Falling Back in Love with Conversations

Graphic by Libbe Phan

Nearly everything in life operates at a conversational level. The reason we are here at all is due to the smooth interactions happening between our organs. We form the majority of our learning through them. In fact, our entire lives can be condensed into a series of exchanges - metaphorical and literal, interactional or transactional. I hear them in the clatter of different pairs of footsteps on both sides of the busy road my balcony looks out onto. Even in the volatile horns of motorists. I step into one with the author of every line I read or as I get lost in the melodies shared by birds, nestled in the branches of a nearby silver birch.

Truthfully, I’m in a hopeless entanglement with conversations. It’s the kind of love which catches you spending hours fawning over the smallest of details and fumbling over your words – even the luminous sign of the chicken shop seems irrevocably beautiful. Because of this I’ve developed an allergy to silence, even in the quiet moments of 7:00am as I get ready for work I have to switch on a podcast just to exist within the comfort of the jovial toing and froing between voices.

However, there are unpleasant side effects to conversations, found in the gaps between them. They are temporary; they would not hold up as evidence in a court of law, which means they are liable to counterfeit. They provide the ideal stage to act out half passions and empty promises. It’s easy to be at either side of a deteriorating conversation, and equally painful; stoking desperately at the embers of a dying conversation because you need to hear the other person’s voice or finding yourself apathetic towards someone’s attempts to keep contact going. Having the wrong conversations can be disorientating. When you get into something too convoluted it is easy to get lost somewhere along the way, missing the point entirely.

This is why we must remain vigilant when starting and ending dialogues. We must keep conversations sexy by paying attention to the main and subtexts and listening to not only the words spoken but also those left out. Sometimes it's even good to leave the instigating to others and enjoy the buzz of communication around you…

Best places to overhear conversations:

1. Buses/Trains/Coaches (phone conversations allow you to imagine what the person on the other side of the line are is saying/sounds like)

2. Almost empty roadside fast food chains

3. Supermarkets (especially when you stumble into a couple passive aggressively discussing dinner ideas)

4. Coffee shops/bars/pubs (especially conversations between old friends, first dates, elderly couples, relatives)

5. Women’s changing rooms

6. Waiting rooms of any description

Conversations retain the ability to lift you into a veritable nirvana or chain you to that really depressing, acrid smelling car park loo. They are verbal games of pass the parcel, each layer of wrapping paper a collection of words uttered from one person to another. Two people cannot hold onto the parcel at the same time, and you must accept if you get nothing when it's your turn to tear off a layer. The most important things happen in the perimeters of conversation. Declarations of love or hate, arguments and discussions, some closed by definitive endings and others left ajar. They are our first and last words, mark the beginnings and endings of encounters or they can be entirely meaningless.

So go out, seize the day, and sow your conversational oats.