A gathering of right brainers.
Somewhere west of Bathurst on Dundas there's small art gallery showing art (art in an art gallery??? why, that's odd). So okay I really wasn't sure what to make of it. I'm not exactly the wine and cheese type who goes to these things to brush up on my art history. As a left brained person or at least someone that went through the whole computer science thing through school going to a right brained artsie fartsie event always seemed a bit challenging to me for some reason.
I still have bad memories of John (aka Uncaringbear) telling me a bench was part of an art exhibit after I sat down on it. I jumped up like I sat on something of high voltage. Laughter all around. Later on I'd visit another gallery, sit down, someone told me it was art, I said "sure.. ha ha... very funny", only to find out it was art. I suppose the rule to gallerys is to never sit down or if you have to bring your own seat. Note: They have these canes that turn into a three legged stool.
This particular event was different in that I didn't know anyone there. Anna-lea, the person that invited me, hadn't shown up yet. As there wasn't a lot of people in the gallery yet, it was around 7:00pm, I wandered around looking at the macabre paintings. At first they looked like any everyday scene. Some people waiting in a room. Upon closer inspection some of the people in the painting looked crazy, dead, or in some weird drugged out state. yeeeah... that's cheerful.
"Hey, Derek.". I turned around it was Lynn, a person I met at another networking function. We talked a bit. She was exhausted from previous outings and as a result had almost no energy to continue meeting people. I suggested that since I didn't know anyone in the room we could meet people together.
We scanned the room looking for our target. As far as interrupting a conversation or introducing oneself or selves the etiquette is that you find a group of three or more people or a single person, never two people by themselves engaged in conversation. We singled out a woman by herself. She was standing up against the wall next to a painting and looking around.
Deirdre stands alone.
Her name was Deirdre. That was all the information we got out of her before Lynn excused herself to go home to get some sleep. Turns out this Deirdre was waiting for a "Kate" to show up and was contemplating leaving as she'd been waiting for over half an hour. I asked her to describe this "Kate". Since I was a bit taller I could look over the crowd and see if anyone matched the description. "Kate" was described having a height slightly shorter than me, dark eyes, was very animated, and tended to wear brown. A quick scan of the room revealed no matching results.
Deirdre eventually left and about five minutes later I noticed Anna-lea outside biking up to the gallery. There were a few people hanging outside chatting. By this time the gallery was crowded and getting a bit warm for my liking. Getting outside I met some people started talking and we all eventually made our way back inside once the crowd started to thin.
"Hi, I'm Julia the Matchmaker.". I looked at the card shoved into my hand. It checked out. Indeed the card read the same thing. "Hi, I'm Kate". Another card. Then it clicked. "Kate!". I asked if they were looking for a Deirdre. She said she was really late and seemed apologetic. I was going to give her the one, two, punch speech about tardiness while showing the picture of Deirdre by herself in the crowd. Julia told me to go easy on her as Kate felt bad enough already. Yes, she had that guilt ridden look to her. Geez, I felt terrible.
Julia, Anna-lea, and Kate
"Gay or straight?". What? Where did that question come from? I looked at Julia where the words seemed to come from, then to Kate who seemed to think this was a normal thing, then back to Julia. "Are you gay or straight?". Oh, she was asking me my sexual orientation. "Straight." I answered back "Chinese or Caucasian?". Eh? what? "What's your preference? Were you born here?" The barrage of questioning took me a little off guard. I looked over to Kate with the "Is this normal" look.
After what seemed like a few minutes of interrogation the answer was "Kelly". Julia had made a match. "Kelly" was a photographer's assistant that she thought I should meet. She seemed to be beaming at the idea. Her face was practically glowing. After her job with me was done she went across the room to hook Cheryl up with some guy in Arizona.
Kate figures out what 24 frame playback is.
That left me talking with Kate. At one point Anna-Lea and I were trying to describe to Kate what 24 frame playback was as a job. It was a concept that we had some difficulty getting across. Not that Kate is dim witted, far from it. She seemed pretty quick and alert, you could almost see that hamster wheel spinning in her head, eyes darting back and forth, absorbing the poorly described information like a dried out sponge that had just been dropped in water. She was sifting through all the data trying to make sense of what we were saying.
It was the way words just fumbled out of our mouths. I kept thinking "This really isn't getting us anywhere. My descriptive powers are really sucking today.". After back pedaling a bit and switching descriptive tactics we started getting through. Watching Kate, as the light bulb came on was incredible, like a Shakespearian stage actor she used her whole body to help articulate the ideas floating through her head. Arms moving. Body flailing. Legs wide apart. Big gestures. I found it incredibly amusing and in the back of my mind wondered if she did Kirk monologues.
The night seemed to end pretty quickly after that. I was glad that I forced myself to go out. Meeting all the people tonight got me out of my birthday (or lack of one) slump.
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