On Conversation

De-Commodifying Friendship

I love the great silence of sitting in my wingback chair, feet propped on the ottoman. But as much as the solitude of my little study suits me, I also find myself in need of retreating from my retreat to feel sunlight, tramp around my neighborhood, and see people. I usually hole up in a coffee shop or some other third place to lightly work and take in the places and people around me.

On one of these excursions, I was in line waiting to order the usual twelve ounce drip coffee, and I was doing what most of us do whether or not we’re too bashful to admit, eavesdropping on my fellow patrons in line. The man in front of me was in a suit, creased like it had spent one too many nights in a suitcase, and he was checking his watch at a thirty-five second cadence as one does right before he gives an order like he is the only one truly in need of service. But the pair behind me reminded me of myself twelve years ago. They had shaggy hair, stained skate shoes, and a tone contrived to give the oxymoronic impression that they didn’t care about what they were saying while also being the most profound words spoken.

I angled myself slightly and shuffled up in the line as the business bro shouted, “Yeah?! Double-shot, and make like you know what you’re doing…” And as annoying as it is to hear someone be so curt with a worker dedicated to hospitality, I found myself more vexed by the words coming from behind me. “I don’t know man. I just think we should start doing something like a podcast, but no mics or cameras.”

I turned to hide my flummoxed eyebrows but remained focused to hear the discourse. “You know? Like meeting up once or twice a week and just talking a little bit to catch up, then having something that’s been bugging us, and we just hash it out.” I could hardly believe it. The person behind me could not conceive of meeting a friend to converse apart from the context of recording and distributing it to the masses. The world, for this pair, has become an ever-present soundstage to serve as a backdrop to whatever “real life” they were partaking through their magic rectangles. The face of the barista was not a face of a young lady working herself through nursing school. I don’t even know if there was enough consideration to think of her as a craft services worker on a film set. Did they even think of one another as friends? Or did they see each other as information repositories and data centers that just so happened to be programmed with compatible software?

I would be lying if I said I weren’t part of the problem. I regularly listen to podcasts, I’ve been a guest on podcasts, and I even was the co-host of one for a stint. And looking back on the time of Ploughman’s Talk, I can say I’ve had similar thoughts to these young people behind me in line. I remember spending time with my dear friend Dalton working on schoolwork looking up from my book and saying, “Have you ever…wait, let’s save it for when the mics are up,” or sitting across from him at the dinner table interrupting a lively thought, “Hold onto that man, that needs to be the next episode.” As fun as it was, the energy I devoted to it changed the way I was viewing my friendship and conversation.

The world around us is filled with perplexity, horror, magic, and beauty that is worth talking about. We all have at least one person in our lives that we can sit next to, look into his eyes, and speak into open air together. Not every thought is for the world, and not every word uttered is for an audience. Even our lives lived alongside others are more or less concealed from viewers, or at least they should be. I’m not saying this in a sense of concealing who we truly are; nor am I saying that ideas should be kept away from the world in selfish pursuit of aggrandizing. Rather, I am saying that ordinary things should remain as such. Ordinary things like meeting a friend at the coffee shop, the pipe night, the dinner party, breathing in, and having a conversation.