R.W. Emerson once said that he'd walk ten miles in a blizzard to find a good conversation. While I take having good talks with interesting people very seriously (mostly because I don't get to have them nearly often often enough), I still don't know if I'd go quite so far. We shouldn't have to look so hard to find one. A good conversation is more than the people or topics on whom it focuses. I find almost anyone to be interesting if I can find ways to tap their thoughts and experiences in a manner that relates to my own.

However, what I might consider truly hard to come by, and thus worthy of sacrifice, is conversation featuring exceptional banter. I don't want to reify that word too much... “banter” is just what I called the particular conversational form I really enjoy. The concept is a bit harder to pin down. I started using that term a few years ago when I asserted to a friend that what made the early Kevin Smith movies so great (especially Mallrats) was not the outrageousness of the subject matter used to move the plot along, but their “almost Shakespearean banter”.

I've since found other ways to describe it: repartee, backchat, raillery, even oshaberi in Japanese. It doesn't matter what someone is talking about, if there is a high degree of adroit cleverness in their delivery, I am entertained. If they've got a complementary style of interaction, I'm doubly so. Witticism is just one of those things that endlessly impresses me. It doesn't even have to utilize crude or outrageous material that pushes the envelope, though that to me represents and added bonus. Banter is just a culturally-specific mode of communication that utilizes specific speech/signifier patterns we find to be intelligent. Not only does the English language lend itself so well to it (more words, less definite meanings, complex wordplay traditions), but its usage patterns are influenced by historical and social factors. I don't know if the golden age of witty small talk has faded, but it sometimes seems so. The back and forth of pithy one liners has given way to the age of absurdity in many different media formats.

Doesn't it just seem like old men are so much better than young people when it comes to “bants” (an actual old colloquialisms)? I've always considered banter to be a skill best honed in working class settings... at least that's where I've heard the greatest practitioners. Today, the information age has largely destroyed the base of industrial operations where interpersonal communication isn't a huge part of the job. As the service economy has expanded, communication has become a much more pervasive part of our work... that is, it's no longer a fun “pastime” = a pleasurable way to pass the time in the past (taken literally). I guess the same set of modern conditions in the workforce could be the reason why men don't whistle so well anymore. Also, when people knew about fewer topics (less news) and their educational scope was more similar, they needed other ways to show off their intellect and verbal creativity besides just popping off inane bits of knowledge. Perhaps I am part of “the trivial generation”.

Even if this stuff isn't true I think that it constitutes a pretty decent sociological analysis, albeit a very materialist one. Allow me to take that angle a bit further. I've noticed that my chats (IRC or IM) are significantly more banter-laden than what I can produce in verbal situations that aren't electronically mediated and subject to delays. Moreover, I feel as though chatting is slightly more multimedia. This began with emoticons and has been increasingly supplemented with more text formatting options and the ability to send hyperlinks to serve as examples (or proof) of what one is talking about. Integrating images and sound into the chat experience is obviously the next step, but some people worry that video chat will spell the end for this unique cultural phenomena. I too am skeptical, both because of the diminished multitasking capability such highly dedicated interactive media engender and because I think delay (not that chat really slows our lives down) has other unique advantages. I remember using highly elaborate chat programs in the mid 1990s, so it is safe to say it has staying power. We haven't seen nearly enough in the way of a next-generation communication protocol to take our eye off chat. I do think that text messaging via cell phones will vanish very soon though... everyone will be on IM all the time... though of course that doesn't mean they will always make themselves promptly available to respond.

Ever since I started using gmail and their associated chat functionality, all of my chats have been saved for future searching. Having this kind of communication history can be a great asset and a great danger, depending on who you are and how well you learn to utilize/protect it. However, what I find more interesting is the sheer amount of human dialog (although it is computer mediated) that is now easily available to be deployed for other uses. I believe chat is the only medium in which regular people can have conversations that approach the level of intelligence and polish that we find in popular cultural media, whether this be books, comics, television shows, or film. That's the kind of programming that generally makes us think we're real dumb or that the executive branch is real smart... I single out The West Wing for doing that in particular. Talk shows don't even get close... government officials usually end up embarrassing themselves if they have to improvise anything. Comedians sometimes can banter at a high level, but generally only for short stretches of time.

If publicly generated banter exists, the place where it resides in permanence is within chat transcripts. Sure, they're filled with inside jokes, ugly abbreviations, and grammatical errors, but who cares? I see a good chat between two or more people, especially when it revolves dissimilar takes on an an idea with, as amateur screenwriting at its best. When taken from that context, lightly edited, and dropped into a narrative somewhere, it can be great stuff to read. Put the words into the mouths of talented actors and we've got something similar to what Jim Jarmusch or Quentin Tarantino makes. Although I can't say that too many of my own chats would be worthy of this transcendence, I think there's a lot of “found” material out there just waiting for someone creative to put it together in a clever way. Parts of it may display creative logic and idea synthesis while others may be potentially “artistic” interactions. I don't know how other people chat, but I imagine it can be very interesting.

