Irony occurs when there are two different perspectives occurring simultaneously, one of which undercuts the other. Dramatic irony is generated during the performance of a play when we - the audience - know something that a character or characters is/are ignorant of. It can be comic or tragic, depending on the outcome of the way the ignorance operates in the specific world of the story.
Human relationships are such that irony is often generated by the difference between what people reveal and what they conceal, between what they feel and what they say, between what they admit and what they deny, and between what they believe and the way it differs from the reality they are faced with.
Expectations we entertain and fuel about a situation create a reality which does not match the actual event when we experience it. That’s ironic too. We look back in the 20/20 vision of hindsight and wonder what we were thinking!
A funeral eulogy for example, given to praise and commemorate a person’s life after they have departed this life, may be experienced by some of those hearing it said or reading it in the papers as quite different from the person they have known themselves. I am not referring here to hypocritical people, great pretenders or celebrated con artists and confidence tricksters, but to the fact that hardly anyone sees exactly the same qualities in people as others do.
Depending on our own unique qualities and the dynamics of our relationships with the person, we may be surprised or even frankly disbelieving when we hear someone who we ourselves have a low opinion of, being publicly praised. And conversely shocked if we hear a person we admire or who has a good general reputation being attacked or denigrated on social media.
Most Sri Lankan people - even in this age of casual villification of others on Facebook and WhatsApp groups - will probably think it uncouth and in bad taste to comment negatively after a person has died. But this is not true of the living, who seem to be fair game, in open season.
Recently I have seen a flurry of birthday messages being sent to a former acquaintance of mine who is a public figure. I knew her in our brief friendship to be a person of great professional dedication, with some endearing and relatable personal qualities which make her very popular among the social media aficionadi of the country.
Unfortunately, I did not join in publicly hailing her because we no longer know each other, despite the many things on paper we have in common: a love of food, a love of good literature, and a love of creativity among them. Under normal circumstances, these preferences count so highly with me that anyone who combines all three would be in excellent standing for life.
And here we come to the contrast between theory and practice, expectation and reality, where irony operates. I write this somewhat sad story with the hope that it will - perhaps - protect others from the personal disappointment I have felt. Like-minded people befriend each other, right? That makes sense. But that is sometimes not reflected in actual events. People say one thing and do the opposite. The social masks they wear and the camouflage these create make it hard to discern their core values and true incompatibilities.
My friend and I were members of a writing group, whose leaders professed to create an inclusive and encouraging forum in which creative writers could share their work with each other, by reading it out loud: not performed with a microphone at an ‘open mic’ session at a cafe, but in the less public and more intimate circle of an unpretentious and reasonably priced lowbrow coffee house, which (endearingly) served items like toasted Marmite sandwiches on the menu.
It was important that it was affordable to all, because creative writers are notoriously underpaid. A high end place would have been out of reach for many. The diverse social backgrounds we all came from added to the positive impression the first sessions I attended made on me.
The sessions occurred regularly once a month, and an email ‘summing up’ of what was discussed was sent to those who could not attend, written with a flourish and a sense of verve by one of the convenors.
The lady I describe was one of the best writers in the group, in my opinion, and her genuine love for poetry and her supportive and encouraging nature was evident in the way she participated as an active listener of others’ work, as well as the way she contributed her own wry, elliptical pieces.
Unfortunately, quite early on in the sequence of the year, one of the convenors took a personal dislike to me, as he apparently did to people from time to time, and his dislike started to express itself in anti-elitist diatribes and pointedly provocative political rants, which I felt were out of place in a supposedly inclusive group, which ideally should be apolitical or multi-political in approach rather than slanted and skewed by personal bias.
Not content to merely make verbal jabs in session, this convenor then started to make thinly veiled personal comments in the public emails as well, commenting on the ‘cocooned existence of the privileged’, among whose despised numbers he classified me. As many people who experience harassment in Sri Lanka will tell you, although at the time I found it surprising and quite inexplicable, being new to the phenomenon, it was absolutely to be expected that no one witnessing this tried to shut him down or challenge or question his unpleasant and apparently compulsive attacking behaviour. Their silence was spineless, compliant and conformist - to not interfere, to not breach the public peace, to not get involved, to not take a stand, to not directly confront what was obviously wrong in the conduct of an authority figure. To evade, to elide, to ignore, to erase. To hope it would all resolve itself with no effort on their part. To not raise their voice, or raise a finger.
