Navigating the Shoals of Oil and Power with Wole Soyinka

Thursday night proved to be an eventful evening with Wole Soyinka. He presented his lecture, Navigating the Shoals of Oil and Power, to a full house at the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. Also in tow was a friend (who refuses to be pictured on my blog for obvious reasons); she is known as the Relentless Pursuant of Pleasure--in other words--the Marquis de Sade. For short, the Marquis. How many of you can say you're friends with the Marquis de Sade? No one? That's what I thought. The Marquis was a helpful accomplice; she pointed out that, although Soyinka's speech was a bit informal, he delivered some brilliant speeches on the BBC Reith Lectures.



I found Thursday night's lecture captivating in that it was as if we were listening to someone tell a story, as opposed to relying on notes. Clearly, he did not plan for a large audience. Soyinka admitted from the start that he expected a "rather small, dour group." (I assumed that to mean U of C students and lepers.) He also promoted his most recent book, a memoir titled You Must Set Forth at Dawn. It's published by Random House, but don't let that bring you down, I'm pretty sure Nan Talese (of James Frey's A Million Little Pieces fame) wasn't behind this book. Bad, Nan! Bad! Stop humping my leg!




The atmosphere allowed for several comical moments, especially when Soyinka pointed out that--due to conflicts surrounding oil--the Delta region in Africa will inevitably explode. He warned, "I feel sorry for you all that you'll have to pay higher prices for gasoline. Fortunately, your scientists are busy trying to extract energy from chewing gum, and so forth." This is true, even George W. Bush mentioned in his 2005 State of the Union address that we will soon be driving cars powered by "wood chips and stalks, or switch grass."



Hilarity ensued when Soyinka mentioned the phrase, "a whole gaggle of generals." Did you know that a "gaggle" is a noun of assemblage usually, but not always, used to refer to a flock of geese. I happen to love nouns of assemblage! From Schott's Original Miscellany I present a few of my favorite nouns of assemblage:

a malapertness of peddlers
a spring of teals
a gang of elk
a murmuration of starlings
a suit of sails
a wilderness of monkeys
a doping of sheldrake
a clutch of eggs
a coven of witches
a staff of servants
a field of runners
a sheaf of arrows
a chattering of choughs
a cete of badgers
a bench of bishops
a murder of crows
a bundle of rags
a barren of mules
a pontification of priests
a rag of colts
a walk of snipe
an exaltation of larks
a muster of peacocks
a desert of lapwing
a drift of swine
a stud of mares
a parliament of rooks & owls
a glozing of taverners
a covey of ptarmigan
a business of ferrets
a drunkenship of cobblers
a sounder of wild boar
a nye of pheasants
a fall of woodcock
a sege of herons
a herd of curlews



Soyinka also pointed out that it would be nice if "somebody would sink a secret pipe to take all of the oil away and force us to use our brains." If that were to happen, I bet the price of wood chips and switch grass would skyrocket!