Friendship, Friendship

May 4, 2016 WalkyTalky WalkyTalky Leave a comment

2nd- Eye-to-Eye_02-2 — drawing by Flash Rosenberg

Friendship Friendship!

It’s the perfect blendship!

Cole Porter

Want to be among the great conversationalists of the 21^st century?

How about the 22^nd?

You can get a head start by getting out there and mixing it up. By using your head.

So get out there and convert somebody— I mean converse with somebody!

Now go on, this time I really mean it!

And you can be a good listener, too.

Great conversationalists listen more than talk.

The Art of Conversation A Guided Tour of a Neglected Pleasure, Catherin Blythe, Gotham Books, 2009

My best conversations inevitably and invariably veer to warm giving and taking talk about matters of the heart.

In other words, for best results, take talking time with a friend.

A friend can be a member of your family, too. Or somebody you meet at a bus stop, if you take the time to get to know them.

Talk about what you love. Notice how it seems to inspire you to talk about all that other stuff.

It can begin anywhere, anytime. My sisters Nancy and Jill loved talking about music they dug, sitting in their bedroom playing records for friends who came over after school. My brother Jimmie and I talked more about comic books and sports with our pals. Games, names and the numbers on the back of uniforms.

Later of course we got into which kid or teacher was disgusted by us, and all the other things that disgusted us— as so much of it so often did…

See how technology tries to separate us into our own worlds, at the same time claiming to bring us closer together?

It changes our own words. We may still have intimate times together laughing, crying, whispering about ourselves and other people. We’ll still talk on the food, the weather, books and movies and sex and what the landscape looks like, what games, podcasts or links to sites we go to or went to.

But, I wonder, does this kind of conversation go on anymore: The one with Shel or Stober or Steve Finkel and me skipping class to skip, gallop, tear on bikes over to Milton’s Drugs on Six Mile Road. Or to DeMott’s Drugs on Seven Mile? To sit at the counter drinking 12 cent chocolate cokes, grabbing a plastic bag of pork rinds to go. And one block closer to Woodward Avenue, the main drag, was Share’s Pharmacy –“Share treats you fair” it said on the window. On the corner there was a Biff’s, Nancy’s favorite place to skip out too, for burgers.

Where were those conversations for you? What did you talk about with your friends? Didn’t the city feel full of talking with your pals?

Hey look! It’s a whole new play about conversation! That’s gotta be a good sign.

Meanwhile, why are the conversations that took place back then the ones we can never remember when we get older?

Were we too busy throwing snowballs at passing cars to comment about it? (Today we’d have a page to comment on about it!)

Did you know that J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye is all about conversations? Holden Caulfield has more than two dozen of them. Conversations come up everywhere he goes in the book. He even comments on what kind of conversation he’s having. What kind they are or were, looking back at them, or even right now during them! He comments on how the conversation is going — one was a lousy conversation, another a witty conversation. Holden has brief and long conversations, “goddam boring” ones and “slightly intellectual” ones, too.

And at the end, after all these attempts to communicate, Holden is left in a pool of tears. Your heart really goes out to him. I recommend this book to all lovers of conversation. And everybody else.

Colorful Drawing of Man and Dog — Yael Kanarek

When my father was in college, he and his friends conducted “bull sessions.” That was in the 1940s. By the 70s and 80s, it was sitting up all night in the dormitory rapping. Shooting the shit. Sometimes Bob and Mike, Jerry, Byron, Ted or Kent and I kept on talking until we ended up trucking down to Main Street in Middletown to O’Rourke’s diner for its famous steamed cheeseburgers and eggs.

Walking and talking the whole way there and back.

After all, where can you hear cooler things than from your friends?

Sitting on the floor and talking till dawn

Candles and confidences

Trading old beliefs and humming old songs

And lowering old defenses

“Love Song” in the musical Pippin

One time I discovered that if I stayed up all night? I would learn something. Like staying open to experience.

Hey, I’m just trying to stay open 24/7 here! I’m a one-stop talk shop. One of my college roommates Jeff always put it this way: “The people are the greatest.”

What did he mean? I think that as close as you want to get to another person, you are left finally knowing that there is always more to learn about them.

The mystery in that.

