Conversation ain’t what It used to be!
It used to be that when you ventured out passers-by would wish you a Good Morning, enquire as to your wellbeing if you were acquainted. But now it’s like wading through a viscous stew of anonymity; or if you encounter someone you vaguely know the greeting here in this part of London/ Hertfordshire is ‘awite’ but never leaving a space for you to reply as they have already continued on their journey and God forbid if you are actually not ‘Wright’s and wish to enlarge upon this wishing possibly to seek a sympathetic ear even.
Then there is the veritable plague of mass-produced mobile phones which seem to single handedly eradicated the art of face-to-face conversation! It’s becoming increasingly rare to see people actually talking to a person next to them! Everyone seems to find it impossible to be present anywhere without their mobile phone being glued to one of their ears whilst indulging in an overload conversation in which they share personal details which really should be kept to themselves.
Then we have the people sporting earphones often so tiny they are virtually impossible to see, who are having conversations with ghosts, specters, themselves? It used to be that if someone was caught talking to themselves in the street then it would only be a matter of time before the men in the padded van and the white coats would appear to incarcerate them in a vast old building with bars at the Windows deeming them ‘ unfit for normal life’ and totally forgetting about them.
Then worst of all these things are the babies just learning the art of conversation a tabula rasa of possibility. Sounding out words, absorbing like a sponge the noises of nature, bird song, the wind, traffic and conversation? Their mother/father permanently on their mobile phone ignoring their first attempts at language, their eye contact, their pleasure at their first attempts to communicate!
It makes you wonder what the future might hold though, doesn’t it, when people have lost the power of conversation, what will we have left?
Tricia Lloyd Walker lives somewhere near London.