My friend, a peacemaker at heart, and a special favourite of his, offered to speak to him and get him to desist in his self indulgent declamations, which had become a sort of bullying behaviour which must have been (to some) as unpleasant to witness as it was to experience.
Unfortunately, her initial efforts caused an escalation in his behaviour, and in my frustrated response to it, as one of her attempts to remonstrate with him took place in front of several other members of the group instead of privately. He - as many compulsively provocative artistes pride themselves on doing - reserved the right to exercise his freedom of self expression as one of the few remaining rights a capitalist society afforded him.
As a result, far more people got to hear his ugly opinions in a public space than would have been given access if she had spoken to him privately at his home - which is what I would have done in her place, to limit the ongoing damage to my friend’s reputation.
I was surprised that a man of his age and in the position of authority that he held would behave in such a divisive way, so clearly abusive and disrespectful of his responsibilities as a self styled mentor. But I was told by several people that ‘this was just the way he is’, ‘that’s just his way of doing things’ - and to ignore it. He would soon find someone else to target. He always had.
My well meaning, mediating friend told me (unfortunately somewhat tactlessly, insultingly and repeatedly) not to ‘wallow’ in the negativity of the situation. I found this a very dismissive and belittling thing to say, since what I expressly wanted (in my view) was very simple: for the manifestly negative behaviour of the group convenor to stop, and for the forum to continue as it had, for the benefit of all. I had believed their stated aim, to promote creativity.
My expressing my frustration at her characterisation of my attitude directly to her was - ironically - felt to be unattractive and unnecessarily aggressive. I think she had expected me to be deferential and humble. She misunderstood my anger at the inexplicable overall situation as ingratitude towards her efforts. More ‘wallowing’ was projected onto me, when all I had ever wanted - ironically - was to progress from this unwanted and unforeseen unpleasantness into greater literary productivity.
I was baffled by the acceptance and normalization of this sort of pettiness and brazen political bias in a supposedly creative community. Assured it was the way it always had been, and always would be, and that ‘everyone just had to live with it, and accept it, because that’s (ironically) how a co-operative works’, I left.
The Covid 19 crisis has since intervened to disrupt these kinds of face to face meetings, and in the years since I left that group I have found other far more dynamic and better facilitated and more effectively-led creative writing groups, of which I am an enthusiastic and productive member. My creativity has happily flourished.
That group have since apparently moved to other venues, and I remain in contact with some members of that group who are fellow literary lovers. But it was unfortunate that in their propping up the egoistic displays of the grand old party, as it was then, that the opposite of the stated aim of the group was so ironically affirmed. It was not inclusive. It was exclusive. And it was not come one, come all. If you weren’t the ‘right kind’ of writer, having hustled or suffered or struggled in the approved way, then those very material facts and issues would operate against you.
People like that see everything about you, but not the actual you. They register stereotypes and biases and facile assumptions and what they themselves project, but not the essence of what they look at, obscured by all these distorting frames.
It was - ironically - an exact replica of the gatekeeping antics that the convenor continually complained about as unjust and oppressive in the hegemonies of the wider world; which he often loudly lamented had excluded him and his tribe and - ironically - conferred on him by doing so the Romantic Status Of The Eternal Outsider, which many poets justly embrace.
I am probably one of the few people in this city who have seen the not-so-nice side of the people concerned in this incident. It’s not that they pretend to be different from what they appear to be, exactly. It’s just that - over time - and under pressure - we all show everything that we are. And sometimes those qualities are paradoxical and contradictory.
Far from ‘wallowing’, I haven’t thought much about this group for 3 years. But I remember this person on her birthday, and raise a glass of unblushing wine to my former friend. May she be well, and well fed - and safe and happy - despite the conduct of some of the company she chooses to keep.
I later wrote a poem about the errant facilitator of that little cabal. But it was just sarcastic, and scornful, and had no internal music. It didn’t take flight and spiral into harmonics the way some of my better works of writing do. I think, looking back now, this was probably caused by the limitations of the chosen subject matter.
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