Does it ever end?

Not as long as we keep talking to each other.

So where are you going next?

What will your conversation look like today?

Two friends having coffee together/when something flies by their window

“Hypnotized” by Fleetwood Mac

A tavola non s’inveccchia “When dining at the table with family and friends, one does not grow old.”

A toast from the founder of Riunite, Harry Mariani, from his obituary, NY TIMES Jan 11 2016

PoMo ConVo

February 16, 2016 WalkyTalky WalkyTalky Leave a comment

PoSt MoDeRn CoNvERsaTiOnS

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT WHAT WE TALK ABOUT LIKE WE NEVER TALKED ABOUT IT BEFORE

My compliments to the ocean.

Dick Cavett in a restaurant after being served a nice piece of fish.

A good folk journalist makes for a good emcee. Like Mr. Cavett, bringing the table together. A Master of Ceremonies. Bring on the Fun Conversations. That’s me!

How does one speak MC ?

Here’s one thing to try: Offer remarks that bring the most amount of people together at one time:

“Well, it looks like introductions are in order!”

“Did you make that yourself?”

“What’s your sign?” (Mine is Slippery When Wet. Thanks to Wavy Gravy for this.)

From “Twentieth Century Etiquette, An Up-To-Date Book For Polite Society” by Annie Randall White

So are you ready to emcee yourself?

[See QUICK OPENERS, DECEMBER 7 2015 for Paul Sills’ advice: “Encourage the laggards.”]

Expert Catherine Blythe suggests in her book The Art of Conversation aiming for about four minutes before cutoff. No longer than that. Keep that convo moving, “like a good game of Frisbee.” Otherwise, she says, it becomes boring — I mean, people and their freakin’ monologues, right?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Conversation-Neglected-Pleasure/dp/1592404979

Q: What is having to listen to somebody talk for fifty minutes and not getting paid?

A: The opposite of therapy!

How does a folk journalist avoid that happening?

A lot of people get into conversations just to let you know who they are. They have no interest in you. (Hard to believe, right?) So why bother listening to them playing the same tape made-to-impress? And how to get an edge in word-wise and actually have conversations with people who talk a lot?

Folk journalists know that wrangling the ego of such a talker takes semi-masterful talk techniqueing. So here’s how to enjoy listening to them, even as they go on and on ad infinitum.

The growing field of Ethnomonology* is here. Finally!

Taught online usually, for profit, and soon to be a major growth industry, ETM teaches that humanity’s monologues may actually teach us about said person rattling saying along. There’s the guy who narrates his lives as he goes through it. Often you see him with ear buds and a phone, describing what corner he’s approaching (BEING HERE THEN!). He often uses Elmore Leonard’s “marijuana tense”** which author Martin Amis describes as dialogue using a present participle that creates a hazy sort of meandering now: “Bobby saying,” and then the dialogue follows.

If this seems difficult to handle, don’t despair. Think this is hard — try living in Papua, New Guinea; at least one tribe there speaks in 17 different tenses.

Languages of Papua: http://www.ethnologue.com/country/PG/languages

“You get my drift?”

– I’m following your smoke.

Still however, you may find yourself learning very little by listening. Nothing, maybe?

When walking with such individually-linked to themselves lingua leaders, remember this: Out amongst his own self, desiring nothing more than to be marveled at/gazed upon, heard in all his incredible incrudibleness, which he believes after all to be the next evolutionary stage of a human being — doubtful: By observing you may still pick up a lot of visual information to enjoy and/or play with.

Or as Yogi Bear once put it: Heyyy Boo Boo, from this viewpoint we can get a better outlook! (Or was that Yogi Berra?)

But if all your emcee attempts fail, chalk it up to what Holden Caulfield describes as, referring to conversations, “Goddam boring ones.” In Catcher In The Rye, he gets involved in more than two dozen confabs. But don’t worry, some of them he finds, “slightly intellectual.” ***

Finally, if still in doubt, you can blame it on The System, referring yourself to this Firesign Theater video:

Confidence in The System https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDqk8o6y13Y&feature=kp]

Enjoy!

* Invented for entertainment purposes only.

