Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed with Harper Lee above bed of Opus reading “Mockingbird”
What, gone without a word?
Ay, so true love should do: it cannot speak;
For truth hath better deeds than words to grace it.
Two Gentlemen Of Verona
Note: This will not be covering majorly awkward convos – after a Minor Auto Accident, what to say at the Precinct Investigation, or convos to a Companion After Running Out of Money and Being Thrown Out of a Motel in Biklabito, New Mexico.
In situations like these, really, what can you say? “D’oh!?”
Remember a few entries ago where I spoke of Convo Everywhere? [Feb 17, 2016] Surely, confabs can break out anytime, forcing everyone to step up and declare something. Sometimes it is demanded of you: “Do you have anything to declare?”
I declare that sometimes it is when you feel at your weakest when you must summon the most strength.
And perhaps the most longed-for awkward moment is a Beatlesque moment when one is unable to speak at all. It’s described as, “Deep in love/not a lot to say” in Things We Said Today or as George (Happy Birthday!) Harrison sings, “But you see that I’m too much in luv” in If I Needed Someone.
The freest thing of all, love means it is fine to just stare. Mildly, wildly, meekly, shriekly inside oneself at the face of it. How can anyone try to capture, contain, explain such feelings in conversational-type words? (Hence, The Beatles!)
Have you been there, been unable to do anything about that? Left speechless with less than bupkis to blurt?Two times immediately come to my mind: after a Rickie Lee Jones concert at Town Hall in NYC and after the play “Sunday In The Park With George” near the same part of midtown Manhattan. Details TK
Think of Dianne Weist in Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway pressing her hand over John Cusack’s lips: “Don’t Speak!”
Back Pocket Banter
Have you ever been so much in love you could not speak?
Is that the greatest or what? How can you make that happen again?
* * *
The opposite of this feelings-wise may be Bonnie Raitt lamenting in Angel From Montgomery, “How the hell can a person go to work in the morning, come home in the evening and have nothing to say?”
That’s a tough convo to not have. More lonely inside a couple than alone.
That just makes me want to go to bed with a book [See above comic strip].
So what does that say about Shakespeare? What does it say about social media?
Post-texting, what do you think will be the next big thing to come along? (Go Mindlink!)
Well, my friends, the world we’ve built for our children is too strange they may not even want to know when it gets here. Who knows, perhaps we’ll be speaking Elizabethan face to face.
Meanwhile, this bantering between the Earl and the King kinda make me think of Warren Zevon’s, Werewolves of London: “He’s the hairy-handed gent who ran amok in Kent!”
Folk Journalistical Historical Note: Mr. Zevon came to the San Francisco radio station where I worked in the late 1970s and left us a promotional version of the song: “Ah-ooo werewolves of KSAN!”
First, know this going in: it is an impossible conversation. Or very very difficult. After a death. Words are insufficient. They just won’t work. Shakespeare may say it best. And it wasn’t just Bee Gees who sang about words being “all I have.”
Some folks first learn about death while at play. As a child in Detroit if you got caught, “counting the cars in a funeral” procession, your friends chanted that you’d be the next to die:
“The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out
The worms play pinochle on your snout
They roll you up in a long white sheet
And lay you down six feet deep…”
Verse upon verse, funnily about the scary. This goes way back to, “Ring around the rosey/pocketful of posies/Ashes ashes we all fall down,” which I’ve just learned Snopes.com claims does not come from the plague in Europe in the 1300s. http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/rosie.asp
[But another children’s choosing-up-sides rhyme, Engine Engine #9 traingoing off the tracks is a death trip, too, right? See GOOD HUMOR MAN entry from December 22 2015]
Worm-play on your snout works as an amulet. We injected lyrical spells into each other, arming up via curses to crack us up. Said across a circle.
Do you know any others? Perhaps there exists an Allen Lomax-curated lp collection out there — “Children’s Funeral Procession Songs of the U.S. Possibly Lifted from Great Britain.” You sure don’t see processions anymore.
new mural off Abbot Kinney
When out of words dumbstruck we say someone is “at a loss” for words. Ram Dass [See DIRECTING CONVERSATION entry, February 2 2016] tries to counter this with his work with dying people in hospices. There he tries to “create a space” where someone can open up and express themselves – a space to maybe find words, continuing to play in the game of life before hanging up the skates.
“Tell me how your parents died,” she said. I couldn’t believe my ears.
“I beg your pardon?” I said.
“What good is ‘Hello’?” she said.
She had stopped me in my tracks.
“I’ve always thought it was better than nothing,” I said, “but I could be wrong.”
“What does ‘Hello’ mean?” she said.
And I said, “I had always understood it to mean ‘Hello.’”
“Well it doesn’t,” she said. “It means, ‘Don’t talk about anything important.’ It means, ‘I’m smiling but not listening, so just go away.’”
She went on to avow that she was tired of just pretending to meet people. “So sit down here,” she said, “and tell Mama how your parents died.”
“Tell Mama!” Can you beat it?
Kurt Vonnegut in his novel Bluebeard
Can you beat that? Vonnegut!
When conveying the news about a death it’s weird today because you can’t just say, “You better sit down” like they always say in the movies. Most people are already sitting, in front of their computers.
When singer Dan Fogelberg died in 2007, I went online to remember one of his tunes and I was amazed to discover scores of comments, memorial pages created at a YouTube link. Everyone mourning together via text, sending memories in video. I don’t deal well with death, but this certainly helped. Obviously it wasn’t a face-to-face mourning. But I felt I was in the middle of a new kind of moving conversation.
Back Pocket Banter: Five Ways To Convo
Do people find you comforting?
How do you comfort people?
How do you deal with loss?
Do you go on YouTube and type up your memories?
If you could live and die during any period of history, which would you choose?
Obit of convo maven
Activity
Hug until the other person lets go. (Hey once we start hugging why do we ever let go? To get back to this thing the artist formerly-known as Prince calls life?)
Get into a conversation: According to many family traditions, funerals and weddings are the best times to catch up with uncles, aunts, cousins and cousins once removed. Ask about their lives and you’ll get good stories. How is that sister-in-law’s sister on the Cape and her kids at Keene State? There are Peace Corps missions and scientists and sports legends to learn about!
Family convos can remind you that funerals are to remind you that engaging in life is worthwhile and worth even more when humor, sadness, the spices of life and death—voila! —are added.
Bonus!
For conversations after funerals, actress Elaine Stritch recommended having a couple of drinks. She told me her next memoir would be called, “How Drinking Saved My Life.” In wintertime there’s Irish coffee, known for having loosened up many a tongue across the San Francisco Bay area. In summer the vodka tonic. I think I still prefer silence.
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 muchoel 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.
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!”
brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not
able to invent anything that tends to laughter, more
than I invent or is invented on me: I am not only
witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other
men.
Falstaff in II Henry IV
Okay, so nobody could be as quick with their wit as Falstaff, a character so great that Shakespeare wrote him into three plays. (Was anyone in more plays than Sir John?) But give these five quick openers a try the next time you find yourself looking for words:
Back Pocket Banter
Where would you take me if I were new in town?
How old were you at your first rock concert? Do you have a story you recall from it?
Is there a part in a movie you would like to have played?
What’s the worst breakup you’ve been through?
Did you ever hurt somebody really bad?
Aside from engaging in this conversation, what is the biggest mistake you’ve ever made?
(Okay, that was seven, but I think you can have fun with at least five of them)
Doll Tearsheet: They say Poins has a good wit.
Falstaff: He a good wit? hang him, baboon! his wit’s as thick as Tewksbury mustard
More awkward convo coming soon!
