How The Deaf Do It: Better conversation face to face

February 8, 2016 WalkyTalky WalkyTalky Leave a comment

Child watching parents signing — Child watching his parents signing

I long

To hear the story of your life, which must

Take the ear strangely.

Alonso to Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest

Seeking an enlightening conversation?

Talk to the deaf.

Take my niece Liz, who works at Gallaudet University in Washington D.C.* Recently, she taught me that speaking in ASL – American Sign Language— can bring forth better conversations onto this earth. How do the deaf do it? And do they do it better?

“Well not necessarily better,” Liz explains, “but it’s a different way of conversing.”

But don’t the deaf miss mucho el converso when they don’t hear any of it?

For the following conversation, we aren’t using ASL; Liz reads my lips and I understand her speech, being in the same family for 30 years…

HANK: How different is this conversation?

LIZ: While I talk, you are hearing everything going on around us. 360 degrees. While you talk, deaf folks listen by looking. I can’t look away.

HANK: How about when two deaf conversationalists use ASL to communicate?

LIZ: The person who signs doesn’t have to look directly when conversing. But the person paying attention has to look at the signer to understand. This is a more direct and more effective way to communicate.

HANK: More direct. Why do you think so?

LIZ: Because it takes more of an attention span to look the whole time. Deaf speakers are more comfortable with eye contact.

HANK: Sometimes it is too much for me to look so long into someone’s eyes.

LIZ: I know! Hearing people get like, “Stop staring at me!”

[Laughter]

HANK: The deaf don’t stare?

LIZ: They’re paying attention. They convey information by the way they look at each other, with facial expressions.

HANK: Your convo has more info because of facial expressions?

LIZ: A hearing person can use the inflection of their voice to convey certain emotions –excitement, sadness, fear. A deaf person on the other hand – I have to tell you visually: I AM SO ANNOYED! Or just pissed off.

HE: It’s much more in your face.

LIZ: Yes. Another thing is, sometimes with a hearing person who is dull, the words come out all – the – same.

HANK: So the deaf are really the most un-robot-like of all conversationalists.

LIZ: I don’t know about that….

Awkward And Semi-awkward Silences

HANK: What about silence? Are deaf folks more comfortable with them?

LIZ: No, we’re the same. There’s no difference.

[Silence]

HANK: What other differences are there?

LIZ: Deaf culture is much more information-centered.

HANK: Give me an example.

LIZ: A hearing friend says: “Look over there.” But “over there” means what?

HANK: Look there?

LIZ: “Look, look!” they’ll say. But that’s not specific enough. And I’ll say, “That’s not helping me. What is over there? A bird, the sky?”

HANK: Superman?

[Laughter]

LIZ: Deaf speakers offer more information: “Look at that tree, how red the leaves are. Look.” We’re used to a more direct way of explaining things. Sometimes with a hearing person, things get so vague.

HANK: Deaf conversation is fuller in a way?

LIZ: Well, I miss the nuanced clues. I can see what’s going on, but you know more than I do. You have the information about the red bird: Please explain more to me!

HANK: What about talking in a group of people? Like at a meeting or a party?

LIZ: In most groups, there is “turn taking.” Talkers take turns while others listen. A deaf conversation has much more turn taking. It is a requirement, because you can’t all be signing at the same time; everybody will get lost. When one person talks, everyone looks at that person. That’s how it works.

Tips For The ASL-impaired Conversationalist

HANK: What else can I learn about conversing?

LIZ: Slow down. Exercise your facial expressions. Move your hands and don’t be afraid to point things out.

HANK: Sign language seems such a wonderful way to conversate.

LIZ: I don’t know that word “conversate,” but ASL can be taught right from birth. It is a part of the connection between parent and child. Babies want to communicate. They can be taught the sign for “milk” which is the baby squeezing their hand. So this is before they ever say in English, “I want milk.”

HANK: I love that!

LIZ: And look, it can serve you your whole life. Think of this: if you are across a room, you don’t have to scream. You can just sign!

* * *

QUESTIONS

With blind folks, everyone seems to want to help. But with deaf people, are hearing people scared to even speak? Is there a fear of the deaf?

As early adopters of technology — from Blackberry to Sidekick to FaceTime, Skype, etc — what’s next? Liz suggests: Virtual interpreters, avatars there anytime you need translation, some kind of captioning on your eyeglasses so you can understand in real time whatever information is coming your way.

So what do you see coming after that? Liz answers: “Beam me up!”

