So I was at the hairdressers yesterday, and while I sat waiting to get my hair cut I flipped through a magazine. All the usual articles were there, the new spring fashions, the domestic violence piece, the tips for the hostess, the interior decoration guide. And at the back was an article on making smalltalk...
I've never really regarded myself as an expert in smalltalk. Heck, sometimes I barely regard myself as competent in smalltalk. I read through the article, trying to decide whether their tips were actually useful (and sometimes trying to imagine myself incorporating said tips). "Don't get caught in your internal critical monologue", "Ask people about themselves", "Always introduce your boss first". As I sat there reading the magazine, thinking about making smalltalk, I realized that I was completely failing at maintaining smalltalk with my hairdresser, who had now finished with her previous client and had started chopping away at my hair. And then I started to worry about whether I was talking enough (I wasn't talking at all) and what I would say if I were to say something. "God, I'm boring. I have nothing to say. I can't even talk about the last episode of eastenders, or the upcoming soccer match. I am completely disconnected from the local culture, and the only thing I could really feel comfortable discussing with my hairdresser is how she is going to cut my hair, and maybe even that would be a stretch if I had to somehow interject and stop her from taking off too much or thinning it to nonexistent wisps from too much texturizing." So much for not getting caught in the internal critical monologue.
The hairdresser finishes with my hair, and I leave with a very waxy cut with nonexistent wisps sticking up all over the place. (it looks cuter today, but still my hindsight remembers the sticking up waxy wispiness) My last appointment of the day, after the hairdresser, which was after the doctor, which was after the dentist, was a facial. I meet my friend, we chat and are whisked into our respective rooms to be massaged and scrubbed and moisturised. And with the smalltalk article in the very forefront of my mind, I start becoming hyperaware of the facialist trying to make conversation with me. The problem is that I just never know what to talk about with people I don't know. I don't find it easy to ramble on and on about myself, and I feel uncomfortable asking strangers too much about their personal lives. I'd just rather lie there in silence and relax, but the pressure of expectation makes me as tense as a tightrope walker. (but a tightrope walker wouldn't actually be that tense, would they? they'd be in that state of concentrated relaxed-ness, like people who walk over glowing coals and concentrate on cool moss in their minds.)
That tension is an old nemesis of mine who I just recently though I'd evaded for good, but it seems I've just swept him under the rug. I'd rather he didn't come back for an extended stay, because the more I see of that tension the fewer things I actually enjoy in my life. I dithered about writing this blog entry, fretting about my vocabulary and possible subjects to write about. I've got an idea for a short story that I just haven't gotten around to writing because I can't jump into it fully - I'm fretting over set and setting, characterisation, realism vs surrealism and all sorts of flaky intellectual labyrnthine traps.
communication is a basic human characteristic. it is what (the experts believe) distinguishes us from the other animals. And yet... it's not so basic. I need to make things simple again. I get stuck in my need for profundity and start to mould in the depth of everything.
