Words words words (and gazes and tenderness...)

[alessandro]

Hello everybody,
Just wanted to share a thought that comes to my head (more and more) actually.   I'm 40 years old and I'm not able to have a conversation with a colleague, or a comrade, or some acquaintance and sometimes not even with friends.   "Not able", in the sense of talking when standing next to each other (or to fill up silences).   Oh what the heck, I'm thinking I tend to give a sense to words, and so the only words that I really enjoy is what is beautifully expressed and that is mainly poetry.   But I can't speak 'poetry', I do not have enough culture to sound 'wise', that's the way the cookie crumbles.  It's not that I don't give any sense at all to the spoken word, it can be a usefull vehicle to explain something, for example, a vision of a certain piano-piece    But frankly, when I find myself on the doorstep of the firm I'm working in, together with a near or far colleague, the conversation goes like this...

Me (sometimes the Other is starting, sometimes Me and the Other together) : Hi, how are you ?
Other or Me : Fine thank, you (or "Not too bad", to give it a little humour)
Other or Me : Nice weather no ?
Other or Me : Yes, nice.  Not too warm, not too cold, just perfect, with this little refreshing wind.
And then, well, to make it short, things are either slowing down, collapsing, falling inwards like a pudding, turning into silence.
 And I don't mind too much (anymore).   I just don't have that socializing character.  I just wanted to share this with you.   On the other hand, I can stare at people, I like to look at people.  I'm probably (a bit ?) of a "voyeur".   Some people like that, others don't.  A few days ago, a girl said to me, directly, "look at someone else", she was I think feeling uncomfortable with my gazing, which I can understand.   But what I really like are... hugs.  Hugs ! And caresses, and tenderness.   And those are things, that I experience, so rarely.  Strange situation.   When I look around in the civilized, urban zones I sometimes live in, I see people talking, talking, cell phones, chit-chat, and really huge amounts of blah-blah and so little tenderness.   I think it's a pity, but maybe one day, I also will get used to this 'gap' of tenderness in my life.
I'm not nostalgic for the "Free Love" period of the 1960's, but I think there is something in between "Free Love" and this actual rather 'cold, distant and often agressive' world.

Tender greetings to you all.  (and please forgive me if this post sounds stupid).

[birba]

It wasn't stupid at all!  I empathize with you because I,too, feel that way among people who aren't really my friends.  It's just with age, I've learned how to sound "interesting" and loquacious.
There are times when I'm doing this and I stand outside myself and take a good look at me and think "you are such a jerk!  you actually look like you're enjoying this conversation!"  But then I start to laugh and realize it's really all part of the game.  But then there are times I'm really sullen and couldn't give a damn what people think of me.  It all depends on my mood, I guess.  At any rate, learning how to play these games can sometimes lead to true friends and unexpected adventures! 

[m1469]

Alessandro, I believe I can relate.  Music "took" my mind and my being when I was very, very young.  I don't even remember when it actually became my way of thinking and being and my very world, probably before I was even born (not to be confused with the first time I sat at the piano).  Not until very recently have I come to better understand anything as it relates to that.  I believe that there is something very fundamental about music and its principles and life itself, and it's an infinitely huge idea as well as being infinitesimally small, all at once.  I believe music is a kind of metaphor or parable to the workings of the universe, and I don't just mean of mankind or humankind, but of all of existence.

I have almost never known how to talk to people with words, and have actually spent very many of my years actually being unable to even speak a word.  Not that the physical apparatus isn't there, it's something else that's very hard to explain.  I believe I have gotten quite a bit better, but it can still be extremely difficult for me for several reasons and I have a very difficult time in social situations because of that.  Through the years, writing had definitely become my voice and I always wrote to a phantom presence who somehow cared.  

In social situations, I never knew how to go.  Is it rude and prying to ask people about themselves?  Some people don't want to devulge a thing and I certainly don't want to make them uncomfortable by asking.  Then again, I don't want to sit there only just talking about myself, either.  Yikes   ... the weather is a pretty good option, I guess  .  Many times I regret things that I DO say.  So on and so forth.  Funnily enough though, I have an easier time talking in public situations (like from stage) than in a regular "social" situation.  Or in completely private conversations with perhaps a trusted individual.

Just as I woke up this morning though, words from my last waking dream were "songs shall be words" and that echoed me into consciousness.  Lately I feel again that music is my thoughts, my language, my world.  While I greatly appreciate strength, tenderness is also one of my favorite qualities.  And, of course, they aren't mutually exclusive and can co-exist.

