CONVERSATION & DIALOGUE
This one we owe to the women. No doubt about it. There’s conversation, and then there’s cutting through all the crap meant to keep us divided, fearful, and lost. In other words, “out of touch.” What does it say when a “man” wants to cross that divide and enter a conversation (with anyone) about art, animal rights, the joys of flaneury, George Sand, David Bowie, or the letters between George Bernard Shaw and Beatrice Campbell?
Not that I actively seek out those connections. I’m too introverted, and meeting people has always been difficult. But I’m at least tuned into the “dialogic species” enough to know that if it ever found refinement and higher intelligence within its grasp, it would be due to the feminine intermediaries of that species – despite the inertia of religion, despotism, and political retrogression.
The question is a valid one to ask: Has social refinement (and intelligence) actually decayed in the last 400 hundred years? Or has it simply gone underground in the wake of all the violent (neanderthal) predations and savagery orchestrated by men? Since the days of “the cave,” women have learned the skills of keeping the “gentler arts” sub rosa and out of sight. Men have condemned them, punished them, lampooned them, and dismissed them altogether. Which means that real (substantive) communication is what was most feared. It has obviously opened doors to the male psyche threatening the fortresses of masculinity.
For the more “evolved” male, this dilemma has been a challenge, putting it mildly. He is quite literally stuck between the norms of cultural expectation and a much finer (refined) space which is unavoidable and inevitable. It entails “communication” which challenges old norms and stereotypes. Personally, I miss what was once called the salon culture in the 16th and 17th centuries. It nurtured a kind of conversation I can only find in reading or on the History Channel. Admittedly, I would have little to add to the conversation. But I would be there to learn, not to talk. And learning for me (not power) is what this journey is all about.
The first individuals brave enough to forge such a literary presence were the women of France between the reign of Louis XIII and the French Revolution (roughly between 1620 and 1789). It was a time dedicated to the definition of taste. Consider the times: uneasy alliances between Church and Crown, endless plotting and bargaining between high-ranking nobility and the monarchy, assassinations and coups, threats of imprisonment for speaking out on virtually anything, demands of loyalty and obedience to the sovereign, and most of all an entrenched patriarchy teaming with codes of behavior. To fight for even one’s simple right to privacy could be treasonous and worthy of a prison sentence (privacy was still a luxury enjoyed by the nobility).
However, this era also invited forms of self-made attrition. The codes of behavior and expectation were wearing thin. Religious wars were proving themselves futile, with no real victors and just endless violence. It brought on an existential moment in the minds of men – an “identity crisis” in today’s terms. The old certainties of life were collapsing and the nobility was obliged to seriously rethink itself. – All of which brought on an amazing metamorphosis.
There was a new game in town – one created by the women of nobility. It inspired not only an integration between sexes but a new literati. It invited a new collaboration between high society, literature and “leisure pursuits.” Perhaps most important for the mental health of its players was the introduction of play and levity. It brought on a new intellectual conversation about “the arts.” Groups gathered in salons where a new sensibility was congealing around “aesthetic perfection.” Free time was now devoted to art, literature, music, dance, theatre, and conversation – training for mind and body.
To be sure, there were also rules: of clarity, forbearance, and in showing respect to others. In other words, it cultivated a talent for “listening.” – As someone said: “No men in France hang more together than literary men; no men defend their order with more tenacity.” They were learning from the women.
The mix of humor and depth, elegance and pleasure, and the search for truth made high society more androgynous and worldly. Sophistication and symbolic heraldry now replaced the need for constant displays blood sacrifice and proofs of loyalty to the Crown. It was the wives, mistresses, female artists and intellectuals forming a blueprint for a “civil” social etiquette.
The first salons were initiated by women – for women – going back 400 years. They led the way, mostly out of reactions from discrimination to formal education. A 16th century Italian concept, the word salone itself simply meant a literary gathering area. It referred to a room, usually the boudoir (of all places), where a lady could receive close friends in private. The French word ruelle, later used by Louis XIV, meant “lane” or “narrow street” designating the narrow spaces between the bed and wall, where visitors took their seats in a semi-circle. By the early 17th century these became public and they could now leave the boudoir. They were led by patronesses called “blue stockings” (originating in England). The term derives from members showing up in casual attire because they couldn’t afford fine clothing. Hence, the emphasis leaning on high conversation and not fashion.
These salonnieres allowed that there would be no universal agreement as to what constituted proper or improper conversation. According to author Dene Goodman, these were “not social climbers but intelligent, self-educated, and educating women….”
