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:
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!
