The Art of Conversation - Catherine Blyth [50]
So detonate your bore with this tactic, from a journalism course’s seminar on pepping up dull interviewees: Whip the droning along with monosyllables—“Yup ... yup ... yeah ... right ... wow!”—all the while smiling, nodding, doing lively things with your eyebrows.
When speaking, act animated and you’ll not only carve up the sense of your words more clearly, but seem more engaging too, as politicians appreciate. They karate-chop the air, to lend gravity to the hot stuff steaming from their mouths, a venerable tactic. In Attic Greece, Cratylus disguised his flummery by
hissing aggressively and shaking his hands; for these things are persuasive [to people], because the things they know become tokens for what they do not know.
He played angry, they believed he was justified. Alas, it worked for Hitler too.
➺ Rule five: Scavenge for material
Nothing to inspire you? Excuses, excuses. Imagine doing zip all, beautifully, full-time—and having to entertain bored masters, potentially on pain of death? Courtiers, muzzled by etiquettes and sheer monotony, somehow unraveled viable material from their cocooned existence. Their techniques repay study.
Sei Shōnagan, a tenth-century Japanese lady and the empress’s chief wit, was more constrained than most. Sitting behind a screen (one could not be seen) dueling poetic ripostes with a man, was life at its most thrilling, and writing verse, off the cuff, in public, a frequent, terrifying ordeal. Relief came in light conversation. What, in such a shuttered existence, did she talk about? Her technique was to watch everything closely, sucking joy from minutiae: the hush of blossom falling, ice shavings sweetened with syrup, snow on a sunny day.
Look around and you’ll find endless material. Like bitching, only nicer (if you avoid needless risk: remember the mauve catsuit), observations bond people by ranging them metaphorically side by side—facing outward instead of at each other, wondering what to say.
Admire the whiskeys behind the bar, wonder how so many Scottish islands can support distilleries. Does that arch frame a bucolic bosky view? Did you love climbing those kinds of trees when you were a child? Is that man over there wooing that woman? You like that necklace? Then admire it. Observe the effort the boring host has made, aloud. He may light up. You might jump-start something new.
➺ Rule six: Watch the waffle
Equally sharp was Shōnagan’s eye for bores. High on her list of “disagreeable things” comes the “insignificant person who talks a lot and laughs loudly” and “uses too many words”—unaware that he is ridiculous, too self-involved to recognize that his listeners are better informed. Overlook Shōnagan’s snobbery and here is the bore’s fatal flaw: significance.
It’s generous to offer listeners more than one topic; blather on and you’ll seem self-obsessed, and rightly so because, if only out of naïveté, this shows no awareness of the imperative to focus discussion and invite others to sign on to a topic.
If listeners can’t relate, every word is a waste of energy, like throwing a ball without taking aim, which is why all tangents and remarks that loop nowhere are freighted with boredom—whatever their inherent interest. And verbiage is certain to wax listeners’ ears. I heard a woman put down a slavish man (he was in love; she feigned not to notice): “Gee, you’re spewing inanities this morning.” But he wasn’t. He was trying to impress her, in self-consciously florid terms. So if on the receiving end, listen harder: Within the pomposity may be a pearl worth knowing.
Or not. For a time I worked at an arts institution. To stay awake during epic meetings, I translated, silently, into English, the jargon-laden prattle (most of which turned out to be about money). But the director had a useful catchphrase for silencing quarrels: “I take a Brechtian stance on that.” Nobody could answer back because they couldn’t understand.
I left.
➺ Rule seven: Divert, don’t dictate
Ideally, conversation