ten minutes of internet credit remaining, so here goes.

Last night’s “port talk” was held at Goodenough College in Bloomsbury. Most people haven’t heard of it; it’s not an academic college, but a residential one for international students at various universities around London. It has that Oxford/Cambridge look and feel with brick buildings and a courtyard, and several satellite buildings that various people live in. They also have a hotel across the street, where I stayed, and will help academics visiting London find apartments.

The “port talks” have that name because glasses of port are served throughout the event. Most of last night’s audience consisted of graduate students, many of them from Architecture or Anthropology.

They took very good care of me. The lecture was organized by my friend Katherine, a Goodenough resident, and she had placed flyers on tables throughout the dining hall. A table of undergrads next to us, not knowing who I was, entertained me with jokes about the flyer.

Undergrad (sarcastically): “So John, what is your interpretation of ‘speculative realism.'” With speculative realism said in the same tones as ‘quantum theory’ would be sacrastically uttered. It was a fun moment.

As for the actual talk, I will let you see for yourself once it is on line.

They day before I was at the Architectural Association, where I spoke in April 2007, and they burned me a CD of my lecture,. It is reportedly uncensored, meaning that once it is on line, you will be able to hear a loose cannon of an architect dropping F-bombs on me and one other audience member, trying to nail me on something called “Russell’s categorical imperative”, and finally getting up and trying to charge me while shouting after I said that he could dish it out but not take it. (A friend grabbed him and held him back.)

We all forgave him afterwards and invited him out to dinner to make up, but he and his friend repeated the performance at dinner, which unfortunately is not on tape and hence cannot be podcast. Infinite Thought (the blogger, not infinite thought itself) was also present for these incidents.

Tomorrow I will sweep toward Suffolk after a longish stop in London.