Talk is Cheap
On a recent flight, I was seated beside a couple who conversed in fits and starts. Though they did not once appear to be frustrated with one another or irritated in any way shape or form, when they talked, they spurted. She repeated herself a lot and he began to respond to her original statement in the middle of her restatement and for literally moments on end the two would talk simultaneously like the cacophony of birds playing chase in the trees. The moments following such abrasion were swollen in pregnant silence. Then another fit would be born, and the crippled exchange would jolt along again like a stick shift in the hands of a virgin driver, the abruptness of which never ceased to startle me. And though it was none of my business or concern, I ached for them and their limp.
I’ve always considered myself to be an athlete, but not a runner. Most people are either one or the other, even if they think they’re both. I see people jogging along the side of the road and say, sometimes in my head and sometimes out my mouth, ‘bless their hearts’. Their steps look so disjointed you can almost hear them inside of your air-conditioned car as you drive by. Avid runners stride, quietly, their arm carriage syncing with their foot strike, their head, shoulders, and hips in a line. Non-runners hobble. Non-runners’ shoulders roll. Their hips argue and their heads hang heavy, too far in front. My high school track coach used to yell at me to ‘quit swimming’—the ugly habit I had of rolling one shoulder in at a time like I was pulling a rope hitched to an underwater bag. When I get tired my arms go cross grain.
Avid runners stride, quietly, their arm carriage syncing with their foot strike, their head, shoulders, and hips in a line.
I have a friend who’s an expert runner, like Olympic level in her prime. She went to the doctor once and he told her most folks are like a Ford Taurus, but she was more like a Formula One race car. The slightest imbalance would throw off her stride and cause issues. Meanwhile, the Taurus could have the bumper dragging and sparking down the road and the driver would have no idea. A couple of Fords were seated across from me.
I was exhausted by the time our plane touched the ground.
In an awkward kind of way, I felt imprisoned by the uncomfortable nature of these strangers’ verbal gait. I kept wanting them to find a pace, to feel a flow. I was a voyeur (a voyeur with little choice in the matter, but a voyeur still). And yet I could not let their dissonance go. It grated on my mind like the sand in the heel of my right shoe.
Perhaps the discordant spattering of words pained me so because real talk sits on a pedestal for me. I find it to be intoxicating. Conversing, as unoriginal as this sounds and reads, is very simply, an art. Better than sex some people say. ‘Right there with it’ says every two decade plus married couple ever. It’s how the days make sense. And it’s almost as beautiful to witness as it is to be involved in. Nora Ephron’s classic, “When Harry met Sally”, still has a cult following, partly because Meg Ryan is Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal is Billy Crystal but mostly because we love what Sally said and how Harry heard it. (Thank you, Nora) The Katz Diner scene didn’t hurt either. But the entire movie is a conversation. Nothing happens. They just talk. And for an hour and a half, millions of people, many times over, still pay money to listen.
The old lost art that makes the sounds work.
Spaceships and bloodbaths sell movies –killing people seems to be exceptionally vogue right now--but quintessentially, through the years, the volleying of words on a giant screen just never gets old. Admittedly, part of the draw is often the aesthetically pleasing people who’ve been hired to deliver the words, but without the content, we don’t keep watching. We stay in the chairs because we crave what we can connect with. And we connect because of the words and how they are arranged but also because of how and when they are delivered. Conversation has at its core the exchange of thoughts, ideas, concepts, feelings--it’s about words and the pictures they conjure up and the meaning of them in all their various shades, for sure--but real talk takes on more than that. It moves beyond what is said into the subtle delicacy of how it comes out and into the air. Hang time matters. Real talk is timing and spacing and pace, whether it fires like a machine gun or drips like honey. It’s synchronized swimming. Two people doing it together. And it can take your breath away when it’s done well.
Unfortunately, artful conversations are rare. They’re magical on screen, of course, but there they are scripted and rehearsed and critiqued and re-delivered until they pop with the rhythm of an original song. Real life is void of those advantages. It can seem you either have it or you don’t. For example, I have a friend whom I adore, but I can’t talk to her on the phone. We have no timing. Were we to dance our toes would be bruised. We know each other extremely well, yet try as we may, we have no modus operandi. So, when she calls, we exchange information and we hang up And I always feel the need to gargle. I love her but we have conversational arrhythmia. And it’s painful. At least for one of us.
On the other hand, I have friends with whom I can exchange words and ideas like a Wimbledon rally. We seem to possess an innate sense of when the other is finished and it is our turn. There is a cadence and a pitch pipe. The melody is clear. It’s as mindless as spoon to mouth. We don’t have to try; there is no conscientious shifting of gears. We just go. It’s like shooting a freethrow with my eyes closed. I don’t need to see the goal. I innately know where it is. And we hang up the phone two hours later wondering where the time went.
In the sport of basketball, nothing is more beautiful or more essential to purposeful offense than the perfect execution of the ‘give and go’. The ball goes there, then the passer cuts here and a rhythm is born. It’s a deadly offense, impossible to defend. And it’s breathtaking to observe, even though it’s been around forever. Some things are so bedrock foundational that they never go out of style, though like the gem in the thrift store corner, you always feel lucky when you stumble upon them. Artful conversation is such a prize. Unfortunately, it’s almost as difficult to find.
I ache for ramblers and non- listeners and jagged interrupters in the same way I ache for point guards who can’t decide when to pass or where to cut. I wish for them clarity of thought, a booming drumbeat in their head, a tuning fork for their ear. I want to erect an invisible instrument panel that will tell them “now!” and “wait!” and “take a turn—she put her blinker on.” My Christmas gift to all the people I love most in the world would be a partner with whom they could verbally spar.
I have to wonder, though, if I am aching for pains the conversationally challenged do not have. Perhaps those who speak offbeat are like the tone deaf, happy to sing along at the top of their lungs because it all sounds like heaven to them. They don’t even notice the sparks from the dragging bumper. Still, I would love to get them beside the track to expose them to the race car’s glide. Because once you go for a ride, you’re never satisfied with limping along.
Good conversation is the glue of long, lusty marriages and the lifeblood of thriving companies and nations. Real talk can heal a wound. It can tear down a wall. It can find a way out when there is none. It can restart a heart.
It can also do a whole litany of less momentous things. Like, make a shared cup of coffee. Or a Sunday afternoon. Or a drive to the dump if you’re so inclined.
Real talk isn’t snobby. It’s not reserved for the appropriately dressed or a dinner table with place cards. It can bloom in any climate, any soil, at any given moment in time. Even on an airplane thousands of miles in the sky. But make no mistake about it, it is an art.
And for those who can feel its poetic ebb and flow, there is little finer.
Sherri Coale
P.S.