So quite a few people have been asking me for the wording to the large painting (6′H X 12′W) I am working on entitled “The Master Conversationalist”. So I have decided that I will post the wording previous to it’s completion for everybody so I can make you guys happy cause in the end that is the goal is it not? Live and be happy? Fly with the eagles and all that.

This was written about 20 minutes after finishing a huge stint of reading that culminated in Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot”. I was overwhelmed with a huge rush of emotion and realization about life, time and space; plus more heavy concepts than I could retain, or desire to for that matter, and I sat at the desk on the hard, cold, metal chair and this poured fourth and came to be. The Master Conversationalist may be my most effective 15mins of writing to date. Well the most fluid at least.

So here it is for you: The Master Conversationalist

Great conversation is made by the use of transition, by harmony of exchange and by varied intellectualism amongst partakers. To be a great conversationalist one must first surround themselves with other great conversationalists so as to give the medium a proper substrate to lay the foundation that upholds the keystone of a fundamental exchange. Secondly, and most importantly one must embrace the ebb and flow of the perfect exchange. Listening deeply is the preposition to intellectualism. One who does not absorb another’s words is closer to a wall than a master of the spoken word. The interjection cannot have the brilliancy that it will need unless properly timed, the agreement will not be eloquent unless it allows accompaniment to the breath of conclusion.

The true master of conversation though embraces no other brick of the structure of language than the pause, the break in conversation, the divine transition; sometimes awkward, sometimes relieving, revealing, sometimes showing where failures rear their ugly head: many times the pause just is. The moment strikes us in many ways; a setting sun, absorption of concepts or emotions we have just seen anew. For the many reasons for the pause there is but one use and one use alone: purposeful reflection. The master of conversation seizes this moment immediately but like the patient painter does not rush, nor delay one second too long. The master conversationalist waits until the moment has passed into infamy. Then using his brush of charm, his sweet caress, his poetic blending of emotion and reason he breaks the pause with the delicate embrace that one gives a new born child because he knows that from that moment on; he is holding a thing so supple, so precious that the utmost diligence and care is needed to give the pause, the birth of infamy, it’s truly splendid, poetic, glowing victory of reflective discovery.

That reflective discovery forever etched into our very being is what we call a conclusion: the recognition that things have changed and we are not who we were before. We are new and alive and fresh. We are finished and yet we are reborn. We are searching yet we are whole. We are free and yet from that point forward we are forever with that pause of awakening and the realization that changed us forever.