ACTIVITY

Be more visual by using facial expression.

Provide more context when pointing something out, get more comfortable with your hands.

Don’t be afraid to point.

Maintain eye contact.

Slow down.

And if you are still struggling to communicate?

My niece suggests: Relax.

“I’m shy too,” Liz says. “Remember that nothing is perfect and it’s okay to ask questions. It’s really okay to say: I did not get that. Can you say it again? It’s a drag when someone goes yeah yeah yeah and I know they aren’t getting it. I wanna slap them in the face.”

Between now and now,   between I am and you are,   the word bridge.     Entering it   you enter yourself:   the world connects   and closes like a ring.     From one bank to another,   there is always   a body stretched:   a rainbow.     I’ll sleep beneath its arches. 

Octavio Paz, The Bridge

Thought is free.

The Tempest

Have compassion for everyone you meet,

even if they don’t want it. What seems conceit,

bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign

of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.

You do not know what wars are going on

down there where the spirit meets the bone.

Miller Williams

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/03/arts/miller-williams-laconic-arkansas-poet-dies-at-84.html?_r=0

http://www.arktimes.com/RockCandy/archives/2015/01/02/rip-miller-williams-1930-2015

*Gallaudet University: https://www.gallaudet.edu/about-gallaudet.html

Strolling Drollery: fanmail from some Flaneur

February 3, 2016 WalkyTalky WalkyTalky Leave a comment

To have at your disposal what the best conversationalists have: a wealth of experience to draw on.

Sherry Turkle, ALONE TOGETHER: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Each Other

To be Open.

Unafraid.

Creative.

Some people talk the talk. But they do not walk the walk.

As a folk journalist you must walk the talk. Whenever possible.

In other words, your words must move the conversation somewhere.

Take the story further. Farther even. With questions, retorts and ripostes disrupting daily dullness.

Ask someone, “Do you know what I’ve been thinking about all week?” They generally may respond: “No, what?” Because, let’s face it, they have no way of knowing what you’ve been thinking. Unless you are reading this, “In the year 2525, if man can survive, then they may find,” that we can read each other’s minds.*

* A song by Zaeger & Evans I had on a 45 in 1969.

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/z/zager+and+evans/in+the+year+2525_20647779.html

A better one, that relates to today’s WT theme, is REM’s “Walk Unafraid.”

http://www.songlyrics.com/r-e-m/walk-unafraid-lyrics/

Likewise, if you offer: “How soft your lips look,” you must walk the talk.

Meaning: Take it elsewhere. To them lips, to the chin, or take it on the chin – it doesn’t matter. “Actions speak louder than words” goes the expression. But did you know that actions prompt words, too? Walking, for instance, stimulates the body and mind, fueling conversation.

Folks who live in places like Michael Moore’s, “Upnorthistan” know this especially. It is why we long for spring – you get out and walk around more. We know when you do that you find yourself chatting with a person tripping down the cobblestones with all winter in silence.

Flaneurs tend toward more lollygagging (which can be lethal in winter). Flanerie will often get you everywhere and nowhere. Drolling instead of trolling, on the run off the cuff or on the q.t. They are master multi-taskers. Nurse-slash-diva mensches who may hail from places like Media, PA., but are neither schnorrer nor schlemiel. Are they schlubs because they like to hang around the café society scenes on every other corner? They prefer a table for three, still realizing that in some societies, “people eat in silence as a sign of respect and focus,” as The Art of Civilized Conversation, A guide to Expressing Yourself with Style & Grace, by Margaret Shepherd tells us.

http://link.arapahoelibraries.org/portal/Art-of-civilized-conversation.–The-art-of/e1dzqt6a5rs/

A flaneur may be at once, “the World’s Most Ridiculous Man,” eavesdropping for the hell of it, as primitive as any saunter-gatherer who sniffs the air for stories, and also the hunter who explores, uncovers, and reveals their city before it all goes away.

Back Pocket Banter

What is the longest time you’ve talked to someone at a café?

What is our favorite hangout and why?

When was the last time you mailed a letter? How about a postcard? Okay then, a card that went into an envelope for someone’s birthday or anniversary?

Do you ever listen to yourself and hear what you are actually saying?

Activity

Compared to today’s throwaway conversation, letter writing is a meditative act. Try it.

A trick of the flaneur is to try and eavesdrop on your own conversation. What would you like to be saying right now? What would that conversation sound like for you? (Don’t ask me; only you can make it so.)

