small talk

I don't know. I was going to start a thread about this myself a while ago, because I have actually got to the point where I find socialising very difficult.

It used to just happen in situations with people I didn't know very well, and of course, I couldn't think of anything to say to them. Now it happens with people I know quite well, and think are really groovy, and yet my mind goes blank, and I still can't actually think of anything to say to interest or engage them.

It's easier when you do have a theme. I think that's half the reason I was such a music obsessive - it was an easy common topic to discuss with other people who were into music.

Now I'm not so obsessed with music, I don't have as much to talk about, and the things I am obsessed with are pretty weird and don't engage other people.

In my case, honestly, if someone asked me about football, I'd probably walk away mid-conversation.

I think the hardest thing to do to be a good conversationalist is to know how to ask questions, and to know how to listen to the answers.

I am good at holiday/festival small talk, where there's a shared experience that unites everyone. Ditto watching football in a pub with strangers.

(3 xpost)

Cue mental image of two random ILXors meeting for the first time:

"Hello"

"Hello"

"Hmmm..."

"So, how about that Hongro, eh?"

"He likes melodic and harmonic complexity!"

"Hahaha, indeed he does!"

"Hahaha!"

(awkward silence)

"So, how about that Momus, then?

My Kids. that's about it.

(Kate, you know at the FAP, I actually went for 20 mins without mentioning them, which for me is 1) a record, 2) a non-descent into small talk).

;-)

The problem is getting to the stuff in common with a total stranger. I have this problem with making small talk with many of HSA's friends. I have no knowledge of or even interest in experimental music or soundart. They have no interest in bubblegum. We could talk about art, but I have pretty outspoken and non-hegemonic views on it, and I don't want to reflect badly on HSA by saying the wrong thing. Sometimes you just have to cast about randomly and hope your conversational fishhook lands on something. I was stuck at a wedding dinner next to a girl I thought I'd have nothing in common with - and some random fishhooking ("what's the last book you read?") led to a discovery that she loved Canadian literature, and we had a great conversation about Margaret Atwood.

HSA is great at small talk. Because he knows how to ask leading questions.

it's just occurred to me that ILX is basically huge protracted small-talk - big-talk, if you will...

I have a built in inability to talk to people that I get the 'i'm not interested' face from. Like, stonewall. Otherwise, I can talk to anyone even if no common ground is found. It just takes an interest, either way, in what is being discussed.

I have an 'i'm not interested' face even when I am interested so I'm guessin won't be having too many conversations with mark in the near future

You're obsessed with telly, you.

What do Americans talk about if they can't talk about the weather? Especially South Americans?

What exactly is big talk? "I thinking we may be divorcing", or is there anything smaller?

1) Childrens telly of our youth
oh hang on, if I carry on, this'll turn into every ILX likk EVAH!!!

i love the Bacteria couple, it makes me think there is hope yet

A million million and six.

eek. new temporary person at the office, sitting next to me (facing me) and i had the awkward situation of sitting down with a book and my lunch, and him asking perfectly reasonable and friendly questions, when i just wanted to read my book and eat my bagel.

jeez. i'm crabby.

I felt very pleased with all of this, as I'm usually terrible at chatting with strangers. I was a bit disappointed she didn't laugh at my last comment. Then another guy came over, and after finding out she was a tea-taster, asked her exactly the same questions in exactly the same order, finishing off with the 'Do you drink tea at home' crack.

that's great. try to get everyone else to do it and the person will think they're going deaf and freak out.

i have been thinking if not one of the differences between a good smalltalker and a bad one is that the former has no scruples about using the same set of anecdotes, with little or no variation, OVER AND OVER AGAIN AD INFINITUM. this may not be an entirely bad quality, but i gotta say that i find it somewhat inane. me? i try never to tell a story twice. mostly to keep myself from falling asleep.

i'm now even worse. and worse still, couldn't remember that i started this thread.

flatmate's bf has been waiting for her to come home in my kitchen for about 90 mins. had a brief chat with him and one of his first gambits was, "ah you're irish...", then a pause, "northern ireland has certainly regenerated a lot in the last few years..."

left room at first opportunity.

