The Voice in the Black Fedora
My final stop in my short trip in Tasmania was Hobart, the arse-end of the state that is the arse-end of the country that is the arse-end of the world. In the few days I stayed in the state’s capital I explored historical Battery Point, wandered endlessly around town, climbed Mount Wellington, enjoyed a city tour and watched Shakespeare in the Botanical Gardens. My final day, though, began like any other and I hoped it to be a slow decrescendo towards my eventual plane flight home in the late afternoon.
After checking out of my hostel in the morning I headed towards TMAG - the Tasmania Museum and Art Gallery - or as I like to think of it, MONA for plebs. After exploring the museum for a bit the P.A. announced that there was a tour starting in a few minutes time. Assuming this was a museum tour and with nothing to lose, I headed towards the meeting spot. Arriving at a time that I thought was early, I was instantly overwhelmed by a flock of impatient geriatrics - I was definitely in the right spot. As the tour began it appeared the tour was not a museum tour at all but rather a historical tour of one of the old cottages on the museum grounds. The volunteer guide asked if everyone had put money in their parking meters as we were headed toward a different section of the museum. Instantly, conversation erupted as the elderly couples bonded over the topic of metered parking and the fines that arise out of it. One individual asserted that their friend had received a $58 fine a couple of days prior. Conversation bubbled over in response. Though, out from behind the pack of conversationalists a voice interrupted with a soft-spoken-yet-commanding tone. “$58?” the voice said, “that’s nothing, may as well just pay the fine and get free parking. I spend $58 on breakfast.” His comment was followed by a sly chuckle, much like the chuckle a malevolent monarch would give while watching their court jester die in a fiery inferno due to an onstage mishap.
The voice wore a navy sports jacket with grey dress pants and formal black, wing-tip shoes. Inside the jacket hid a black waistcoat and behind that, and most saliently, a dark blue turtleneck poked out with the voice’s unexcitable face resting on top of it. A smirk was slowly being pressed out of the face towards the surface. Perched on the voice’s nose were his spectacles which were overshadowed by the opened clip-on sunglasses hinged at their top. To finish off the look, a black fedora. All in all, the voice was dressed in a way to brag about wealth but only so much wealth that this boastfulness would have to be contained to a dozen grey, British tourists attending a free tour at a museum with free admission.
Throughout the tour, the voice confirmed each delicate fact given by the guide with an affirmative nod. Not a nod that said “Ahh, how interesting” but rather “I approve of this, you are correct.” The voice even did us the pleasure of occasionally adding his own facts without us even having to ask. The guide could be mid-sentence and the voice would appear with his own special additions, additions which I welcomed like a member of the Klan at a gay pride festival. If ever there was a book or historical film the guide asked if anyone had read or seen or if there was ever a story or place the guide asked anyone had heard of or been to, the voice had read it, saw it, been to it and knew all about it.
At one point the guide interacted with the group by saying what would happen to members of the group had they been convicts, based on superficial features. One woman on the tour, for instance, would have received lots of money for her long, flowing hair had it been cut off. This was the voice’s wife, though, and he was having none of this. Speaking at a volume quiet enough to be considering muttering to himself but loud enough so that everyone could hear, the voice declared “she would not have been a convict!” The voice, of course, was offended by the accusation that someone who could afford badly coordinated turtlenecks and the cost of admission to a free museum would be married to a person who might steal a loaf of bread during a period of mass impoverishment due to lack of equality of opportunity.
However the voice’s solemn anger reached its pinnacle toward the end of the tour. Our guide was discussing with some of the other tourists the state of convict conditions and the lack of sanitation, hygiene and food and the surplus of illness, hard labour and inhumane living conditions. She particularly noted the young age of some of these convicts - some as young as eight or nine years old. The voice, with his calm, confident demeanour had had enough of his three and a half minutes silence. He had had enough of the guide’s liberal editorialising of history and attempts to humanise children. With burgeoning intensity, his head squeezing out of the top of his turtleneck, the voice declared “but they were all convicts,” as if his argument was self-explanatory. The guide, unhindered, retorted that some of ‘crimes’ committed by the children would have been petty, like stealing a loaf of bread. The voice was unconvinced and he was not done. And so began the moment we'd all been waiting for - the voice’s climactic soliloquy. In his long monologue explained his constant displeasure of historians characterisations of “these poor convicts” and how we need to judge them as criminals based on the views of crime and justice of their time. At least that's what I think his argument was. I couldn't really tell because the voice merely just tried to fill space with esoteric language and mentions of the books his read and the historical figures he knew about. I was quite offended because I thought use overly complicated language to substantiate an insubstantial argument was my thing.
