Free Stuff

On Wednesday I stopped for lunch at a Bangladeshi cafe in the 'bohemian' quarter. There was a leaflet on the table - an offer from 'Quarantine' to pay for lunch "in exchange for a conversation." While puzzling over this I watched two people come into the cafe who turned out to be Quarantine, an experimental theatre company. I decided, as a diversion from my solitary dining experience, to engage with one of them. Asking her the purpose of the offer, her answer was elusive: "We'll just see where it goes," she said. There was to be no audience, no recording, no taking of notes with a view to using the material in a future production, no promise of further contact.

She showed me a 'menu' of conversational topics  from which to choose - starters, mains and afters - and allotted us 30 minutes. The menu made it easy to get started but the conversation was stilted and a little self-conscious, perhaps because of the artificial constraints. Nevertheless, it was a cordial exchange between two strangers talking about Christmas and other celebrations. As we shook hands in conclusion I explained that I had already paid for my lunch at the counter. She didn't offer to reimburse me (perhaps she thought I had given poor value) but it was such a small sum of money that I was embarrassed to press the point: besides, experimental theatre is lamentably under-funded.

I don't know what Quarantine gained from the experience but it left me thinking about the nature of conversation (which may have been their intention). Conversation at its best can be a stimulating and rewarding experience involving wit, intimacy and humour: but it so often isn't. Many times have I endured monologues from people who mistake the sound of their own voice for interactive communication; many times have I sat in company listening to the same point being made repeatedly by a dull round of predictable anecdotes; and many times have I been present (even complicit) when conversations degenerate into emotion-fuelled ranting.

Quarantine call this event No Such Thing , thereby making the point that a lunch may be free of charge will certainly not be free of obligation. But later in the week I did get free beer and free music. I attended the launch of the Modernist Society's revamped magazine, an unstructured event, just a melee of interested people, but it gave me another opportunity to engage in conversation with strangers. My sketchy knowledge of Modernism is a handicap but, thanks partly to the supply of free beer, I succeeded in bluffing through several exchanges without being openly denounced.

When I moved on afterwards to a gig, the free beer had put me in a good enough humour to shrug off the hefty ticket price. I had been lured there by a sales pitch which promised the "much talked about" Hidden Orchestra plus Mind On Fire DJ in a "new live show," a "highly emotive, celluloid-inspired journey through one of the greatest films never made", with special light-projections by Lumen. In the event I was unmoved by the turgid, repetitive, electronically generated music which relied heavily on two drummers to give it life.

I stuck it out until the interval when I decided to cut my losses and go to another venue where, in contrast, free entry gave me access to a more satisfying experience - acoustic gypsy jazz - enthusiastically played and sung by three smiling, engaging and skilled performers. Measured by my 'quality of conversation' criteria, the first gig was a monotonous monologue, the second an uplifting interaction.

Of course I don't claim that all free music is good music, and it is evident that all conversation is free but not necessarily good, but I have yet to find the downside to free beer.