If the multitude of establishment executives spent one half the time spent at cocktail parties doing something constructive or creative Guyana would be an infinitely better place. In fact, there is probably enough cocktail time in a couple of years to increase GDP by 2% per year or write a few novels the length of War and Peace and still have quite a few hours to spare.
Cocktail parties are a big mystery. What purpose do about 95% of them really serve? Surely not to entertain friends. That can be done infinitely better at quiet, small dinners. Surely not to transact business. We have offices for that. Certainly they are useful in spreading gossip and scandal far and wide but then ladies’ hairdressing salons do that much better anyway. If you have visiting clients I suppose a cocktail party can be helpful if you want to confuse them completely with a multitude of names they will never remember and a hundred faces they will immediately forget. But what else?
Are cocktail parties held then for the sake of good conversation? Are they the sign perhaps of a cultured society scintillating with wit and freely exchanged creative ideas? I hardly think so. In fact the book of etiquette and the best hosts and hostesses specify that at cocktail parties one must circulate, circulate, circulate, and not spend overlong in one place or with one group. The sound you hear at cocktail parties is the unmistakable sound of idle chatter, not I believe the hum of distinguished intellectual opinions being exchanged.
One of the most infuriating aspects of a cocktail party is the short-windedness of all conversations at them. Over the years I have grown infinitely frustrated by the number of times at cocktail parties somebody has got to the middle of giving the real reasons for the decline of West Indies cricket or explaining post-modernist literary theory lucidly to me or is on the point of making some sort of sense out of the World Trade Organisation or is about to unlock the secrets of the Egyptian Sphinx for me or is about to put me in the picture about the coming wars in cyberspace – only, in the current manifestation of idle chatter, to have us interrupted by someone who wants to talk about, what else, the coming elections or the latest woes of GPL or the coming elections or corruption in tendering or the coming elections or the death throes of GuySuCo or the coming elections.
Certainly it is against all the rules of cocktail parties to stay in one place and discuss in depth with one or two people the later poems of T.S. Eliot or Karl Popper’s refutation of Marxism or the arguments for and against George Headley being considered a greater batsman than Don Bradman. And it is also strictly against the rules to go off in a corner with the prettiest woman in the room and try to monopolise her for the entire duration of the party. And cocktail parties don’t last long enough to get really joyfully drunk. And the snacks served are never enough to satisfy but always just sufficient to ruin your appetite for dinner when you go home. So what on earth really is their use? It may be that they are simply given to repay invitations to other cocktail parties which would mean that we are doomed to the misery of an endless cycle of reciprocated courtesy.
But I think the real answer to why cocktail parties exist at all is that they are a commercial invention of the liquor and soft drink companies and catering firms. I am sure there is somewhere a secret committee made up of representatives of the leading companies in the liquor business dedicated to encouraging the maintenance and growth of cocktail parties. This committee is certainly working to great effect.
I have done a study of my invitations to cocktail parties and in 2010 compared with 2009 the number increased by 44.85%. If laid end to end the number of bottles of rum consumed at cocktail parties in Greater Georgetown alone in 2010 would reach from here to New York and back as far as Port-of-Spain. And the buzz of inconsequential talk would drown the thousand best orchestras in the world all playing together.
May I respectfully suggest, subject to the protests of the leading liquor companies, that from now on everyone and every organization in Guyana arrange half the number of cocktail parties they would normally contemplate and donate the money they would have spent on the other half to charities of their choice. And in the time saved let us all read good books and write masterpieces and plan great works and study the glory of the stars at night.
Did I hear someone say “Good. And what better than a cocktail party to launch the idea?” I am almost sure I did.
