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:
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)
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/
As more and more of our relationships play out over social media, with political squabbles passing for conversation and emojis standing in for genuine expressions of affection…
Meghan Daum, LA Times February 18 2016 on how Justices Scalia and Ginsberg could share common joys despite their political differences
People yearn to elevate the “national” conversation. When a culture like ours lacks decent political dialogue, comedians act as our philosophers and guides. We turn to Samantha Bee and John Oliver.
I do, for guidance.
Meanwhile, do you think texting has helped the national conversation?
I don’t. When you don’t have to face a convo-correspondent, you can grind them down and out by turning a give-and-take into a rugby grunt. It’s so easy to push and shove aint it? But screaming angry and lost is not a conversation.
Political conversation can be enlightening. Despite what you may take from current debates. And the best way to join a national convo? Start one. Locally. Here’s an example:
In August of 1968, I was sitting on the floor of our “family room” in Detroit watching the Democratic convention being broadcast on NBC. (My parents liked Cronkite, but Huntley-Brinkley were great covering conventions.) Suddenly there on our 19-inch Magnavox were policemen in Chicago swinging billy clubs at protestors, knocking them into dark streets.
I turned to my father sitting behind me. My father always watched TV shows from the sofa with the evening’s Detroit News on his lap.
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Why are the cops beating up those students?”
My father folded the newspaper on his lap. The continuing mayhem kept flowing right there in front of us in uncut black-and-white news footage, and he seemed at a loss.
“I don’t know, son,” he said.
“I don’t get it,” said the 13 year-old son.
“I don’t understand that, either,” said the dad.
And this is when I first learned to – the phrase was already popular on protest buttons —“question authority.”
Because guess what? Authority did not have all the answers. Sometimes authority didn’t know what was going on. It was time for me to join the national conversation. (Ask your grandparents for more details.)
By Andy Rash
Back Pocket Banter
Perhaps some folk journalism seeds were planted during that 1968 Democratic convention. I remember seeing NBC News reporter Sander Vanocur brandishing his microphone like a weapon, flashing past competing convention floor reporters from ABC and CBS, adjusting the antenna on his portable headset—made him look like My Favorite Martian — and shouting: “Buzz off guys, this is my interview!”
Questions
What do you think of our current discourse?
Do you ever write letters to a newspaper or call a radio talk show? What about?
A popular button worn during the revolutionary days of the 1960s said: “Question Authority.”* Do you ever question authority? What kind of response did you get?
Cultural Convo
Write a short thank you letter to a public figure who has had a positive influence on you.
Shoot an email to a local, statewide or national politician about something they said. See what kind of response you get and tell others about it.
Join “the national conversation” online or on a street corner. Annotate, annoy, amuse and inform others. With verses of your own devising, drive eyeballs open 24/7. “Write your ream or only dream.” Go ahead and pull a leg pull a face pull a prank. Kesey and the Merry Pranksters of the 1960s defined a prank as, “Something never been seen before: You bomb them, but you do it at night, with poetry.”
America is talkin’. It is this conversation that I find fascinating and vital. It is who we are – a highly opinionated, multimillion-voiced choir with Internet access. I think the anonymity allows people to honestly state what’s on their mind. The ugly Americans and all the rest come out to play.
Henry Rollins in The LA Weekly February 2014
In the mixed-up scrum of politics and media that our so-called national conversation has become….[it’s] a roiling cauldron of outside observers, all bent on ‘bearing witness’ to the situation.
Mark Leibovich, “Let Us All Bear Witness To The Conversation!” NY Times Sunday Magazine September 2014
KATHARINA: Where did you study all this goodly speech?
PETRUCHIO: It is extempore, from my mother-wit.
KATHARINA: A witty mother! witless else her son.
TAMING OF THE SHREW
Would you like to conduct better convo with your relatives?
Who wouldn’t! Conversations with a parent can be so fraught.
And here’s one reason why: Mothers make up words all the time. How do they do that? And how can you keep up with them? Either they get them brand new hot-off-the-pusses of their babies and keep a journal, or they stole them or I don’t know where they got them.
For instance, my mom always hated us kids sitting around doing nothing.“Why are you sitting around like a bump on a log? Good gravy! Criminently!”
Right there are three things at least I never understood. No wonder I was raised up so screwed up. Years before drones, heat-seeking mom missiles left me under a barrage of zingers.
Fathers are more about mixed messages. “I won’t die until I see you’re successful,” Dad would say. So wait, meaning that if I become a success, then you will die? Nooooo!
“You just gotta have that old confidence!” went another well-wrought Da-da-ism. Well, um then, how do you get that?
No idea. By contrast, mothers can lead you into the most embarrassing conversations ever.
THE TYPING TEST
During one of our best, I was smack in the middle of a typing test in New York City, in the kind of yellowing midtown employment office where 80 wpm w/14 mistakes is kinda lousy, but in the late 1980s could still get me “temp work.”
I grabbed an empty desk and gave a call back to Detroit while waiting for the woman doing the scoring to return.
