Slightly Haunted "Q&A" Audio Fiction Piece

Colorful outtake from 2019

Ahhh, my earliest memories of being in the crowd whilst unscripted adults yammered…

It was, of course, church, I speak of.

After the sermon, and before the song and offering-passing — were the weekly prayer requests during the back half of 11.00 a.m. Sunday worship. Oh man.

The randomness of it. Any adult in the crowd could stand and share. Fascinating. Who was in charge? Who’d go next?

Whatever they’d say — it could be short and sweet. But really, there was a possibility of someone saying something weird, or saying something normal in a weird way. Or, possibly crying, possibly making a joke, or forgetting the point of what they were bringing up.

YES.

I would zoom in to the look at the face of the pastor. Could he handle it?

Are you kidding?

More than handle it. Professional. Fully moored. Altruist. Alchemist. Alouette, gentille alouette.

Later, I got similar vibes watching TV talk shows. This was mostly over-my-head episodes of Donahue. But I liked the similar feel: straight man/expert vs. waves of expression/questions/concerns/accusations.

I’m still going. I work at a large college, and a large department within that college. All the lectures, meetings, town halls, assemblies I could really imagine going to — I go to. Often, but not always, mandatory.

» Allll the Q’s and alll the A’s.

Sometimes. SOMETIMES. I’ll even ask a question.

I also go to book signings and occasional neighborhood meetings. It’s all tied to the same thing:

“What is going to happen if someone asks something strange?”

And so bring you this short, literary musical piece, first formed in 2019, “Q&A” (embedded below, you can just click it).

It’s a song, sort of. It’s really more a collection of voices — including mine as the “host” - type person. I scraped a lot of audio from a lot of random YouTube and podcast sites back when I was weirdly pursuing what was possible. Up until the last draft, I even had a different “moderator” talking — saying everything that “I” say here. But it seemed better if I did that part.

None of these people in the clip were ever in the same room. I don’t know who they are. They certainly don’t know who I am. But in this piece, we shared a few moments.

It’s weird.

It’s Halloween.

Someone said online today that they were nervous about the season finale for America — coming Tuesday, Nov 5th, 2024 (Election Day).

Yep. That’s got me feeling a bit crazy also.

Thoughts?

Feel free to leave a “like”below — and/or any comment of any kind. Thank you!

Geoffrey

p.s. full transcript below.

Q&A

Can we get this one over here? This is my friend.

In the margin expansion—I think you mentioned productivity initiatives. How much more productive can they be? What are the sources of that productivity?

Let’s hold that… And then, we’ll get you, ma’am.

Thank you. I truly appreciate your authenticity. It was very, very wonderful to hear. I apologize, I’m sure my question is going to sound childlike because I didn’t even know half of the people you were even talking about. My question is, most of this sounds very full frontal lobe, very low or no amygdala. And you’re talkin’—like, with my kids, I see a lot of happiness yet they’re working out of amygdala, not out of full frontal.

When we think of these of these governments in the region we often think of the foreign minister or the president. But for the average citizen, the government is the police officers or the municipalities and the police or municipalities are often quite predatory.

  You made the statement twice that you get something that The Street doesn’t.  Once: for the debt. Once: for they don’t appreciate the emerging market opportunity. Can you give some more substance to that claim? 

I think about what Vladimir Ilyich Lenin said when he said that decades pass and nothing happens. And suddenly weeks pass, and decades happen.

I have one question that there was so much about fears. Was fear so widely studied because simply it is the emotion which is extreme and that’s why it was studied so easily? Or, was it so often just from the precise reason that it is easy to observe fear as far as, for example, rats are concerned? The process of learning could be, I mean, quite gloomy for me.

Yeah, so, what we’re seeing is a dramatic reordering. It defies real prediction. Earlier today one of the students asked me about what I thought was going to happen. And I like to quote Yogi Berra, who said, “I don’t like to make predictions, especially about the future.”