While I haven't seen any products that have accomplished the task of adding creative value to chat specifically, I do know about a book that was written using the transcriptions of scam-baiters, the folks that frustrate email con artists (especially the Nigerian outfits) by seeing how far they can string along their greed by making outrageous demands on their actions. I'm not focusing here focus on a congealed theme like that one (it is quite compelling given how many of us have received similar spam), but it wouldn't seem difficult to send out calls for material touching on particular theme, especially now, at the apex of the transparent individual willing to post lots of material about themselves online. I don't know if what would emerge could be considered non-fiction, since not all the material would be attributed and some level of editing would be required. However, it would certainly be worthy of the “inspired by actual events” mantle.

Update: The Writer's Guild strike is a great opportunity to try out this decentralized creative writing project. Now we just need a chat protocol that could match up people who are interested in talking about similar topics (some of them being introduced to match a preconceived theme) and permission to mine the content they produce. License it as creative commons share alike material and lets see what some skilled editors can do with it. I found a startup weekend project called scrolltalk that might be able to get the job done.

I believe that it is very important for people not just to have beliefs about what they like and dislike, but good reasons for holding these beliefs. For a limited time or meaningless interaction, I'll buy arguments for intrinsic disposition, but eventually I want the analysis taken further.

I've never been much drawn to art (pun intended). I didn't like the classes in high school, though have sometimes enjoy making a drawing or painting with friends. Most art is largely confusing to me because the meanings normally seem obscure and partially contrived after the production process. Sure, I like installation art and some “modern” art that is more palpably creepy or powerful for one reason or another. However, it doesn't usually speak to me in the way articles, stories, songs, or conversations do. I certainly never find myself contemplating the meaning of a particular piece days after viewing it. It may be intrinsically appealing for one reason or another, but the whole experience slips out of my mind rather instantaneously... sort of like poetry. That's why I'd usually rather look 2D art in picture books rather than pay to walk around museums.

Maybe I am psychologically geared to a find “sticky” meanings through particular mediums. Maybe I'm opposed to it because I didn't had enough “art appreciation” in my upbringing. However, I do think there are barriers to “art” having general appeal for the popular masses. Moreover, art has an association with highbrow old people. It's not just the price either... it's that there are concrete cultural barriers to appreciation. Sure, I can fake it, just like I can not understand what an individual word means and still get the gist of the passage. But if the entire story ends on hopelessly open-ended note (as some fashionably do), I usually just give up. Perhaps I'm just verbally centered and other modes of communication simply don't translate. I'm ready to accept that fate and try to make do with it.

I recently went to the “Last Thursday” art festival here in Portland and had a revelation. Only one man's work really spoke to me. That is, I was only moved to really examine one artist's work out of a hundred. When I say “examine”, I mean that it made me want to think about it more... to ask questions about motivation and technique... to get the story back. It was a really simple and cheap concept. He finds old illustrated children's books, cuts out the pictures, and inserts clever little text messages where there is space in the scene. That's it... he just laminates it onto a piece of wood with a small hanging clip on the back and sells them for $20 a piece. So, I started talking to him about it and then I started wondering why this particular approach appealed so much to me. In effect, he's just naughtily subverting whatever message the innocent image once conveyed. I drew a few different corollaries for him (because that's what I'm good at) and he agreed with the examples:

Adbusters. Subverting the implicit assumptions of corporate advertising and their target audiences
The Onion. Placing tongue-in-cheek observations next to stock photographs of weird individuals.
Demetri Martin. Drawing really simple diagrams to complement observational humor
Absurdist Tshirts. This cottage industry does a mixture of all the above, but maximizes production, distribution, and display better than any

Of course, I love all these examples... otherwise I wouldn't have been able to recall them so quickly. Sure, I could have suggested the dada or situationist movements, but that's too high concept for public encounters. Anyhow, not only was this experience the only one that knocked me out of my usual “art observer” haze, which is much akin to my the one I experience in malls. Seeing what this guy had done, I immediately started wondering if I could do something similar, but better. This is one of the very first impulses I've ever had to try to do anything associated with this scene, so I'm happy to have found a spark of inspiration. Still, in order to take the concept further, I need to synthesize another idea. At its most low-end, this is nothing better than caption contests magazines have been holding for decades. At the higher end, it's the custom irony of The Far Side. I would like to focus more on complex message delivery, but I haven't had a breakthrough on the mechanism yet.

Sourcing images is also a little bit tricky, since anything targeted for mass distribution either needs to pay off the originator or use only images in the public domain. Still, I think it is the route I most enjoy... one can always make a facsimile of what they see – for instance, once I saw a drawing of Mario looking across a bedroom at the Princess in lingerie... scribbled on his white glove was UP-DOWN-UP-DOWN-LEFT-RIGHT-LEFT-A-B-A-B-B-A... that's witty, classic, and all together legal... it's ain't high art, but its even better in my opinion.