** Elmore Leonard’s “marijuana tense” http://austinkleon.com/2005/12/22/elmo-leonards-present-participle/

*** J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye is terrific for lovers of conversation: http://mentalfloss.com/article/64836/13-things-you-might-not-know-about-catcher-rye

with Paradise Lost at UCSD — Paradise Lost found near Geisel Library on the campus of UCSD

Conversation as Contact Sport

January 11, 2016 WalkyTalky WalkyTalky Leave a comment

Legend has it that comedian Chico Marx (above with his brother Groucho in the “South Carolina” scene from The Marx Brothers GO WEST) was backstage after a live performance, kissing on a showgirl smoochie smooo — as was his wont, ladies and gentlemen. But on this particular evening, his wife Miriam had come to see the show and saw this.

“What are you doing?” asked Mrs. Marx.

“What?” said Chico.

“Kissing that woman!”

“Oh, I wasn’t kissing her,” explained Chico. “I was just whispering in her mouth.”

Smooth smoocher, eh?

On the other hand I’ve heard, “sometimes a conversation needs a kiss just to shut up a minute.”

Many have tried it and gotten away with it. Artisanal conversation, it’s called in certain hipster clubs. Then again, as my friend Flash Rosenberg defines artisanal: “Art is anal.”

How about trying this one: “Words can be weapons and comedy our kiss!”

And speaking of contact comedy, check out Flash Rosenberg’s cover for a new cartoon book by John Towsen, Ph.D, “How Many Surrealists Does It Take to Screw in a Lightbulb? or, Why did the Intellectual Cross the Road and Walk into a Bar?

http://www.amazon.com/Surrealists-Screw-Lightbulb-Intellectual-Cross/dp/0692488561/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Now That You’ve Been Arrested…the secret of men and women when they converse behind bars

December 30, 2015December 30, 2015 WalkyTalky WalkyTalky Leave a comment

The first time I got arrested in Minneapolis I realized two things:

You enter into what Ken Kesey called, “the cops and robbers game,” in which all old rules go out and you’ve got to play with a whole set of new ones.
You learn that it can be better to be a woman than a man.

Picture this: 577 anti-nuke protestors scaling the security fence at Honeywell Corporation hard by the Interstate 35 (Hence, Twins jacket in photo). Actor Martin Sheen is with us too — yay!– but when we land on the other side of the high wire, cops are waiting for us. They slap their plasticuffs (see same photo) on us, which they’ve been using instead for the past what, 40 years now, but still burn into your wrists?

This turns out to be the biggest arrest in the history of Minnesota protest. No kidding. (This was in the 80s, so does record still stand?)

The “Honeywell Project,” was a group of activists out to convert the corporation — you may know Honeywell for blenders, home security systems, popcorn poppers. Did you know they also made cluster bombs? And missile parts, too. The idea behind the Project was a peace conversion for Honeywell, to strike their swords into plowshares, with no loss of jobs. Did I mention Martin Sheen was with us, in his funny Minnesota ski cap (similar to guy in photo)? Marty’s tops; he plays the judge in, IN THE KING OF PRUSSIA, a 1983 dramatization about the “Plowshares Eight” who broke into a GE plant to protest nuclear weapons, pouring vials of their own blood onto secret missle plans. *

Man owns four things

that are no good at sea:

rudder, anchor, oars

and the fear of going down.

Antonio Machado * *

When you climb over and fall onto the lathered green of Honeywell Property, cops quickly slap and strap ‘em on you, pack you into vans and off you go because you’ve been arrested for criminal trespass. Heading downtown I will meet women from different “affinity” groups who live as far away as Iowa and Wisconsin. One of them notices my agitation under the stress and straining of these restrictive plasticuffs and she puts her hand on my knee.

“You know,” she says. “Nothing the police can do to us is as bad as nuclear destruction.”

Listening to her actually calms me down a little. (SEE previous blog entry on LISTENING LOUDER) Then a woman from Red Wing tells me she’s been heading to the streets to fight corporate obscenity like this for forty years. She is so serene about everything; hell, it just gets me all pissed off again.

At the Hennepin County Jail now, I’m not only arrested, I’m tired and angry too, and very much dead on my feet because we first gathered this morning at six and now it is late afternoon and still freakin’ cold in Minneapolis.

