big talk

likes and dislikes something something

today’s likes

• the feeling of air on my back

• scarcity (make a rule that you can only listen to music released before 2006 and see how it changes the way you interact with it)

• long gel nails (thank you, bella) and how they tippy-tap on glass

• obsessively collecting poetry

• lying for fun

• cool showers (you can pretend you’re in the midst of a summer rainstorm, or underneath a waterfall¹)

• flash photography

• a nap in a warm car after a long day

• overusing parentheses

• dramatic irony and parallelism

the other stuff

i hate when people put big bows on babies.

i hate the heat. i hate when people monologue. i hate pb&js made with sourdough bread. i hate when people act as if they’re enlightened because they comprehend ideas i understood in middle school. i hate how i sound when i speak. i hate getting sunburnt on cold days. i hate middle talk.

(it makes sense that when my mother told me that hate was too strong a word to throw around i used it until it lost all meaning. i’m actually a little insufferable. if you made it this far, though, you might enjoy the rest of my brain.)

i hate waiting for my turn in conversations. i’m fighting in a constant bloody battle against the urge to interrupt, and i usually lose. i’m not the type to denounce all forms of small talk — the weather is fascinating & always different, why wouldn’t we discuss it, i love to complain — because why would i? it’s safe. (i really do want to know if you have any siblings.) sure, i’ll interrupt myself in my own writing, but i don’t during small talk. middle talk is where i lose the war.

let me explain.

a conversation should be a spastic, frantic thing. a feverish rush of information gathering. we should have multiple theories we’re building upon collaboratively, branching desultorily from a long-forgotten central thesis, sharing a peer-to-peer psychic connection. we should feel delighted and frenzied and as if we’re completing a puzzle. i know this type of conversation exists. i’ve spent enough time barefoot on the blacktop, lingering in a doorway, talking for hours on end into the night to know that every other conversation feels really, really empty in comparison. this is big talk.

middle talk is faux big talk, and white men are experts on it. (your dad probably has a masters degree in it.) they resort to drastic measures in order to unlock big talk² and think they accomplish it by making tiktok slideshows of patrick bateman or by posting on r/showerthoughts. it’s nothing. middle talk is all posture. it's the most boring way of upkeeping a hierarchy.

i think big talk rewires synapses. middle talk probably kills brain cells. i loved it when i was fourteen and mostly interested in making declarative statements about how cringe everything was — i just sucked the love out of my relationships to become stronger. i thought i was so deep, and projected ugliness to feel powerful. middle talk worked bad for me for a while, and then life got better. i discovered i was like the other girls - and the common denominator in my explosive friendships was really me all along - and that the mundane selfishness of middle talk works as a necrotizing self-soother. it’s the conversational equivalent of top ten funniest parks and recs moments or rush limbaugh playing in the background. nobody’s ever really listening, are they?

ok, i ramble, but end with a plea: more big talk, please. & less of the other stuff.

1. playing pretend is a worthwhile pastime. please don’t underestimate the value of imagining something new

2. just think of the posts they make after doing mushrooms for the first time ?