The Art of Conversation - Catherine Blyth [38]
Friend (who shall be nameless): Hello, Mrs. X. Where’s your husband?
(Pause. Mrs. X turns green, gulps.)
Mrs. X: “He died two weeks ago.”
To me gossip is a growth industry, ever more essential in atomized urban society, as family ties weaken and networks grow wider, looser, and diffuser, and most bonds are inked in friendship. While monitoring a virtual crowd of Internet pals can accentuate loneliness if you’re not truly in touch, gossip remains friendship’s primary medium, as well as being good for business. If I could, I’d buy shares in it.
Risk: Misjudging your audience; too much information, too little
Opportunity: Information; titillation; unearned sense of superiority
Scenario: Reunions; christenings; bar mitzvahs; and (at low volume) funerals
SEX?
Once upon a time my friends and I shared further and better particulars—for research, you understand—but detailed accounts have been off-limits since the last door slammed on my teens.
Does sex talk turn you on? Does your listener want or need to know? Certainly, the Mitford sister, Diana Mosley, found it dry fare at a lunch with the aging widow Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, who was evidently keen to remind guests that a king had once preferred her charms to ruling his country:
Pathos personified, about nine people including a nurse (in a green silk dress) & she (Duchess) tried to get the ball rolling by saying how nowadays people are only interested in SEX, well as we were all well on the way to the grave the ball refused to roll.
Risk: What you think flattering may not be if your listener’s mind’s eye isn’t soft-focus
Opportunity: If it turns you on
Scenario: Locker room, doctor’s surgery, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen . . .
CURRENT AFFAIRS?
A fair bet once. But as a surfeit of topics rush in via radio, TV, or Internet, like Cleopatra, 24/7 news “makes hungry where most [it] satisfies.” Hourly are we buffeted by vistas of calamity, but our relation to it is image-deep—dulling shockability, jading interest. So where our grandparents avoided talk of war out of consideration for those who wished to forget, we are likelier to shun it out of boredom or that guilt-salving euphemism, compassion fatigue. Not that we think of it like that. In fact, we’d rather not think about it, since it makes us feel futile.
Nonetheless, discussing big stuff with baby boomers remains more mind-expanding than numbing, thanks to their halcyon memories of 1960s protests. And many—their mortgages paid off, their offspring schooled and resolutely deferring the production of time-consuming grandchildren—are also doing something concrete to set the world to rights. Let them fire you up and you might find yourself getting out there too.
Risk: Depression; tedium; argument; revelation of dubious beliefs
Opportunity: Catch the latest; quell a bore; have a row; raise consciousness
Scenario: Student union; pub (for sports haters); dinner party; AARP holiday; sixtieth birthday
HEAVY WEATHER?
The British classic. Where others have climates, UK skies are ruled by the capricious goddess Weather. Except, with climate change, weather has gone global—no longer a demure neutral topic of discussion, but a titan, hauling an unruly retinue of visions of imminent, overheated apocalypse, as we dodge hail in July, sunbathe in October. Want to talk about it? Do canapés go with melting polar ice caps? Up to you.
I say, reclaim weather; acquaint yourself with its fluffier side and go cloud spotting.
Risk: Cliché; inconvenient truths; environmental depression
Opportunity: Remember umbrella/sunblock; better than old ladies’ bunions
Scenario: Start of conversation; passing time of day with strangers on street; anywhere. Go on. If only for one day a year, imagine how nice it would