“A typing test?” Mom asked right away.
“Yeah, I know,” I said, affecting dullness, my go-to affect when feeling attacked. “A typing test. I’m 35. At 35 a typing test.”
“Did you tell them you were a writer?”
“Yes, I said to the lady: ‘I should be writing the copy for this. This Royal Typing test? Not taking it, but writing it, ha ha.’”
“I just read an article —“
[I cut this part for many reasons. Moving now to later in our conversation.]
“You sound depressed.”
“Well, it’s just that, I’m already at the age pro football players retire.”
“So? You’re not married, you don’t have another mouth to feed.”
“I know. I mean I should be, but I’m not. Well at least I’m not divorced yet.”
“You’re still seeing Michelle?”
“Yes, I told her last night: I’m 35, I should be getting my kids to bed. Instead I’m still trying to get you to bed. But no, we’re not going together…no.”
“And the other one?”
“Her?”
“If that’s the one. I don’t know.”
“The other one took me to a dance concert. Well, it began as dance and then came a light show and there was some singing and a film.”
“Whaaaaa?”
“One of those new wave variety deals. But one of the dancers had a broken leg, and the singer had laryngitis, so the dancer had to sing and the singer had to dance.”
“Oy fa voy.”
“It was okay. The film was good.”
“Now what about Melissa?”
“No, we’re not, no.”
“You’re not seeing her anymore?”
“No. Because her life is a mess right now, she says. I said what woman’s life isn’t a mess right now. With everything that’s going on.”
“Wasn’t there another woman visiting from Boston?”
“Her? No, we’re not, no. She told me she’s been having some bad luck with her Ouija Board lately.”
“You don’t say!”
“Or something. She’s been seeing this mystifying oracle, I don’t know, it’s none of my business. I said, ‘Who has time for two-minute mysteries, baby: love me.’”
“You remember what I told you?”
“That moose meat rivals the best beef?”
“What?”
“I know – love is just peer pressure when you really need it the most.”
“Your father and I would like to see you…you know.”
“Sure I wanna be married; it would improve my social life! That’s like asking why do I trample on the environment? Because-the-guy-before-me-did! That’s why anyone gets married.”
“Well, your father and I –”
“No, I do. I wanna make my kids laugh. I want them to make me laugh.”
“So?”
“So everybody I know is either getting married, breaking up, having a baby, or dying.”
“Welcome to my world, that’s called being an adult.”
“Thank you! I wondered what that was supposed to feel like.”
“And wasn’t there one from last summer?”
“Her? No, we’re not, no.”
“Mindy?”
“I mean, we were, but now we’re not.”
“Not even seeing each other?”
“But that’s the great thing about voice mail: you don’t wanna see each other but you can pretend to still be talking. She leaves voicemails she says, just to put her voice into my energy field. ”
“Go on!”
“It’s like getting messages from another dimension.”
“Better than a poke in the eye from a sharp stick.”
“The last time with her she said she had to laugh to keep from throwing up.”
“Go on!”
“Remember the one who told me that before I met her I could barely butter bread?”
“No.”
“She told me for a guy who claimed to have his head in the game, I sure had it up my ass half the time.”
“The therapist?”
“Like, I couldn’t even look at her anymore without feeling I was sexually harassing her. So no, we’re not, no.”
“So go no.”
“So now you know.”
“Good gravy. Well, thanks for calling. You could call more often.”
“I’ve been trying to. You’re never home. Get your answering machine fixed, we’ll talk. Bye Mom – ”
[CLICK]
Decent convo but I get no closure because my mother just hangs up. She got that from her father, a member of Generation I from a time when a phone call wasn’t anything like a real conversation consisting of greetings and farewells. A phone call back then was an event! Witness this 1904 scene from the MGM musical, MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS *
Years before “Let the machine get it.” Before phone conversations became interruptions because a call bothers you in the middle of everything going on right then in your life. (Mostly texting.)
Five Questions For Folk Journalists
Do you have conversations with family members face-to-face?
How long do these exchanges last?
What would improve your conversations?
At what age did you have your best conversations with a parent?
Did your father or mother have any “catch phrases” passed on to your siblings?
Activity
Want more fun connection with beloved family members? Try some phrases/trite truisms a parent particularly pulled out for no rhyme and very little reason. (References from the ’50s and ’60s are all fair use, public domain and publically-domiciled cultural fodder.)
“Hey, there she is, the People’s Choice!”*
“Hello Old Timer!”
“Good Gravy!”
“It’s all grist for the mill.”
“Christ on a bicycle!”
Bonus! Another Excellent Mom Convo
Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson recalled a childhood conversation with his mother. She wanted him to understand that becoming a world-class athlete was not as far-fetched as he thought. She said Russell should ask himself: “Why not me?”
* In MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, starring Judy Garland and written by Irving Brecher and Fred Finkelhoffe, a phone call took an appointment to arrange. And a family to listen in.
There’s less cleaning up afterwards.
Kurt Vonnegut on why he preferred laughing to crying.
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:
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!”
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.