In any case, the tour, after a short while, ended. I did enjoy my time in Hobart I just have not really expressed that here. I soon after left the museum and, later in the afternoon, left Hobart. The voice left the museum and went to go pay his parking fine.
After checking out of my hostel in the morning I headed towards TMAG - the Tasmania Museum and Art Gallery - or as I like to think of it, MONA for plebs. After exploring the museum for a bit the P.A. announced that there was a tour starting in a few minutes time. Assuming this was a museum tour and with nothing to lose, I headed towards the meeting spot. Arriving at a time that I thought was early, I was instantly overwhelmed by a flock of impatient geriatrics - I was definitely in the right spot. As the tour began it appeared the tour was not a museum tour at all but rather a historical tour of one of the old cottages on the museum grounds. The volunteer guide asked if everyone had put money in their parking meters as we were headed toward a different section of the museum. Instantly, conversation erupted as the elderly couples bonded over the topic of metered parking and the fines that arise out of it. One individual asserted that their friend had received a $58 fine a couple of days prior. Conversation bubbled over in response. Though, out from behind the pack of conversationalists a voice interrupted with a soft-spoken-yet-commanding tone. “$58?” the voice said, “that’s nothing, may as well just pay the fine and get free parking. I spend $58 on breakfast.” His comment was followed by a sly chuckle, much like the chuckle a malevolent monarch would give while watching their court jester die in a fiery inferno due to an onstage mishap.
The voice wore a navy sports jacket with grey dress pants and formal black, wing-tip shoes. Inside the jacket hid a black waistcoat and behind that, and most saliently, a dark blue turtleneck poked out with the voice’s unexcitable face resting on top of it. A smirk was slowly being pressed out of the face towards the surface. Perched on the voice’s nose were his spectacles which were overshadowed by the opened clip-on sunglasses hinged at their top. To finish off the look, a black fedora. All in all, the voice was dressed in a way to brag about wealth but only so much wealth that this boastfulness would have to be contained to a dozen grey, British tourists attending a free tour at a museum with free admission.
Throughout the tour, the voice confirmed each delicate fact given by the guide with an affirmative nod. Not a nod that said “Ahh, how interesting” but rather “I approve of this, you are correct.” The voice even did us the pleasure of occasionally adding his own facts without us even having to ask. The guide could be mid-sentence and the voice would appear with his own special additions, additions which I welcomed like a member of the Klan at a gay pride festival. If ever there was a book or historical film the guide asked if anyone had read or seen or if there was ever a story or place the guide asked anyone had heard of or been to, the voice had read it, saw it, been to it and knew all about it.
At one point the guide interacted with the group by saying what would happen to members of the group had they been convicts, based on superficial features. One woman on the tour, for instance, would have received lots of money for her long, flowing hair had it been cut off. This was the voice’s wife, though, and he was having none of this. Speaking at a volume quiet enough to be considering muttering to himself but loud enough so that everyone could hear, the voice declared “she would not have been a convict!” The voice, of course, was offended by the accusation that someone who could afford badly coordinated turtlenecks and the cost of admission to a free museum would be married to a person who might steal a loaf of bread during a period of mass impoverishment due to lack of equality of opportunity.
However the voice’s solemn anger reached its pinnacle toward the end of the tour. Our guide was discussing with some of the other tourists the state of convict conditions and the lack of sanitation, hygiene and food and the surplus of illness, hard labour and inhumane living conditions. She particularly noted the young age of some of these convicts - some as young as eight or nine years old. The voice, with his calm, confident demeanour had had enough of his three and a half minutes silence. He had had enough of the guide’s liberal editorialising of history and attempts to humanise children. With burgeoning intensity, his head squeezing out of the top of his turtleneck, the voice declared “but they were all convicts,” as if his argument was self-explanatory. The guide, unhindered, retorted that some of ‘crimes’ committed by the children would have been petty, like stealing a loaf of bread. The voice was unconvinced and he was not done. And so began the moment we'd all been waiting for - the voice’s climactic soliloquy. In his long monologue explained his constant displeasure of historians characterisations of “these poor convicts” and how we need to judge them as criminals based on the views of crime and justice of their time. At least that's what I think his argument was. I couldn't really tell because the voice merely just tried to fill space with esoteric language and mentions of the books his read and the historical figures he knew about. I was quite offended because I thought use overly complicated language to substantiate an insubstantial argument was my thing.
In any case, the tour, after a short while, ended. I did enjoy my time in Hobart I just have not really expressed that here. I soon after left the museum and, later in the afternoon, left Hobart. The voice left the museum and went to go pay his parking fine.
