This all started with a conversation I had with my friend Eric. He dropped by to visit and we talked about a number of things. He is fun because he is so quick and well read and doesn't get nervous about leaping from subject to subject.
When he got up to leave, I laughed and said we discussed the world like we were skipping pebbles across the lake....hitting just the surface of ideas before we sink the concept.
Later I wrote Eric and said that it would be interesting to build a conversation like an edifice. Since he can think in a more linear and rational manner than I, he could build the foundation and basic architecture of the building, while I contributed flying buttresses, gargoyles and decorative borders.
Years ago I read Magister Ludi by Herman Hesse and I was intrigued by the book's concept of communication. In the story, men got together to have dialogues where they consciously shaped conversations into beautiful structures that grew increasingly complex and dazzling. I read the book more than 30 years ago, but as I remember, when the group became very old, they created a conversation so arcane and metaphysical that they became one with the dialogue....disappeared into it.
It got me thinking about visual metaphors for conversation. They are endless....rivers, trees, a Dagwood sandwich, schools of fish. Different types of lines coming out of people's mouths like the drawings of Saul Steinberg. (When I taught junior high, they thought it was hilarious to use lines all smudged and chaotic coming out of people's mouths..."talking dirty," of course.)
My friend Julian came by a few days later, and Phil got me out in a lawn chair in the sun so I could talk and soak up a few rays. Julian stayed for about an hour and we discussed a wide range of subjects. Later, I thought our discussion could be interpreted by images of birds.....sparrows for everyday thoughts, wrens for the cheerful, house finches for the melodic , western tanagers for the beautiful, crows for bawdy talk , gulls for soaring thoughts and honking of Canadian geese for debating. No eagles in this diagram. Too severe and judgmental.
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