Monologue about dialogue

Last night, Josh called. I told him about the play. And how one of the organizers said she didn't like that the speech, dialogue for lack of a better word, was so disconnected. She wanted a "see-say" type of drama where what one says leads someone to say the next thing in the narrative, and thus propel action through words. I told her this was unreasonable. No one talks that way. That isn't the function of dialogue.

Dialogue does many things, but connectivity is not one of them. Josh and I were talking about how a number of conversations are vehicles for getting out of conversations. This is a strange but powerful role of dialogue. Silence is ugly, but in many cases the attainment of silence requires speaking. You have to prove there is nothing else to say.

I gave him the example of the drunken stranger at the bar who is mired in his sadsack life and needs a message board to post on. I don't wish to receive these posts. This is how the dialogue goes:

Stranger: Man, it's been a hard week. I had to reorganize all these fucking databases. And my ex-wife isn't returning my calls, but I don't really blame her. And my cat's sick and shitting all over my couch.
Me: Damn. So, how about those Yankees?

If he talks about the Yankees next, then I'll go through another conversation to get out of the conversation.

I was at the Blind Tiger one afternoon, when some sadsack came in and proceeded to regale the whole bar with his tribulations. I was talking to an elderly couple from Wisconsin on their first trip to NYC. The husband was asking what I would do when the smoking ban took effect. Sadsack jumps in "I quit smoking four months ago." The man from Wisconsin says "Why did you quit?" "Clearly, it was getting in the way of his talking," I replied. Problem solved.

My boss at my old ad agency always complimented me on my ability to write dialogue. I pride myself on my dialogue. I give it a streak of realism that exposes how desperately people want to get back to their part in the human play going on before them. This means a lot of non-sequiturs.

One good case: If I'm not an expert on a said subject or if I do not hold the same conviction as the person discoursing with me, I can sit in silence. You know that feeling where a friend is telling you such a good story or elucidating an issue with such authority, you just let her go off. Most of the time, this suffices. But, this is also a stingy way to look at dialogue. Storytellers, like performers, want acknowledgement.

Real dialogue is sustained acknowledgement. A willing participation in a this-that tennis match. In our conversation, we talked about what each person was doing at that point, about our friend Wayne, about my grandmother, about Islam and its American perceptions, about hot girls versus beautiful girls, about dialogue, about Wayne again, about moving to New York City and finally about how we could know when we should next communicate with each other. This lasted 18 minutes (stupid laughter included), and nary a segue in the bunch.

Dialogue is not exposition. Dialogue is verbal placeholding; it's carrying the zero. Where each speaker is a zero. Actually, an empty set.