In her memoir “Yes Please,” Amy Poehler said she gets funny lines while listening to people deliver monologues on their cell phones. Paul Krassner told a joke in the 1990s about giving cell phones to the homeless so they would not look like they were talking to themselves. Joshua Wolf Shenk writes: “Indeed, thinking itself is a kind of download of dialogue between ourselves and others. And when we listen to creative people describe breakthrough moments that occur when they are alone, they often mention the sensation of having a conversation in their own minds.”*

* http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/opinion/sunday/the-end-of-genius.html

What do you think he meant by this?

Look back on your conversation – what can be learned? Look forward to your next conversation – what can be prepared for, directed into a deeper discussion?

Bonus Activity

Annotate annotate annotate: Print up a recent texting convo you conducted. Send it back to the other person, only this time adding in bold what you think was really meant by each sentence. An annotation dives deeper into what went on between you two while you were saving all that time texting instead of writing letters.

Tips

Slow down. Upon greeting a fellow human, instead of digitally registering at hypersonic speed, greet and note to yourself (or to them) what inner conversation pops to mind: is it their clothes, their gait, their grooming? Like a digital printout outside your hard drive, conversation broken down can lead to discovering much more about each other.

It is very hard to nail down a human being, isn’t it? You get one pegged and realize you’ve peeled just one layer of some sweet onion. When Tom Hayden ran for Governor of California he described himself this way: “I’m Jeffersonian in terms of democracy, Thoreauvian in terms of the environment, and Crazy Horse in terms of social movements.” (And Harold Stassen in terms of elections? Zing! I kid Tom.)

Personally

Garrison Keillor used to write a column called “Mr. Blue” for Salon.com that offered advice to the lovelorn word slinger. It was like sitting with him in a café contemplating jazz. I wrote asking if he thought it was all right to eavesdrop in cafes. He wrote back saying you betcha.

Two books: Sherry Turkle’s: http://alonetogetherbook.com

My friend and flaneur, Leonard Pitt, has a memoir of Paris and Detroit coming out next month called, “My Brain On Fire.”

http://leonardpitt.com

It is great to hold a conversation, but you should let go of it now and then. Poet Richard Armour

http://articles.latimes.com/1989-03-01/news/mn-582_1_richard-armour

Need to talk? Remember, as Ian Drury wrote: You’re never alone with a schizophrenic.

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

Russians Ride The S.I. Ferry: Good Places to Converse (An Occasional Series)

January 12, 2016January 12, 2016 WalkyTalky WalkyTalky Leave a comment

My New York genes kick in. I can talk to anyone.

Edwin Lynch, Metropolitan Diary New York Times Jan 11 2016

As a folk journalist, which pays less than what is required to survive in New York City, one is forced to accept other lines of work when living there. And, especially in the 1990s, many artists, writers, and composers taught ESL, English as a Second Language.

Looking for that 13 bucks an hour? NYANA was the place to do it downtown.

“NYANA” stands for the “New York Association of New Americans.” A wonderful place where new immigrants came to learn. We taught Russians, Syrians, Taiwanese, Japanese, and Koreans too, in hopes that one day they’d go out and find great jobs and hire us.

What I mainly remember from back then is that almost every adorable women in NYC taught ESL. Cool-looking, indie gals, who came from all over the country to read Jim Harrison and Carl Hiaasen on the subway on their way to work. Not with yellow hi-liter pens (that was more the ’80s), just intensely, like they did not want me disturbing them.

Actually, the real reason I taught ESL?

One day, after dropping out of college to travel, I found myself on the island of Crete working in the vineyards with grandmothers and grandfathers whose children had all left Greece to open fish and chip shops in Australia. Right there under bulging green grape (stafilya) bunches, trying to communicate with these lovely Cretans, that’s when I decided: I want to use the English language again.

So I came back.

One day in class downtown at NYANA, I’d been drilling my Russian students with the typical lesson:

“Yefim, do you like chicken?”

Yes, I…am…chicken.

“Yefim, do you live in Brooklyn?”

Yes, I…love…Brooklyn.

I turned one of my more advanced students, Basya Rankashiskas:

“Basya, is it better to marry for love or for money?”

Oh Henry, to marry for love it is better than money.

Then she blew my mind by coming back with:

Henry, why you no married? 22, Russia, married. Why no you?

“Well Basya,” I said. “I’m…looking.”

She pointed to the large classroom map on the wall:

America is a big country, Basya said.

Well, she had me there.

