Poetry & Blindfolds

Lately, I have been working on a new play, entitled “Touching Base.”  For me, ‘touching base’, which means to meet with someone and discuss something, sounds eerily close to ‘touching bottom’, which means not meeting anyone at the bottom of a swimming pool because you can’t swim.

The play takes place in a mysterious department of a large business and is tasked with disrupting normal office functions.  Got a new and improved software that tends to crash?  Got an enhanced photocopies that takes longer to operate?  Got… myspace?  All of these bumps in the road of life are created by this very department.

As I was writing the script, the working version of which can be seen here, I was trying to load it up with conversations that sounded good but never really made a point.  It was somewhere in my third draft when I discovered that this was a very easy task indeed.  In fact, I pulled numerous conversations directly from chats I have daily with colleagues.  My hope for writing a parody slowly dissolved as I discovered that I’m writing the Classic Artist Play: that is, merely a mirror on the world.

Missing from this play was Raw Talk.  Raw Talk is merely talking plain and straightforward, and I’m unpleasantly surprised to see so little of it in my own canon of chat.  On Farcebook and Mehspace, people almost bend over backwards to speak in thrilling absolutes - ‘my friends are the best’, ‘the weekend was perfect’, ‘had the best time’ - that are as extreme as they are completely numbing.  I do this, too, in spades.  I bristle at the phrase ‘my friends are the best’, yet if I was asked if my friends were, in fact, the best, my first instinct would be to affirm.  I compliment them; I feel good about having such incredible friends.  And it’s pointless.

This is precisely why I can’t stomach groups, no matter what their focus.  Sports fans?  Can’t do it.  Kareoke people?  Can’t do it.  Religion?  Fahh-gett-a-boud-it.  Obama fans?  Nope.  Atheist groups?  Argh, no.  Blogs?  Not so much.  Chicago Sketchfest, with 500 people all being funny at once?  Loathe it.  It’s not that any of these things are bad in the least, but it is the complete absence of Raw Talk that sets me off on my own.

I have tried to cast myself back to when I really lost Raw Talk (I still have the capacity to do it now, but only under risk of being called out for being ‘weird’ or some other phrase that suggests I’m not playing well with others).  My friend Charles and I had Raw Talk when we were kids.  Unedited, unlimited, oftentimes uninformed, dialogue.  Nowadays, with our childhood friendship fully encased in emails and blog comments, we often snipe at each other.  I suspect neither of us want to slather each other in absolute platitudes, so we go 180 degrees in the opposite direction.

Even with the closest friends I have (and they are the best!!!!), I do find myself effortlessly re-packaging myself and presenting the best Truman I can be in that situation (sometimes this is Moody Truman, most times not).  I had dinner with my friend Melissa (who is the best!!!1!) the other night and found that three beers did wonders in getting to Raw Talk.  Perhaps this is why people drink.  I always did it for self-loathing reasons, but everyone is different (and the best!!!!).

I suspect that people avoid Raw Talk because it messes with one’s own self-image too much.  It makes one vulnerable, urges one to re-think opinions and stances, suggests a possible close bond.  And who needs that?

Well, I do, for a kickoff.

* * * * *

POST-SCRIPT: This blog was first released on my mysapce blog in February 2009.  This led to a fairly ugly exchange between the aforementioned Charles and me, which led to him de-friending me altogether.  He took grave exception to a particular comment of mine, which suggested he just write a bitter blog and have his mom talk him down.  He exploded at this suggestion.  After which, he wrote a bitter blog and his mom talked him down.