Men are led into one holding cell. The women are taken to another holding cell.

FlashSketchCoupleHandstands__14 — sketch by Flash Rosenberg

Here in my cell of men, what kind of conversations do you think you get?

“Cops. I hate cops, don’t you?”

– Yeah I hate the damn cops.

“How you feel about the Vikings?”

– They suck.

“Yeah they suck.”

– You got a cigarette, man?

As comedian Robert Klein would have put it: “Not much happening there!”

But as I’m getting fingerprinted, trying not to be afraid – they press your fingers down really hard and you’re left with tons of black ink that never come off — look at this: I can see right into the women’s cell. And I give a long hard look at the womenfolk in there.

Womenorah_FlashRosenberg_ART_023 — Womenorah by Flash Rosenberg

I can see the women in there are holding hands. The women are in some kind of a circle, surrounding one woman who appears to be on her stomach, stretched out in the middle of the circle of women. Right on the floor of the cell. The women around the circle are chanting at her. It could be something Buddhist, who knows. Kurdish even. Then they’re running their hands along the back and sides of the woman on the floor. Completing this ritual, they motion themselves into a togetherness by closing the circle and hugging.

Wow, I’m thinking. I could use all those things right now: Songs of solidarity. Sympathy. A back rub.

Because while I have always had the ability to withhold my own with any man, I can’t help think as I’m being lead back to my cell: I’m in the wrong affinity group here!

In fact I realize that if it weren’t for those women, I would never have made it through that day peaceably. [Note: This is before the men’s movement of the ‘90s, so maybe its all changed now – fellows read Robert Bly translations of Rumi to each other so maybe things changed.]

Ever since Minneapolis, I’ve preferred talking with women. Post-prison, I’ve even loved singing with them, which I highly recommend.

Back Pocket Banter When Talking to the Police

Once I was walking with my friend, the comedian Paul Lyons. Just strolling, we suddenly saw a policeman out in front of a neighbor’s house.

“Did you call for backup?” Mr. Lyons asked the policeman.

Works!

* IN THE KING OF PRUSSIA http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084130/

Honeywell Project history: http://www.wri-irg.org/en/node/3101

** Antonio Machado https://poetrydispatch.wordpress.com/tag/antonio-machado/

Doesn’t matter which direction you point your prayer rug. Rumi

That’s it for this time — cheers, Ha!nk

Elevator Conversation Anyone?

December 21, 2015December 21, 2015 WalkyTalky WalkyTalky Leave a comment

ELEVATOR TALK

NOTE: If you’ve consulted this site in order to learn how to break the ice on elevators — I am sorry. Let’s get this idea out of the way right now. Other folk journalists may offer tips for conversation while encased going up or down. I suggest taking the stairs. (Better for ya!)

Elevator conversation is awkward enough, but I remember one legend regarding lifts that my parents passed down to me. This is a tale of two white tourists riding an elevator in a Park Avenue hotel in New York. Yankee baseball slugger Reggie Jackson gets in at some point, pulling his doberman along on a leash.

As they all ride together, Jackson commands his dog: “Sit!”

At which point the tourists sit down.

Folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand catalogued many similar myths in his funny book The Choking Doberman, W.W. Norton, 1984.

http://www.janbrunvand.com/about.html

And now back to our regularly scheduled convo tips from your local folk journalist…

P.S. Reggie Jackson, interviewed by a reporter for a Rochester, NY newspaper said he’d heard the story a thousand times but, “I’d never own a dog in New York. Whatever you’ve been told isn’t true.”

All Aboard at the Conversation Station !

December 7, 2015December 22, 2015 WalkyTalky WalkyTalky Leave a comment

sketch by Flash — drawing by Flash Rosenberg

Humans are wired for social interaction. We want to work with people and have conversations with people. Laura Venderkam, Wall Street Journal Bookshelf (Aug 14^th 2015)

Conversation stations can include: a Restaurant, a Diner, a Café, a Park.

How about in a classroom? Among fellow students. Back and forth with the teacher. Or in class after the teacher leaves, even.

Waiting in/on line, waiting for a plane, waiting for your laundry, your coffee, your $$$ lottery winnings.

