More Conversations

Free writing:  what’s on my mind?  I apologize in advance if this post ends up twisting and turning more than one particular road I drove on earlier today. It was a rainy, grey, gloomy, cool fall day as I set out to, well, just to. I set out to.  When I left home this morning, it wasn’t raining, but showers were in the forecast. 

So, there I was, driving in the rain, windshield wipers going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The music of choice – even that wasn’t a choice, as I had my iPod on shuffle. BUT…it was set to shuffle on a playlist called “Recently Added.”  Over the past three weeks, I’ve probably swapped about 100 songs out of my collection of 1,200, and there seems to be a definitive mood. I’ve added a lot of Stevie Wonder, Sade, Jill Scott, and Frank McComb - soul artists who write very deep and meaningful lyrics, and also pay attention to how their music composition interacts with the lyrics.  And in listening to deep song after deep song play, something hit a chord with me. (Yes, the pun was intended.) Those were songs of heartache and heartbreak, of struggle, of pain. But there were also songs about love, about life, about living and aspiring and achieving Higher Ground. Uplifting songs of hope.  Those words spoke to me, as if the artists themselves were in the passenger seat, speaking to me.

Maybe it’s the function of the small world I live in right now, but it seems that we’ve lost our focus on love and life, and living and aspiring. It seems we’re caught up in reality TV and replacement refs and negative political ads…and money.  Those who have a lot, we’re mad that they want more. Of course, we want more. Or need more. Both, really. Who are you voting for? Who are you voting off? I’m so tired, not enough hours in the day to meet all the demands, complain, complain, complain, compare, contrast, sink deeper and deeper and withdraw within ourselves and become closed and…

...stop sharing. 

Who are we anymore? Robots? Punching in, punching out, mimicking each other, squawking complaints like parrots? Sad, angry parrots. Angry birds. Infested with road rage because we have to get to where we’re going 17 second faster than we are, so we can…WHAT? What are we in a hurry to do? All of this? Over and over again?

Which leads me to a question I’ve asked before: What happened to conversation? Real conversation? Where we offer a piece of ourselves, and where our offering is appreciated, and cherished, and nourished, and returned?  I don’t want to talk, so I’m going to give you a snippet of thought, just enough to get a general cold unemotional point across, unless I add a :) or a :( . 

And yes, I’m totally guilty of all of this myself. And I don’t like it. But it takes two. A conversation alone is really not a conversation, but that’s what I do - just me, in my car, talking out loud when I hear an interesting song lyric, or see an interesting sight. When I take the time to pull over, and turn around, and analyze what I’ve seen terms of how the subject fits in, and can be separated from, it’s surrounding, so I can take a single photo that hopefully overachieves the one-thousand word allotment.  But how does a photo become a thousand words? By conversation. Not by text messaging. If the average word is 5 characters, including a space, then a 160-character text can contain 32 words. SO…a picture is worth 32 text messages.  Or 36 Tweets.

I will fully admit that I miss conversations. I crave conversations. I totally believe in conversations. Those who know me know that I can become fully engaged in a conversation, a LONG conversation, very easily. I’ve posted about conversations before, how it’s becoming a lost art, and I think there is a definite correlation between the degradation of the art of conversation, and the degradation of many key elements of society (friendships, marriage, democracy), and really, therefore, of society. 

Society would be much better if we would just…have a conversation. A real, deep, thoughtful conversation. We can laugh the entire time if we want, but let’s engage.    

And even though a picture is worth a thousand words – and one could then call it a visual conversation;

And even though a song could be called a musical conversation;

And as much as I engage in mental conversations with I’m roaming with my music, taking photos…

…a conversation isn’t a conversation without a willing participant.

So engage. And let yourself be engaged. It may save us all yet.

Related posts:  
"Conversations", 3/27/11
"The World Is Making Me Dizzy, Let Me Off -OR- Jane, Stop This Crazy Thing!", 6/21/12