Last week I gave a lecture. I had lectured at this place before. Usually there is a room full of maybe 20-30 people. They are bright-eyed, attentive, and a great audience. I hadn’t lectured there in a couple of years. In preparation, the secretary sent me an email and asked if I had any handouts to give to the students. Then she asked, “Do you plan to come in to lecture?” Come in??? I had no idea what she was talking about.
Well, what she was talking about was the fact that they now provide distance learning. Only a few people, if any, were going to be listening in the room. Everyone else was going to be watching and listening in the US, in Canada, in Belgium, in England and who knows where- over their computers.
When I arrived in the venue, I was handed an earphone/microphone and had a camera set up with a monitor and with two computers, one in front of me and one beside me with readouts as to who was listening on two different connections.
Last week, the lecture required a lot of interaction and clarification and by the end of the evening, I was really enjoying talking over the air with these disembodied voices and answering their questions.It was like having my own call-in talk show.
This week, however, it was a bit disconcerting. I was speaking about using humor and metaphor in therapy. Of course it meant that I was telling some jokes. Somehow, telling a joke that people usually enjoy and hearing no one laugh was really strange.
And then I realized the absurdity of the set up. Here I was talking to people who were sitting in front of their computers. They could be doing pretty much anything and I would never know. So as the session drew to an end, I decided to ask. I asked “What are you all doing when I’m talking? I’m just curious. Like are you sitting there eating salami sandwiches? Are you wearing your pajamas?”
All of a sudden I had one of those movie montages in front of my eyes, my voice ringing though empty rooms at scattered locations throughout the world as people sit in bed in their pajamas eating salami sandwiches.