Okay, picture this: A crowded waiting room. “Everybody waiting…old man sleeping on his bags, women with that teased-up kind of hair…kids with the jitters in their legs and those wide wide open stares.” Joni Mitchell, Just Like This Train

Like Joni, for good talk, I take trains whenever possible.

Why?

Folks are more appreciative on trains. Appreciative of things like TIME. Like lounging, reading, sleeping – folks on a train create a little neighborhood together. It’s like The little neighborhood that never was. Except right now it exists while you are traveling together. Where ya going? Through time? Hey, nobody leaves the room do they? Which makes them great places to appreciate conversation.

So get your convo on in the “Club” car, the “Dome” car, the “Sightseer” car.

Ever been?

Women in purple in dome car — Purple dresses in the dome car

It’s where Amtrak-Americans gather for observation, games, and opening up. As a folk journalist, I’ve gone coast-to-coast with a cast of characters thousands of miles and over eight-minutes-long for NPR. *

The youngest get excited about stuff like: “Look at the light rail track over there!” (Apparently little kids love light rail. Perhaps post-Millennial Gen Next will popularize mass transit!)

The oldest, who maybe dislike flying or the bus, know rail travel is more civilized. Amtrak was years ahead of the sharing economy: you are forced to share a table in the dining car. But you get to hear about lives. Ethanol farmers from Kansas, rodeo clowns from El Paso – each takes your mind off your laptop and phone, talking your ear off all the way to Union Station in Chicago, LA, Portland or Spokane.

You get to feel their strong handshakes afterwards.

Rob & Bob our guides about the Empire Builder — Rob & Bob, nature guides aboard The Empire Builder

I lucked out once and got seated for dinner while crossing eastern Washington into Idaho and Montana with two nature guides: Bob & Rob. They came aboard to present a “Rails to Trails” talk. Soon the history of the Cascades and a couple of Columbia River dams came alive as the apple capitals and pear orchards flying by. The tunnel we’d come through was the second longest in the world – longest being in B.C. just north of here—and by the time the full moon over Wenatchee rose, I’d learned all about Mt’s Baker and Rainier, and Snokomish, too, so I suggested the duo do a “Bob and Ray” routine because Rob was low-voiced calm and Bob taller and more high strung in his descriptions of vineyards and the delights of Washington cherries.

Of course, there are other times, a folk journalist will sit staring out a train window, thinking: “Man I have no life.” Then out the same window, passing Ventura, here comes a view of the Pacific Ocean, sea and sky and mountains and everything in between. And then he realizes: I have all of life! And soon I’m engaged in friendly confabs up and down the California coast again…

Suddenly I hear: “Lookit, Mom! Lookit!”

What is it?

”Bubbles!” the little girl shouts pointing at a polluted river winding down there below the tracks.

“Woo Woo!” goes the train, and all is well.

Williston ND Station — Williston Station, North Dakota

BACK POCKET BANTER

Where have you traveled on a train or by ship?

What kind of acquaintances have you made on a trip?

What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever seen happen while traveling?

Did you ever learn anything new from conversations on a train, ship or plane?

What is the longest trip you’ve ever been on?

BONUS!

An additional conversation aboard Amtrak is how you are reducing your “carbon footprint” by taking a train instead of flying in an airplane. Which may lead to interesting places and a longer confab in the Dining Car.

ACTIVITIES

Ever ask a diner woman or porter on board what’s their favorite song? They’ll sing it for you.

Williston North Dakota — Leaving Williston ND

* A folk journalist walks into an Amtrak

http://savvytraveler.publicradio.org/show/rundowns/2003/20030516/rd20030516.shtml

Freestylers & Foreigners: Fear and Locomotiving on the Southwest Chief There are only three trans-continental trains in the U.S. And, with Amtrak planning on dropping some of its long-distance routes, you might want to put a choo-choo trip across the States higher on your travel to-do list. Hank Rosenfeld took this to heart when he boarded Amtrak Train #4 at LA’s Union Station with a cast of characters including golden-agers and their grandchildren, Central American tourists and ex-cons let out of Lompoc that morning. And all the while, on his 48-hour trip to Detroit, Hank experiences the romance of the rail.