It seemed like English. The letters appeared on the slightly out of focus screen, all straight lines and curves just as we had learnt to write them at school but it wasn’t the letters that were the problem, it was the words, they just didn’t make sense. It was a presentation but it was filled with technical jargon and topped up with initials and acronyms, not just three letter ones but four, five and six. It was written in quasi-legalise and it was verbose, overly ornate and stretched its clichés to breaking point. Even the diagrams didn’t help; their colour had bled away as if even the projector had given up trying to understand. Oranges became ochre, browns became beige and it all merged into a muddy confusion.
The room was hot and stuffy. The curtains had been drawn to dim the light and the projector and the lap tops whirred away giving a constant background note to the presentation, a soporific and mesmeric hum that didn’t help how we all felt. We held our heads in our hands and strained our eyes to focus on the words that swirled and danced in front of our faces and we tried to make sense of what they were saying. The flow was lost, hung up on acronyms that stuck in our minds like an embolism, a moment’s hesitation and the thread was gone.
Someone asked a question and there was a brief opportunity to catch up. A joke was made and we laughed and shuffled in our seats. Ties were straightened and the men ran their fingers through their hair but there was more to come. The presentation started again; there was another slide and another and another. With each turn of the deck the more everyone hoped it would be the last but they still kept coming and the room kept getting hotter and the machines kept humming. A sip of coffee or a glass of water made no difference but then a window was opened and a cool draft crept through the air. The heat escaped in a mad dash, driven by an innate need to increase entropy or was it just in a mad dash to leave the discussion behind? The heat could get away but we were stuck.
We rubbed our eyes and cracked our knuckles, doing whatever we could to remain attentive. We rearranged our pens on the table in front of us again though they hadn’t moved for over an hour and we fought the urge to reach for our phones to check for any email, for any small crumb of comfort. And then, as suddenly as it had begun the last slide appeared saying any questions and that was it. The presentation was over; we had got the gist but not the detail; we had got the outline but it wasn’t filled in; we had seen the words but had completely failed to understand the English, if indeed that is what it was. Were we really the audience that this was aimed at?
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 