TALKED TO DEATH

August 26, 2016 WalkyTalky WalkyTalky Leave a comment

Some of our most difficult conversations have to do with death.

Don’t they?

Having lost three people close to me in the last months, I’ve been to too many funerals to know what to say anymore.

Actually, after so much practice, I SHOULD know what to say, right?

But I just hug.

I know that doesn’t exactly help promote conversation. (Well, maybe it does, after an embrace?)

I prefer the silence of a heartfelt hug if the alternative is old platitudes that serve only to fill up time and space: “He’s in a better place” and “It was his time.”

Awkward!

So hug until the person lets you go. Let them let go first.

“Sorry for your loss.”

“My condolences.”

For other ways to converse when dealing with death, check out this “AT A LOSS” entry:

At A Loss (For Words)

On a lighter note, here’s what philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson said about it in 1888: “We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death and afraid of each other.”

Yoiks!

A real conversation-stopper there, Ralphie boy.

“Hello? What? Ralph Waldo wants to come over for a little chit-chat? Um, no thanks, I’m late for my Transcendentalism class!”

Bonus

Good news: Tom Wolfe has a new book out about how we talk to each other, called “The Kingdom of Speech.”

“Tom Wolfe traces the often-amusing history of bickering over how humans started talking”

https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2016/08/24/tom-wolfe-traces-debunking-darwin-ideas-how-humans-developed-speech/XYH7pZDoEAgYFkYd1nTtrI/story.html

Finally, Beware Bringing About the Death of Conversation Itself

Those dry sticky salivaless sounds which can be death to a good conversation.

David Foster Wallace, author of INFINITE JEST, celebrating its 20-year anniversary

Kid Whisperering

May 3, 2016May 3, 2016 WalkyTalky WalkyTalky 2 Comments

The fear is the basic condition, and there are all kinds of reasons for why we’re so afraid. But the fact of the matter is, is that, is that the job we’re here to do is to learn how to live in a way that we’re not terrified all the time.

David Foster Wallace

I’m not fearless. But I will try and talk to anyone. Even a rock:

See the large boulder above my head? This is your intrepid folk journalist covering breaking news: part of an embankment is crashing down onto the Pacific Coast Highway north of Malibu, California.

I interviewed stuck drivers, highway repair people. Later I interviewed the rock.

Heck, I’ll interview anyone.

(with Sigmund Freud)

But a folk journalist mostly prefers talking to real folks. Good folks like you and you and you too out there. (A publisher saw me do it in a restaurant and suggested I write a book about it called, “PLEASED TO MEET ME.” That’s taken from the title of an lp by the band The Replacements.)

My niece noticed how I draw conversation out of her three year-old. She says I should hire myself out as a Kid Whisperer.

You know, borrow children from their parents and bring them back more conversant.

Is there a market for such a skill?

And how does kid whispering work?

When the toddler describes an action he recently took — he went to the playground, had pizza, or a bowel movement, etc — I follow with:

“And then what happened?”

“And then what?”

“What happened next?”

If he describes the picture on the page of the children’s book he’s reading, I’ll say: “Go on!”

When I do this, I’m imitating my grandmother, Adeline Krasnick of blessed memory, a great conversationalist known to all as Nana. Nana always seemed so interested in what we had to tell her. “Go on!” is sort of like saying, “You don’t say,” which Nana also said frequently. (Funny how saying you don’t say actually stimulates conversing.)

And sometimes, my three year-old grandnephew will go on and tell me more.

Here I am about to do some kid whispering with him:

He’s a little busy on the cell phone right now.

Next time maybe. Soon. When he’s four, for sure.

Just Asking: you’re a winner!

February 19, 2016 WalkyTalky WalkyTalky Leave a comment

Yesterday I came across a wonderful quote from writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. In describing the first story he reported for Washington’s City Paper, he “found out that journalism is a done thing. In other words there is no ‘better than you.’ There’s just the story you produced. That’s what it is. Either you repeatedly asked questions or you didn’t. That was a deep sort of lesson – that the winner is the person who keeps asking questions. That’s the winner.”

Yes, a motto for folk journalism world over: Keep Asking Questions.

As a folk journalist, trying to create a space by invading someone else’s, you can connect. With the right question, you bring a moment to life that might help a fellow human find meaning. You can try to make room enough so a conversation can become as big as your subject’s world.

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ newest book is Between The World And Me, called a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the single best writer on the subject of race in the United States” (NY Observer)

http://www.randomhousebooks.com/campaign/between-the-world-and-me-2/

Here’s a link to his memory of first committing journalism, in a recent issue of New York Magazine where writers, musicians, and actors recall when they found their life’s passion: http://nymag.com/news/features/beginnings/ta-nehisi-coates/

The world is changed not by the self-regarding,

but by men and women prepared

to make fools of themselves.

P.D. James

Directing Conversation: a Tip

February 2, 2016 WalkyTalky WalkyTalky Leave a comment

Those dry sticky salivaless sounds which can be death to a good conversation.

David Foster Wallace in INFINITE JEST

Want a way around such icky stickiness? Like to keep your convos unstuck in time, alive and flowing?

Here’s one smooth move problem solver. Folk Journalists call it: “Directing Conversation.”

When in the midst of back-and-forth banter among three or more persons, I make physical moves with my head. I mean, if one person is talking only to me, I stop looking directly at them. Instead, I shift my head toward the third person. Amazingly, this often makes the person talking also look at the one I just shifted to look at.

Try it!

(Can prove especially useful when the third person does not hear so well and needs to see your lead conversant’s mouth.)

Speaking of aging founts of wisdom around us:

My conversation may be full of holes and pauses, but I’ve learned to dispatch a prive Apache scout ahead into the next sentence, the one coming up, to see if there are any vacant names or verbs in the landscape up there. If he sends back a warning, I’ll pause meaningfully, duh, until something else comes to mind.

Roger Angell in his recent book, THIS OLD MAN

Now a semi-mature tale delivered by Ram Dass (above) in Colorado in 2013:

An old man is ambling down the primrose path one afternoon when he hears a voice: “Pssst! Can you help me out?”

He looks down to see a big frog staring up from a lush, green meadow.

“Did you just speak to me?” asks the old man. (As it is always in these tales.)

“Yes, could you help me?”

“Well I don’t know. Maybe. I mean I hope so. What’s the problem?”

“I’m under a curse. If you pick me up and kiss me, I will turn into a beautiful maiden and will cook for you and serve you and be everything you ever wanted.”

Well, the man stands there for a while and then picks the frog up, puts him in his pocket, and continues walking down the trail.

After a little while, the frog perks up.

“Hey!” he shouts from inside the pocket. “You forgot to kiss me!”

The old man lifts the little feller out, holds him up about nose high and says to him, “You know at my age, I think it’s more interesting to have a talking frog.”

After the laughter of recognition comes, Ram Dass explains: “The nature of aging has to do with change.”

Aha! Here’s a link to more RAM DASS via his love serve remember foundation:

https://www.ramdass.org

Link to NY TIMES piece on INFINITE JEST, just celebrating its 20th anniversary:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/books/review/everything-about-everything-david-foster-wallaces-infinite-jest-at-20.html?_r=0

Link to Roger Angell’s book: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25733456-this-old-man

In winter’s tedious night sit by the fire

With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales

Of woeful ages long ago betide –

Shakespeare’s RICHARD II

Animator Chuck Jones when asked how it felt to be an old man: “I don’t feel like an old man, I feel like a young man with something terribly wrong with him!”

Charles Solomon in the LA Times