Trampoline Hall - The Origins Of Everyday Expressions

I describe Trampoline Hall to my friends as "random lectures, on random subjects by random smartasses."

On November 15th 2004 the random smartass was me, the random lecture was entitled "Why do we say that?" and the random subject was "the origins of everyday expressions".

Trampoline Hall is the brain child of Sheila Heti, It's an art-house / bookish-kid / nouveux-beatnik thing that takes place every month in Toronto (and sometimes New York) where people get up and give lectures on subjects they may have researched, but are not professionally experts on. If you've ever enjoyed it when a friend goes absolutely nuts explaining some obscure facts about marbles or something they cared about as a kid, then you can understand the appeal. The idea, I suppose, is that if you care enough to go investigating into a subject that isn't your job, then it's obviously something you're passionate about and that can frequently translate into a highly informative and entertaining exchange of information.

It's one of those things that's very difficult to explain to someone. I can go on and on about how amazing it is to go buy tickets to the event and end up holding a hand numbered engraved matchstick, or a twig wrapped in ribbon... I can prattle on and on about how cool as it is to have the theme, the flyer, and the website be something completely different every single month... I can gush for hours about how fascinating I found learning about Indian carpenters and the chairs they made for their British imperialist oppressors, the hundreds of thousands of ways we use the number 32, or a billion other random topics but in the end nothing I can ever say will do the event justice.

It's a labour of love that exists solely because some people out there still care, I consider myself privileged that I was allowed to speak, especially considering how the current mayor of Toronto was one of the previous lectures. I tried my best to honour the event with the absolute best lecture I could possibly do and I attempted to hone my abundant passion for the subject into something entertaining as well as informative.

Honestly my only regret is that due to the insatiable demand to lecture, there are no repeat speakers allowed and I will not be able to do it again.

So without further ado, I am very pleased and proud to present an audio recording of the event:

Trampoline Hall - November 15th 2004

Post mortem:

I wasn't sure if I was ever going to put this up on my site because there was there some pretty severe speed bumps. I seriously stumbled over my words a few times, some stammering and babbling repetition, and the absolutely SAVAGE question and answer period that followed it where I got beaten up like the freckled kid at recess, but in retrospect I am quite proud and I can honestly say I find making a room full of strangers laugh incredibly intoxicating.

Despite the fact that the lecture will always be what was said on that day, I'm also posting the original text because a lack of preparation, time constraints and my inability to use a flash card as notes properly caused me to skip some rather key segues, ruining the structure that I genuinely feel is the strongest part of the entire thing and I'd like that to be recorded for my own selfish reasons.

While the recording of the lecture is an almost tolerable twenty minutes long, it was condensed via on the fly editing and some almost absurdly fast speaking, so the full text is absolutely massive and I would only recommend reading it if you found the lecture to be incredibly enjoyable and you're one of those people who listen to the directors commentary when you rent a movie. Also, I suppose you could feel free to read along to the recording and note just how much stuff I missed.

I'd like to thank Sheila and Misha for the opportunity, all the books and websites I used for my research and my friends and my sisters for showing up, except Kirk whose outrageous cheering when I came out totally threw me for a loop. Hello, Hi... I'm giving a lecture not throwing a game winning touchdown.

Additional Materials:

The Written Text
A picture taken at the event (thanks Ryan)
The absolutely brutal question and answer period (thanks hecklers)