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[25 Apr 2012|07:46pm] |
[The video flicks on quietly, without pomp and circumstance. In truth, Meredith had considered a little fanfare or even something of a theme song, but on reflection it had seemed a trifle arrogant. Normally arrogance wasn't something that even caught her radar, so for it to register against an ego as large and impervious as Lady Meredith's meant that it had to be an issue. When the camera focused, she was seated behind her desk: her hair pulled back into its usual severe bun, her face impassive. The desk was clearly old, and the back wall was lined with books: if the camera was closer then the observer might have been able to tell that many of the books had been written by her. On the desk was a digital photoframe: it had clearly been turned away from her usual eyeline, which -unfortunately for her- meant that the camera on the opposite side got a clear view of short video file displayed on it.]
Good afternoon - my name, as many of you are aware, is Professor Meredith Cadogan-Snow. In addition to my capacity as a professor of the subject of archeology, I also oversee the everyday affairs of the anthropology department. [She allows herself a small smile: if Meredith is proud of anything, it is her department. If anyone is as important to her as her family, it is her students.] Our department is not as grand as the business school, nor as lucrative as the lawyers...but we have one thing that no other department does. We have heart. We have the weight of history behind us. We study those that have gone before, so that we might better understand ourselves and what may yet be to come. Though the bones may be dusty, and so are a few of the professors -[Here she smirked, a self-deprecating little hand gesture intended to acknowledge her inclusion of that group]- archaeology is a living, breathing discipline that tells us not only from where we have come, but also where we will one day end. All of us, even we reincarnates - we are living, death comes to us, we are birthed anew. In a way, we are living anthropology. I know I am: a career has been made from that very fact. We are stories that were told, that grew in the telling and became distinct from the truth of it.
[Meredith drifted away for a moment, lost in a reverie of her own making. For the briefest second, her eyes flicked towards the photo that she had turned away - then, as if remembering why she had pushed it away, her hard expression returned and she returned to the camera.]
I shall be uploading a number of these videos over the coming weeks and months, in an attempt to allow you to get to know what our department means, what it is for and why it is one of the finest assets this university has. Some I will film here in my office, some from outside with students past and present. I intend even to broadcast once or twice from our summer expedition, allowing viewers to see what it is that we do, up close and -as they say- personal. And let me tell you: there is nothing more personal than holding somebody's skull in your hands while your assistant tries to find their jawbone. [Another tight smile: this is obviously an anecdote rooted in experience.] These videos will also be simulcast on the main external website, allowing prospective students to get a feel for what it means to study at Montenegro University: the first, last, best and only college for reincarnates. I invite current students to add their own comments in the reply section below, knowing that they will comport themselves in a manner that befits the stature of this institution.
For now, however, I should like to leave you with a famous poem. A poem that encapsulates exactly that which we hold highest in our minds: that even the grandest of our achievements will, one day, be nothing more than rubble for future civilisations to sift through. The poem, of course, is Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias".
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
[Meredith's voice was easy to listen to: low and purring, yet somehow as clear, as sharp and as cold as a shard of glass in an ice-cream cone. She smiled again, looking by now as if the act of appearing human was causing her physical pain, and winked a sly farewell. The scene lingered for a second, and then the screen went dark.]
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