FootprintsintheWind.com

A conversation perfect may not be
for we ever want more of it
and it ever goes its own way
but if we will first set out
we will make it better than planned

:- Doug.

We need, first, to wrestle out how to have our conversation, and, second, about what.

:- Doug.

Raising the temperature another degree works against conversational progress. Backing away might help, might provoke. Asking questions and developing curiosity—we don’t know how and we cannot predict the dog-kick effect.

:- Doug.

One center of conversation is hurt, another is assumption, another is fear. These animate conversation. These bring in unexpected energy and turns, dog-kicked, a conversation kicked. What we do with that as well as what we will want to do with that, are both unknowns. Might someone become fascinated by these choices?

:- Doug.

A quotation recited
Can be a
Center
For a conversation
For a life

:- Doug.

What I learned from a recent difficult conversation:

When I got him talking things went better (I knew this, didn’t I?); when I was doing the talking he was holding back, preparing to defend himself. So one learning is less talking, more hearing. Another is asking for information and his perspective rather than telling. Not really surprising stuff.

The trouble with my analysis and plan for future conversations is that I could not, easily and with sureness, know what would be the other person’s reactions. I could make guesses, and can get better at guessing, but the effect of my preparation must await the fire to find out.

:- Doug.

Writing gives you more children running about, conversation even more. Running about: doing and saying the darnedest things.

:- Doug.

The test of conversation is whether it noticeably improves the life of the whole.

:- Doug.

The unknowable conversation.

:- Doug.

We get to good conversation by a process of testing and nudging.

:- Doug.

This being old
is new to me
and it feels right

:- Doug.

Might we use the elements of sound to change, add, vary, contradict, or evaluate our own ways of participating in a conversation, what we do and say? Musicage, p 206, gives these elements of sound: pitch, timbre, amplitude, duration. If we say what we have to say varying these, consciously, how might it expand our perception and thinking?

:- Doug.

John Cage, in Musicage, p 208, speaks of asking the flautist to go against grain and play “almost imperceptibly” while asking the pianist to play a full range of volumes. There was another group of musicians who experimented with trading instruments—and found new ways to have their musical conversation. Might we do something similar in the middle of a conversation? Not only taking each other’s arguments. Say physical poses (tableaux?), or vocal pitch and rhythm?

:- Doug.

What is a person? How does one become a person socially?

:- Doug.

The deep structure of a conversation is usually formed by the shapes of the space in which they occur—both the physical immediate space, say the coffee house, and the context of the question which incites us together. The shapes of the space are also formed by the players participating and each one’s individual history and history or no history with the other players; the colors on the walls and on the cars driving past; the smells; shadows; the important animal and plant life of the place; the things we think are peripherals; the powers and things we cannot control such as numberless people in government and corporate offices; and especially the flows among all these things.

So what do we do once we discern the deep structures for our conversation? No one of us can keep all these things in mind or in the back of our mind. No one of us can remember to look in all these directions, call all these winds in to play in our skies.

We can do one small thing, and then another, keeping this data warm and our space alive. We can perceive this deep structure and enliven stretches of it. Well made, the conversation will feel right, the players will be safe, and life will feel more at home in all this context.

:- Doug.

Conversations may sometimes appear in the wild, but I think the better ones usually are generated happenings.

:- Doug.

The ideal is to not have anything on your mind going into and out of a conversation.

:- Doug.

Work so as not to offend nor spoil silence.

:- Doug.

Conversation is wherever we are and is in what we call ambient sound. If we are not making sounds, we call the ambient conversations silence. Unless.

:- Doug.

In conversation: 1. the surround, the context, is limitless; 2. in light of this, we rightly speak and refrain gently, allowing the others to find their ideas and ours, not trying to hold back the river nor divert it, working with the flow, enhancing the flow; 3. remember and act and speak as if fellow players are friends, no matter what they or you say or want to say.

:- Doug.

Pretty much everything can tell me about conversation.

:- Doug.

Could talking to yourself in the mirror (like Lee Glickstein), or even not talking, lead you into better conversation?

:- Doug.

We need to get conscious again, at least at each outset, of what we are doing in conversation: making life. Extending and enhancing life. We need to get particular about it: notice where it is latent, where it needs help, where it needs repairing, and looking for ways to inject more without removing the greening sprouts. Our aim: to generate a living conversation.

:- Doug.