In 2016, as part of my artistic practice, I tried to document my attempts at talking to strangers and finding community in Vancouver. This is the third in a series of five writings. (Names have been changed to protect people’s privacy.) The beginning of the series is here.
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Friday, May 27, 2016
Who holds grudges?
Mothers. Fathers. Daughters. Sons. Brothers. Sisters. Well, that will be almost everybody…and then…lonely people.
Lonely people tend to live too much in their head which results in manufacturing distorted perceptions of the world. Their ability to read a situation becomes skewed by defensive chatter. It says that everybody is acting against you. Words and actions take on a new meaning.
Theodore Zeldin wrote “Conversation with yourself is full of risk…” and that the benefit of sharing your thoughts with others is that you will discover how other people see you.1 That can be a pleasant surprise, or not, if it’s something you don’t want to hear.
Today I met DH for a coffee at Continental. And there, was Thomas—sitting inside at a table by the window as usual. I got there before DH, so I picked a table a bit apart from his but not so far away—as if to say that I did not care that he was there. It was a communal table and I wanted to see what it felt like to sit at one of these tables. Do they make it easy to talk to strangers? That’s the big test in the fall. And perhaps, I need to have a couple of places, three maybe, that I try in case one is busy. There must always be the rule that I sit a communal table. Sitting at a two-seat table says: ‘not open to talk.’
So back to Thomas, who is really puzzling me…but not bothering me, honest. How could such a grown-up man, 75 years old maybe, hold such a grudge? He has spun a tale in his head, and I am now an enemy. Persona non grata. I am sure he has few friends. He is a born-again Christian, which only seems to be a problem in how he approaches others. If anything, he is indignantly righteous, freely over-using words such as ‘should’ when talking to others about how one must conduct oneself. ‘Should’ is a real turn-off of a word.
I am curious to see how long this behaviour will go on for. I would rather not talk to him anyway. It is easier than being subjected to his ‘righteous’ world view. I shiver at the thought of him hugging me. Last summer, when I first met him, or shortly thereafter, he thought I was a great human being and once, outside Continental, he asked if he could give me a hug. I said ‘sure.’ WHY THE FUCK DID I SAY YES? I did not want to hug him, but he caught me by surprise and I couldn’t figure out how to turn him down politely?
That’s awfully nice of you to ask but I’m not into hugs. I appreciate the sentiment though.
Or…
Sorry, I don’t do hugs. (Followed by a shoulder shrug and big phony smile?)
What if I had said ‘no.’ Would he have held a grudge right away?
You bet.
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Back to the present, it’s May 2022 as I write this.
Back in 2016 I was ruminating about long tables in cafés and I asked “Do they make it easy to talk to strangers?” I never did follow through with my art project of testing this out methodically.
There was (and I think there still is) a trend in Vancouver of communal tables in new cafés and restaurants. Do communal tables actually invite strangers to talk to each other? That is the intention in a city that has a problem with loneliness, but in my experience, it doesn’t work here, maybe elsewhere it does.
Way back when, in the mid-eighteenth century, long tables where a normal fixture in coffee houses. In fact, in Building and Dwelling (2018), the author, Richard Sennett, reports that “when you bought your cup of coffee, you sat down at a long table, expecting to spend quality time discussing matters of the day with perfect strangers.” But eventually, by the nineteenth century, as cities grew, even in Paris, the café evolved to a public place where strangers expected to be left alone. Long tables turned to small round tables that would sit one or two people.
Here we are in the twenty first century with deeply ingrained habits towards strangers. You can put a long table in a café but doing so is just an empty gesture. We live in an era where people are more comfortable looking at screens. Long café tables have become office desks for remote workers. Cafés often function as spaces to feel less lonely but that doesn’t mean anyone will talk to you.
Conversation: How talk can change our lives by Theodore Zeldin, 2000