When I created this
blog, I thought it might be possible to be starting a conversation. That’s what
the accompanying note at the right side says, anyway.
A
conversation is an informal talk with one or more other people. We have
conversations in all sorts of circumstances. I had a light-hearted one today at
the barbershop, for example. But conversation can be non-verbal, in a sense, if
it is written. In truth, that is a correspondence, but with the immediacy of
today’s communication, “correspondence” seems almost antiquated.
But
conversation requires at least two people, as noted. Sometimes – no, often –
conversations must be kick-started. There has to be something to break the ice
of gelid convention. That’s why it is so easy to have a conversation with a
perfect stranger over a drink at a bar, a coffee at a diner counter. The
communal sipping gives us – me and the guy next stool – something in common.
Not to mention the tongue-loosening properties of caffeine or alcohol.
But there
are differences between conversations at the bar and those at the diner. The
differences include those in subject matter, content and intensity. The chat
over coffee is more apt to be relatively quiet, sober and somewhat more topical
– serious, even. At a bar, however, well sports often is first up at bat, and
if politics comes up, serious – and I don’t mean somber – consequences can
ensue. Aware of that potential disaster, most bar conversations avoid the
topic. Most bar talk is more superficial than not.
What’s
the point of all this? Just leading up to this wonderfully insightful cartoon
from this week’s New Yorker. It says it all. So I need not “say” more in this
colloquy (should someone chime in, it would be a conversation) but simply bow
out on this caricaturistic note:
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