Paul Krassner

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.

The goal: to get to where the words fall, from a muse-filled sky, down through your mind, and off the end of your quilled tongue. Author Ken Kesey

Comedy loves heart. Paul Sills, founding guru at Second City

At the feet of the great satirist Paul Krassner *

Ready for a few folk journalistically-tested quick openers?

These convo firestarters tend to be terse, bent toward further conversage.

(For one-liners bent toward getting the heck out of a bad conversation in one quick of a hurry SEE WITCRAFT How to Extricate From Any Conversation — TK)

But hey, you take a chance, am I right? The cartoonist Mark Alan Stamaty of “Macdoodle Street” fame in the Village Voice, drew one that I kept above my typewriter for years. Its theme: “You have to risk it all every day!”

Now some folks have, as it has become known through cultural history, “the gift for gab.” (In some parts of the country: “the gift of gab.”) Usually these high-energy individuals are able to get away with lines like, “Is that a smile? Are you smiling right now?”

Or this one:

Quick Opener, “Don’t they miss you?” Semi-startled, you answer: “Who?”

Quick Opener Comeback: “Heaven. I know they must be missing an angel right about now.”

Yuck. By adding authenticity to your game, you can avoid this superficial subtext–shallower-than-spit level of a conman. Here’s how to insert yourself into another person’s space. Do what Paul Sills, guru of Second City advises. His mother Viola Spolin wrote the first handbook on improvisational theater games and Sills told us in an NYC class one day something I’ve never forgotten: “Encourage the laggards.”

He meant that in the everyday battle for existence, leaning inside with a quick jab, uttering the first sentence, is not that hard. So try to encourage those you cannot.

“You are in the safest place in the universe,” he’d tell us. “On a stage.”

Our teacher was right. What a safety in freedom we all felt about firing that first volley. We could say anything. Perhaps Sills’ approach came from Shakespeare’s “As You Like It,” wherein Jacques says: “The whole world is a stage, and all the men and women merely actors.”

But how can you continue offstage, backstage, in real life, without acting out every anxiety, all your neuroses falling out all over everybody because after all, Shakespeare’s Jacques was a melancholy man after all.

Think of professional athletes who “make a play.” A folk journalist is just as serious about playmaking. (And often makes plays at being serious, too.) What do I mean by this?

Make a play for making room enough so a conversation can become as big as your subject’s world. Because when you explore, you find interesting people. People get more interesting by telling you a tale. They might reveal their dreams, or say something obscene, something simple as recalling an episode of their favorite show, or talk about where they went that time with their first love.

BACK POCKET BANTER (Other Quick Openers)

Noticing how pictures on the fronts of t-shirts are just about the same size as a small TV screen, “What is that funny thing on your shirt?”

From mall to boardwalk, it is easy to be encourageable, “Where did you buy that lovely dress? Did you make it yourself?”

“Is that good? What you’re reading. What’s it about?”

“I love the rain don’t you?” (Stolen from Woody Allen where his next line is, “It washes the memories off the sidewalks of life.” May be inapplicable in some western climes.)

“Do you hear that? What’s that song they’re playing?”

Even, “Whacha’ doin?” when gently expressed can get the ball to their side. The Beatles did a whole song with that as their title. **

“I really admire your shoes” is most always welcomed by young women.

And young men have been known to lead with one of the following three:

“Yo!” “Wazzup?” And, “Nice car! Hey!”

Or the equally played betimes: “Hey! Nice car!”

NEXT TIME: “Onward!” Author Henry Miller and radio storyteller Jean Shepherd both said this I think, although Jean (flicklives.com) was more known for “Excelsior!”

* Hear my conversation with Paul Krassner, publisher of The Realist and co-founder of the Youth International Party: The Yippies!

http://www.scpr.org/programs/offramp/2012/11/27/29428/paul-krassner-turned-on-groucho-and-told-john-yoko/

* * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpWrNS2UTgA

Strolling Drollery: fanmail from some Flaneur

Quick Openers: Sure Fire Ways To Clever Convo