So now I’ve spent most of this millennium traveling around the country sticking a microphone in faces until I guess I find one that fits.

Activity

Ride the Staten Island Ferry and talk to everyone. (I took my ESL students along and it was fun.)

Teach ESL; you will learn to engage foreigners in basic conversation and won’t regret it.

Happiness is interpersonal.

Ticht Naht Hanh Tricycle Magazine Spring 2015

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

Jock Talk: sports convos for all occasions

January 9, 2016January 9, 2016 WalkyTalky WalkyTalky Leave a comment

GREMIO: What! this gentleman will out-talk us all.

PETRUCHIO: Hortensio, to what end are all these words? The Taming of the Shrew

Welcome back Sports Fans!

With the NFL playoffs underway this weekend, let’s talk sports!

Women may love to talk, but guys never shut up. Listen to talk radio. Sports talk radio. Or notice while watching a sports telecast: they’re just out to out muscle each other. But wouldn’t it be more entertaining and instructive if instead of just talking to fill dead air, they spoke at a clever level of conversation?

Baseball is the greatest conversation topic ever. Civil War author Bruce Catton

Sure is! The statistical depths and storytelling alone make for endless summers and off-seasons of excellent, lingo-filled confabs. And George Carlin’s comparison of Football and Baseball — “stadium” vs. “park,” “spearing, piling on” vs. “the sacrifice,” “a sustained ground attack” vs. “going home” — is one of the finest examinations of the language we use when discussing sports. Here it is, literally:

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/humor7.shtml

Football field in Middletown, Connecticut

Back in the mid-1970s, every Sunday night in Middletown USA, Bob Glasspiegel hosted a conversational sports show on WESU 88.1 FM. He called it, “Jock Talk.” Think of the Algonquin Roundtable only with sports wits batting it around the bases.

I think this is the appeal of your better podcasts, which reach funny and informative levels of give and take by the practice of sharply-shaped words leading to good interviews = good conversation. [SEE LINKS PAGE FOR SOME PODCASTS]

As part of the WESU’s “Jock Talk” active listenership, I was asked to do color commentary on some basketball broadcasts with the aforementioned announcer Bob Glasspiegel. We were having a conversation on the air about the relative merits of “streaking” naked during halftime (college males randomly ran wild and nude across campuses during a certain dull point in the ‘70s; something left over from the freedoms fought for by the cultural revolutions of the ’60s.). I made some remark and suddenly our play-by-play guy punched me.

Luckily it was radio. But I was so startled, I fearfully refrained from offering any decent conversation the rest of the game. (Or “tilt” as they were called back east where Wesleyan University plays its games) At another game when someone streaked across the b-ball court — okay, my dorm mate, but he was very drunk and it was the ’70s — I had to interview him before and after the event. Not easy, as he was one of those guys, as a coach remarked later, who “wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouthful.” Years later, while doing similar color commentary on NYU broadcasts (“Go Violets!”), I got into a physical fight with the mascot from the opposing team. (A “Judge” from Brandeis, was it?)

Anyway, the above experiences are rendered as this folk journalist’s way of saying: good conversation need not always lead to such results. It’s up to you. You can be the catalyst for everyone else’s creative convos. Perhaps you’ll help today’s podcasts usher in a new golden age of storytelling, who knows?

Back Pocket Banter

Have you ever called a talk show on the radio? How about C-Span on TV?

What did you discuss?

Was it like a real conversation or did you just state your opinion and hang up?

What kind of podcast would you like to be part of?

Activity

Call a talk show or sports show on radio or TV.

Bonus

Michael O’Donohue, one of the original SNL writers, told a story of going to a baseball game with a blind friend and describing the action to him as it progressed inning by inning. Late in the game, “Thwack!” – a fly ball to left field and it is going to be a home run. At that point O’Donohue pulls out a souvenir baseball he brought to the game. While continuing the play-by-play: “It’s a long fly ball to deep left back back back…” he suddenly slams the souvenir ball into the stomach of his blind companion. “Home Run!!!”

“[Mychal] Thompson watches players walk into arenas today with their oversized headphones and wonders if they even bother talking to each other anymore as they did back in his day. Casual conversations aren’t the only thing Thompson misses.” Ben Bolch on the former Laker basketball player, LA Times, December 24 2013

ADD Jock Talk: this video creates dialogue where there was none. Certainly nothing like this!

http://nesn.com/2015/01/nfl-bad-lip-reading-returns-with-hilarious-2015-edition-video/