Where I work, one of our regulars is this awkward mumbly middle-aged Irishman who comes in to read back copies of the Roscommon Herald (1966-67 for preference). His accent is so thick and he mumbles so much and so rapidly and in such a monotone that he is generally pretty hard to understand, though I did have a conversation with him once about why he carries his spare change around in an empty digestive biscuit packet, "It's the only way I won't lose it". Anyway, he was talking to a German colleague of mine and asked him where he came from, on being told Germany he said, "Hitler... He was a great man".

Ah that's a common phrase tbh

Love Roscommon ppl tbh

The "great man" phrase. Not necessarily about Hitler like.

My colleague was left somewhat speechless. He did follow it up with, "The Royal Family, they're German too".

I can hear him, I can hear the cadence, I know that man and have known him forever, you do him justice in yr telling and I commend you

Flann O'Brian knew the same man well iirc

Ah god help us Tom you'll have to take over from McGahern tbh that is a post that has me transported altogether

That reminds me there was another guy in - the place is never short of middle-aged Irishmen, now I come to think of it - who had, on his lapel, a badge with Flann O'Brien on it, the famous photo with the hat, and possibly a t-shirt as well? He was about to launch into this big, well-rehearsed, explanation about Myles naGopaleen better known as the writer Flann O'Brien, or whatever, and I was, like, "Yeah, you don't need to tell me, I'm reading "The Best of Myles" right now", which gave him the opportunity to tell me all this stuff about the Cruiskeen Lawn which I knew anyway, still he went away happy. Then there was another guy, the other day, trying to convince me that his surname, which was Wall, was an Anglicization of an Irish name which in turn was Norman and how he had traced his ancestry back to Jean De Valle who came over in the Norman equivalent of the Mayflower in 1294 or whenever it was - though he didn't seem to know where my surname was from although everybody who knows anything knows it's purest Ulster.

... or Roscommon apparently!

there was this northern irish fella at my uni. not sure what his job was there but he wld hang out half a block away from the bookstore and he wld give me these nuggets of wisdom every time id see him

Then there was another guy, the other day, trying to convince me that his surname, which was Wall, was an Anglicization of an Irish name which in turn was Norman and how he had traced his ancestry back to Jean De Valle who came over in the Norman equivalent of the Mayflower in 1294 or whenever it was

fyi this is unquestionably true

It is also wholly typical that he felt you must be made aware of it

Would imagine twas le Valle tho

He's been in again and I've just helped him scan a story from the Roscommon Herald. I think maybe I should start reading the Roscommon Herald myself, these are headlines and sub-headlines that accompanied the story:

Hillstreet Man's Visit to Boyle

ALLEGED ASSAULT CHARGE

WENT ASTRAY FINDING HIS WAY TO CARRICK

AND GOT THE KNOCK-OUT

BAD LANGUAGE STATED TO HAVE BEEN THE CAUSE

FINE IMPOSED

"Hugh Clynne, labourer, Hillstreet, deposed that on 15th August he came to Boyle to buy working clothes. He drank some stout in Boyle and he got on the wrong road as he missed the train. Out the Roscommon road men told him he would have to back to Boyle to get to Carrick. A man hit him with a blunt instrument and he was taken in a motor car to the local hospital."

The article he was trying to scan was like an inch wide and ran the length of a enormous broadsheet page, in tiny print too - he thought he could get it on an A4 sheet! Anyway, I've only got the illegible rejected pages so I can't read most of the story which looks thoroughly entertaining.

I've got hold of a magnifying glass.

"To Mr. Callan - I was not in Boyle for ten years previously. I bought clothes in Boyle. I did not meet many people on the road. I was not using ugly expressions to ladies. My story is that when I asked the man to show me the way to Carrick he hit me with a blunt instrument. The man who hit me said he saw me swanking around Boyle that day. When down I asked him not to kill me."

I've been sick lately and I'm sick of it