“The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.” – William Hazlitt

“Conversation should touch everything, but should concentrate itself on nothing.” – Oscar Wilde

I’m my happiest talking.

To you. On a page. 

Suddenly we’re together and I’m doing my best not to let your attention off the hook. I’m like a fisherman that way, teasing their nibbling prey. If I don’t focus, my fish will get away. Focusing I’m not thinking about myself, my aches, doubts, this cold coming on. I’m all fisherman, intent on my quest. Time doesn’t exist. The fish tugs, I tug back and in no time it’s time for lunch.

I do not write to inform, any more than recreational fishermen fish to eat. The joy is the sport. I want to be with you, catch you, so I am not alone. Occupied one can’t be unhappy. Unhappiness accretes in stillness, when one is stalled. Its first question – and it’s a doozy – is, Am I happy?

What I write matters less than that you’re listening. Your attention is my overseer. Lose you and I’m alone. Am I boring you? Yikes! Change topic, tone. Tell a joke.

I used to feel this way about playing tennis. You cannot be unhappy playing tennis. Lose focus and you lose the game – or get whacked by the ball. Writing I’m always at risk. Is your attention drifting?!

Many people talk – or write – to hear themselves. They do not notice their listeners wandering off. I had an old aunt who talked. You could put the phone down and fold laundry and come back and she’d still be talking. I felt bad for her but she didn’t feel bad for herself. She was cheerful talking.

The trick to talking – or writing – is listening. This is what I’d teach if I found myself teaching writing, Heaven help me. Never take your eye off your audience. Attention is so easy to lose, especially in this A.D.D.-addled epoch. Half through a sentence a cell phone buzzes: “Hold that thought.”

I’ve no patience for windbags. They enrage me, commandeering my time. The nerve – as if I had nothing better to do! Readers sometimes apologize for not reading all I’ve sent. No worries, I absolve them, if I failed to snag you, my bad.

The talking game heats up when you can’t think what to say. Bless my parents for my sociable garrulity. Not to talk at a dinner party was a crime worse than larceny. No oaf more offensive than a “Silent Sam.” For several years, in my newspaper days, I hosted a weekly talk show on public access TV, interviewing local worthies. Sometimes stage fright spooked them into mutes. We were taped live.

I fail at conversation when I get too fervent. I become preacher, proselyte, table-thumper. Fans of the Nameless One who should know better turn me homicidal. I must watch myself.

In my boyhood home, no one listened to the kids. We were told, not asked. My grandmother, who lived up the hill during summers, listened to me. A recent widow, blazing smart, I suspect she was amused by my precocity. I hurried up the hill to tell her things – and she’d listen – and ask questions – and remember! She more than anyone made an attentive listener my crack cocaine.

My fault as a talker is I’m hard to stop. One thing keeps leading to the next till my listener feels trapped. I imposed a six-hundred-word limit on these daily jabbers so you’d never lose sight of the Exit sign glowing in our darkened auditorium.