[Bob]

You're just supposed to get the other person to talk about something that interests them.  You've got one topic, weather.  There are others like that.  It helps if you have things in common.  If you don't, conversations end up brief and quiet.  I don't always like little chitchat and don't see the point in it, except for smoothing things socially but, but it just seems like a waste of time and energy sometimes.

[m1469]

Actually, it does also depend very much on who you are talking with!   The subject doesn't have to be profound if you both like each other very much .  Not to mention if you love the sound of their voice, too.  The subject of weather or other small things could be delightful if you're in love ... hee hee. If you're in love, nothing seems like small conversation .  

[alessandro]

Already many thanks for these replies m1469, Birba, Bob.   There is some comfort to find in reading them.

... hee hee.

Yikes

I like these interjections.

You know, I would like to dig a little deeper into this "talking" and "tenderness"-matter, with the risk of becoming embarassing.   Here follows some shatters of information.   Talking, speaking, what is it but a shaped scream (of joy or sorrow).   I can only think at 'the mouth of truth' (this symbol that you often find in ancient arts...)

https://www.rome-passion.com/bouche-de-la-verite.jpg


Mama - Baba - Papa...  It started for us all in a same way, I presume, in general.   And in my case, I think I'm talking less and less, and sometimes I think that I will, in a near future, not be able to have a 'human', interactive, decent conversation at all.   I'm already feeling that I lost skills, and I don't know if I should feel sad for that.   It's psychological.  
I got in touch with psychotherapy 15 years ago (not for this "words" topic).  A first psychotherapist only made me cry and I also felt that he wasn't really my type of doctor.  The second one was bettere, deeper, more silent (!), more delicate, refined.  But also, a lot of tears etcetera.   I was overwhelmed by a world full of emptiness and absurdism.   Now, I'm not a lot overwhelmed anymore, it is mainly the same world, but I try to live with and in it.  I'm sometimes feeling good ans sometimes bad, and I accept these moodswings, or better, I try to live with them, to take the good moments for what they are, and to wait for the bad moments to go by.

Actually, it does also depend very much on who you are talking with!   The subject doesn't have to be profound if you both like each other very much .  Not to mention if you love the sound of their voice, too.  The subject of weather or other small things could be delightful if you're in love ... hee hee. If you're in love, nothing seems like small conversation .  

If the person with the pleasing voice talks nonsense, I can't cope with it, though the way things are said is very, very important to me;   And being in love, well that's a topic initself.  I remember a strange feeling I had when I was 10, twelve years old, thinking about a girl I was in love with.   And I do think that the feeling fades away, though not completely.   There are still remains of this "loving" feeling in me, ten years and four-five love-affairs later.   I think that I don't focus on the feeling on being in love anymore.   Not that I lost all ideals, but I'm now for like eight years in a relationship (a personal record), and things change,every day.   The times that we are making love, decrease, the times that we have long conversations decrease, the times that fight  together decrease, but not the value of the relation for me.  We live in a certain kind of harmony, with not many words.
I like this idea "Love me, and for the rest shut up" that I once read, the words were said by some kind of French 19th century empress to her lover.   They had this kind of pact, he could have her, and live with her for ther rest of her life, but he had to promise her not to say word to her.   An interesting point of view.   I think it was really 'en vogue' in 18th century upper class to see social life merely as some kind of scenery.   It was important to behave like some kind of a prostitute, trying to marry kings and princes, but never to forget to have a good lover, because you couldn't find both in one and the same person.   I'm still not totally free of this idea.   Though I imagine that one can find almost everything in one and the same person, I 'm not convinced at all of monogamy.   (ow, stop, I'm far off topic.)

I think that I've never been this openhearted in a long time ! Isn't that a strange and contemporary thing to say, that I open my heart in this forum, but that I have no-one in real life to do so !

How to express all this tenderness I have inside of me ? I feel terribly frustrated.   I want to carress the hair of the girls I love, but something inside me holds me back.

One more idea that I have for this loss of speech that I experience, is maybe 'male'-related.   I think we can all agree that a woman talks more than a man, in general.  And that boys "lose" their voice and have in a certain way to try to recreate a voice.  And there, we realise that there is not so much to talk about, and in my case, the result is almost muteness.   When I go a little further, but you shouldn't necessarly follow me there, I find it rather particular that for example in French, phonetically "voix - voice" is the same as "voie - track".    So if one says "Tu dois trouver ta voix", it can mean you have to find your voice and you have to find a good track in your life.



Very warm greetings, soft spoken words and tenderness to you all.

A.

[m1469]

To be at liberty is perhaps the heart's one desire.  Yesterday I "silently" declared 'bring me your love, and if you don't love me, I love you anyway, but please don't bring that to me as I won't accept it for you or for me.'