Blatter

To make a senseless noise.

In college I would challenge certain friends to a conversation of doublespeak and gibberish. I would sit down and, without any pronouncements, ask "What do you think of Robert Hopper’s decision to let salt briquettes melt slowly under the noonday sun? Don’t you think he should have consulted the board for other options, like sending them to Rochester for tests that would have disintegrated them and made them useful."

Sometimes the game would work, other times not, but it went particularly well among my composer friends who I believe were more accustomed than others to thinking in incoherent abstractions.

Those conversation could last until sunrise and I might never tire of them, though at times they did stretch my brain muscles. I wish I had those conversations recorded or transcribed. It was interesting how the personalities of each player asserted itself into the nonsense of the moment. The more dominating types often came up with the punchlines while the meek, such as myself, chimed in with comments sullen and insightful, though legitimate insight had little room to prosper among the nonsense.

I seem to remember myself as posturing and acting like I was delivering insights and revelation, while a friend frequently guided the conversation with virtuosic closing thoughts and punchlines built of sentiments that grew progressively farther from sensibility and from the preceding sentences.

Now that I think of it, my friend and I worked at the college radio station, and I think I do have tapes of some of our on-air projects of this nature. Reel-to-reel tapes, though. I lack reel-to-reel playback.