YOU CAN TALK

There are lots of ways to talk to each other now aren't there? I mean, ten years ago there was texting, msn and email. Twenty years ago, we had the clunky old telephone, and before that was a thing, only a hundred years or so ago, there was the telegram, the letter and the carrier pigeon. Beyond that you had to saddle up your horse and ride like the wind.

You'd think we'd be bang on with communication then, wouldn't you? We ought to be masters of the universe - we send radio signals into outer space, we bounce our voices off satellites and tap away into our keyboards through a vast interconnected network of all our computers - sometimes to people who are as far away as is humanly possible. With a little video delay and some chunky pixels, we can even see them - in real time.

I'm not sure our sprawling communications technology has particularly helped us though. Every new thing we dream up seems to bring its own protocols and etiquette - don't sign off with a kiss, screams my head sometimes. The winky face? What are you thinking? That's not how you spell that...

Well, anyway, it seems a little stressful to me. In truth, the purest form of communication has got to be face-to-face-live-and-in-the-same-room hasn't it? Even I can work this out from empirical evidence: every other form of communication seems to want to be like face-to-face, but each is restricted by its natural obstacles - not being able to see the other person, not being able to anticipate their reaction, not being able to detect an atmosphere, a tone of voice or the presence of another person - and not being able to be interrupted. These are all really important.

So what strikes me as incredibly sad is stories of people who live in the same house, exist in the same rooms and dance silently around each other, holding toast and coffee mugs and butter knives and mobile phones, but can't seem to find a way to talk.

Switch of the telly.

Sit down at the table.

Turn off that phone.

Log out of facebook.

Smile through the awkwardness, and talk.

And the thing is, I think it's OK to talk about anything. I mean anything - talk deep, talk serious, talk silly, talk books, talk food, talk politics, talk work, talk tall, short - anything. Find the nuances in the other person's posture, the little flicks of their eyes, the way their mouth curls up or their hand grips the edge of the table - listen and learn, watch and detect, ask lovely open-ended questions and answer your own. Talking is brilliant.

I know, right, it's easy for me. I don't have anyone to ignore awkwardly or avoid speaking to. I can talk to the mirror or throw out some thoughts on my blog like a massive hypocrite. Yeah maybe, but astronomers can observe things that astronauts can't see. And I've seen lots of sad stuff out there in the void of empty space, whether I've experienced it or not. I'm still naive enough to think of space travel as our greatest adventure. And I'll talk about that any time you like.