By Lida Prypchan
Ladies and gentlemen: I am an historian and, although I’ve lived in Spain for over thirty years, I was born right here in this city. Today, as we are celebrating its bicentennial, I have been invited to speak to you on this special occasion. Let me assure you that I’m known in my profession for being concise as well as eloquent, and have no tendency for making long, monotonous speeches that give the audience more to sweat about than to think about. As I mentioned already, I was born in this city and, if you’ll excuse me for being blunt, at the age of twenty-three experienced a dire need to get away from here.
Why did I have to get out? I felt stifled by the sheer tedium and lack of concern in this city. I never considered it home and never cared for it. I had an affection for a mere handful of people who lived here: they were rare beings who appeared out of nowhere like phantoms without bearing in the midst of a somnolent population, which had no interests, no imagination, no progress, no joy, nothing new to say and nowhere new to go – not even any hostilities to at least provide a distraction. It was a world full of conformists and indifferent beings that were not even aware of their depressing lethargy.
In a dull and oppressive atmosphere such as this, quite inappropriate for a young person with a yen for life, it was inevitable that my yearnings should turn into despair and that I should become obsessed with the tempting idea of suicide. Somehow or other I had to get clean away from this suffocating boredom! One of the human soul’s seven deadly sins, I am convinced, is the desire not to do anything – and I only wish I could eradicate it! Suffering would be a thousand times preferable to finding me face to face with my enemy, Tedium. Once a person is afflicted with this, there’s absolutely nothing more to be done, because everything, absolutely everything, seems dull and irrelevant. At least when a person is in pain he has something with which to occupy himself – his suffering- and also a subject for later complaint. I know very well you’ll think my former problem was merely personal and not related to the environment. You’ll surely say, “Things aren’t boring, it’s people who are boring.” And my reply is, “things aren’t boring, things are worse than boring.”
In fact I’ll give you an example: I remember a professor who used to like to lecture us on how to be a man or a good husband. When he did that, I’d yawn a thousand times a minute, because over the years’ experience has taught me that a man who suffers from the verbal diarrhea of “conjugitis” often gets his kicks from slapping his beloved wife around when he gets back home at night. So, what’s the purpose of all his sermons on morals and good behavior?
Well, to get back to the subject: at that time, this town was very set in its ways. The inhabitants were in the habit of dressing up for the evening, or rather, taking off their daytime guise. The only ones who didn’t and there weren’t many, were women married to cave men, who led them to believe they were still wearing their masks. These poor women, in deference to boredom, dedicated their lives to frenzies of eating, and then to dieting on unsweetened grapefruit juice so they wouldn’t get fat. The babies, true to type, spent their childhood singing and screaming. The teenagers, oddly enough, confined themselves to fighting with their elders and then blaming the generation gap. Basically, everyone was seeking their own release from the humdrum existence of their daily lives, but the awful thing was that there was no remedy!
As far as I can remember about the public services, the most imaginative contribution was that made by City Council. As they were well aware that something had to be done to solve the problem of boredom, they created streets and avenues full of potholes so the citizenry could appreciate the rich subsoil. Their cars ended up in the junk pile, but the experience was worthwhile because it provided a unique and quite sensational insight.
This is why, ladies and gentlemen, I entitled this speech “The City of Tedium”.