The trend quickly spread throughout Europe, and by the 18th and 19th centuries the salon was modeling itself on the Parisian standard. Since conversation inevitably branched into political debate and the many changes in the art world, men inevitably joined in and began their own salons. Some included “only men.” Particularly in France and Germany, and with the profusion of formally educated women artists and authors, they eventually became mixed groups.
The salon culture then traveled overseas. Since the French Revolution there were many interruptions and pauses in the art of conversation. It actually experienced a diaspora. And with the American temperament already so well documented by Tocqueville – uncouth, boorish, rough-hewn– one wouldn’t think it would ever survive in a place like the American frontier. But it did – again disguised, private, discrete, and desperately guarded.
The east coast gentry had no cause to conceal anything. The European (blue stocking) salon was quick to start up there. It had its book clubs, lecture series, and visiting authors. It had myriad reasons to gather under the peerage of souls thirsty for knowledge, enlightenment, and “taste” through poetry and art. At first it found sanctuary at colleges and universities, but then spread into town halls, churches, parks, and other venues.
But again, it also made its way out onto “the frontier” – albeit in more generic and assimilated forms. It had to disguise itself in ways that incorporated a whole different kind of male-oriented culture. Many of the women either had no formal education or were self-educated. Nevertheless, they needed reasons to gather, to share and support one another. One such environment became the “cult of quilting.”
Quilting was a façade while producing deeply needed materials for families with little or no money. They produced recycled comforters, blankets, and heavy work clothing. Their labors allowed a dozen or so women to sit at a large table, in a circle, and engage in conversation – with eyes and hands busy with needle and thread. At some level it was all about bringing life back into balance. It was also a makeshift gestalting of endless emotional issues that wives, siblings, and mothers faced everyday living extremely difficult and isolated lives on the prairie. It was the first group “therapy session” of its kind in America. Their men of course remained oblivious to this ulterior motive.
What these gatherings shared in common with the salons of New York and Paris were the sensibilities of the human spirit laid bare. The former did it through art; the latter through instinct and raw primal need.
Variations and improvisations of the quilter society carried on into the next century. Industry and progress finally improved “leisure” enough to enable more privacy and free time. But one constant remained, and survives today: refinement, subtlety, listening, mutual respect, and a thirst for knowledge.
Many women then and today may be uneducated or self-educated, but it misses the point anyway. What carries on is the art of being “in touch” – a forsaken art in too many sectors of society today. As a man particularly, one has to go out and actively pursue it – which I personally am very bad at doing.
Gore Vidal said it best: “I was speaking of a category to which I once belonged that has now ceased to exist. I am still here but the category is not. To speak today of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun. How can a novelist be famous … if the novel itself is of little consequence to the civilized, much less to the generality?”
For what it’s worth, I feel better not being alone in that sense. One doesn’t need to be introverted to feel the vacuum that even Vidal felt. He was the most gregarious, socially-oriented, salon-attending, party-participating public figure that ever was. Which tells me that even in the company of intellectuals, celebrities, and tankards of alcohol, one still encounters a dearth of conversation. Toilet humor, sex, people “on the make” and “working the rooms,” yes!! But substance has gone south along with patience, openness, common (professional) courtesy, and deep sharing.
I remember a comment Phil Donahue once made about his mostly female audiences. It had to do with the art of “listening.” He was grateful that it wasn’t men who filled his studio because, instead of listening, instead of asking “what happened then, how did you feel,” men aggressively “compete.” Men interrupt and say, “that’s nothing, wait ‘til you hear what happened to me!” It’s either a contest of “one-downmanship” or “one-upmanship.” Hence the reason men feel empty when out “with the guys” and lay the burden of endless listening onto their wives and girlfriends. Men simply don’t know how to shut up.
I confess: This entry is really about a fairly consistent void in my life at this time. There’s an emptiness that forces me to dialogue with all I have in my possession — an alter ego, four walls, and a family of cats — not exactly the same thing. Dating is also a challenge, as it’s always been. I pride myself at least in knowing that I’m a good listener (hearing Mr. Donahue’s caveat loud and clear). I was a “shrink” once (by definition a “professional listener”) and I learned the art of listening fairly well — and I ask questions. But dating alone doesn’t automatically fill the void I’m talking about. Many women today, alas, are “talkers” and horrible listeners – a sign of the times. They’ve managed to learn from the men.
I’m not quite sure exactly what it is I’m looking for here, where I’m going, on the deepest personal level. But when I run into it, I’ll know it. It seems to be about touching something extremely deep and existential, needing implicit trust. When I meet that person (or persons) I’ll be the first to say, “now we’re talking!”
© 2021 Richard Hiatt
The Subversive Imagination: Dispatches from the American Frontier 