Laur Kaunissaare is an Estonian dramaturge. He attended Lecture For Every One at the Estonian Public Broadcasting.
So there they are. Sitting around a simple table. People running Estonian public broadcasting. It could have been a meeting somewhere else, but it’s this one, so it’s interesting to think about the connotations here.
Normal people sitting around a normal table. People you feel you know, although you don’t. Half of them women, even more than half, if I counted right, which clearly, is good.
A morning meeting on a damp and rainy day. People gather slowly, get their coffee mug, find a chair, choose who to sit next to this morning. A normal day like any other, a day one will probably not remember afterwards.
Or maybe they will. Perceiving this lecture by Sarah Vanhee that precedes today’s meeting is very personal, so somebody witnessing others experiencing it, like me, has no way of knowing what kind of an effect, if any, the lecture has made. It’s a lecture between banality and sincerity. About making people realize their power of changing the course of events, privately and globally. This kind of message has been told countless times, so it’s all about how to tell it without falling into banality. Maybe this is the way we live now, longing for sincerity, fearing banality. People around this table are between loosing themselves in the lecture, and leaning back politely, slightly bored. After all, working in the media, they’ve heard it all. I guess we all have, nowadays.
It’s an attempt to raise awareness, this lecture, this performance. It’s being performed in meetings around the world. In a way maybe it tries to change the world, at least encourage us all to do it. “Lecture For Every One” is naive, idealist, minimalist, maximalist, there are many adjectives. But it’s also very conscious of itself. Which is one of its weaknesses. Which makes it very contemporary. I think this is how people feel now, at least in what we call West, very conscious of themselves. At least that is how it felt in this meeting, on that damp morning in Estonian public broadcasting.