For today’s post I want to start off with a little library story then I’ll briefly chat you up about 3 books: What I mean to Say by Ian Williams, At a Loss for Words by Carol Off, and The Soul of Civility by Alexandra Hudson. Interestingly, these books are very much in conversation with each other, and also bloody timely, woooo.

So, first, the story. Which comes with a bit of a content warning for ideation.

I was working at one branch of the library system one day and came across someone who seemed not good. And it’s an art form to know when to persist with a person seeming so — because as always, you might be wrong. So you start slowly with the good old small talk. And then you leave spaces for the person to interject. In my experience, they usually do if they’re in need. Though, they don’t say things like, “I’m in need of help.” Not in words anyway. There are cues. Sighs. There is a certain sigh I’ve come to know in my years of library work. Anyway, long story short, the person was ideating but said, it’s something you can only talk about as a lived experience. I said, yes, I get that. Until a couple of years ago I didn’t have that lived experience. We went back and forth. I worked in available services, we talked about when to seek help, how to know that. I was glad at that point to be able to use my lived experience in a way that made it useful. Strange to say that I was glad to have had such an understanding but I felt that way at that moment. The person departed and I felt confident, or as confident as one is able, that they were okay for the time being. Flash forward maybe a month and I’m at a different branch, and what are the odds for someone who goes randomly around to branches? and I see the same person. They have a hospital bracelet on. I say hi and work in after the appropriate bit of small talk and feeling around, have you been okay? gesturing to the bracelet. And no, they hadn’t been, but let me know that because of our prior conversation, they had sought out the help they needed in a timely fashion. I had helped, they said. I didn’t really feel as though I’d done much other than listen, and talk a bit. But if I had been of small use, wonderful. I mean, wow.

I guess I’m sharing this story because I want to maybe extoll my own virtues, I’m not above that at all. But also because these types of conversations go on all the time in libraries. Probably elsewhere too, but certainly in libraries.

I’ve thought a lot about conversations since I began writing my novel Everything Affects Everyone. And really ever since I’ve been working in libraries which I began doing in my undergrad. I did an interview with Kerry Clare where I talked about the reference question. You can read the full interview here. And here is an excerpt:

“Well, to immediately circle back to libraries, I think I’ve just realized, because of this conversation that we’re having right now, that so much of the book is informed by my experience of what we like to call in the biz, “the reference interview.” Wow. And so what every library worker knows and works toward, and really this is one of my life’s main raison d’êtres, is the perfection of the reference interview. Which is ever unattainable, a work in progress, the holy grail of library work. Because, as in most conversations, a lot of what happens is sidelong. Sure there is often the straightforward person who comes in wanting X book, asks for X book, and walks out with same. Wonderful, that! But often the person arrives looking for something that they can’t say, or don’t know how to say, or want to say but are too uncomfortable to say, or don’t even know that they can ask for this thing that they need. So, it is this really delicate back and forth, that must be purely openhearted, and orchestrated to not presume, to not overextend, to probe but with good intent, with a mind to privacy, a mind to empathy, and with a great deal of instinct, as to when to be blunt, or ask the really dumb or super open ended questions, when to be silent, when to nod. It’s an exercise in hope and humility and curiosity and must be filled with a genuine interest in the human before you. “

And recently I refreshed my memory of the Elizabeth Alexander poem in which she asks, “Are we not of interest to each other?”

So while I’ve been thinking about these things for a while, I am very interested in thinking more about them. Which is why Ian Williams’s book based on the Massey Lectures he gave, What I mean To Say, is such a balm and a marvellous starting point for more conversations.

There are so many aspects of conversation that I had not considered or not from the same viewpoint. He asks good questions: “Do we only speak to gracious people? How are we supposed to engage with difficult people?” He says, “Conversations are mutually built. We approach them as engineers, framers, plumbers. Conversations are mutually maintained.”

Williams talks about conversations as being “architectural.” He says, “There’s a balance of speaking and listening, of enthusiasm, of goodwill, intent, of power…” He also talks about conversations through the language of music which I love. His thesis, he says, is: “We can talk about anything if we know how.” and “I think tone is everything.” He emphasizes that “we need to listen to each other.” “We should listen to people as if they were dying.” I really appreciated his IG post on silence and shaming.

Carol Off’s At a Loss for Words: Conversation in an Age of Rage seems to be perfectly timed to coincide with the Ian Williams book. Words matter, and she gives us the knowledge and tools and backdrop of our recent history to have conversations about them. The words she examines are: Freedom, Democracy, Truth, Woke, Choice, Taxes. Which probably tells you all you need to know about the direction of the book. You might think, ugh, I don’t want to think about those things right now, but we’re not really going to be able to avoid it, are we? So having Off’s wisdom in our pocket is going to be useful. She says, “We can still avert disaster. We have the ability to listen, to attempt to understand, to vote, to accept people who are not exactly like us into our societies and our circles to care for each other again. But we need to talk to each other, to be able to disagree with people’s opinions without hating them for expressing them. Despite what’s been happening to the six crucial words I’ve examined here, we still have the language to restart the conversation and to get ourselves out of a mess.”

The last book I’ll talk about today is Alexandra Hudson’s The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves. I’ve talked about it before here, but it’s worth noting that she has chapters on “Citizenship in a Digital Age,” and “Hospitality” and “Polarization and Tolerance.” (It occurs to me now to do a re-read of Pema Chödrön’s book which addresses polarization soon, too). Hudson asks in her book, “What does it mean to be human? What is the bare minimum of respect we are owed, and owe to others in light of our shared humanity and irreducible worth as person? What does it look like to live out that respect practically amid deep differences with others — including in our divided political moment?”

She says, “Politeness is easy. Civility requires effort.” And it’s a good point of distinction. She says that “While civility, grounded in respect for the personhood and human dignity of others is always good, politeness can be — and frequently is — weaponized to silence and suppress disagreement. Civility never silences or steamrolls. In putting the dignity of the other person front and centre, it instead seeks to listen and learn.”

Can conversations repair? I guess that’s my question. I like how Williams speaks about them in terms of buildings, architecture. So they might have bricks and mortar and electrical work we can attend to. I’m not an expert on anything. But I have had about a million (slight exaggeration) conversations with every kind of person that might walk into a library. A lot of them have been filled with small talk, but I never use small talk as merely small talk, you know? All I know is you’re not going to change every life, but if you persist you can change a few small things here and there. I have to believe that means something. Trajectories can change in a life because of one act of care, because you listened, because you recommended the right book at the right time. I’ve seen it.

Sometimes just reading the correct combination of books at approximately the same time can help fix you.

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November 28, 2024