When Conversation Is Impossible

March 16, 2023

I find it nearly impossible to express myself in conversation. No matter how hard I try, I leave nearly every conversation feeling that I failed to say what I meant to say, that I misrepresented my feelings, and that the person I was speaking to gained a false or at least skewed understanding of who I am.

If you asked the people I talk to most regularly, they would probably say that they have a decent grasp of who I am. And this is certainly true, if we are considering myself as a social being. They can read my external behaviour and make decent estimations about my mood and my feelings. They can tell by my tone of voice whether I'm nervous or sad or just run-down. After working with someone once a week for two months, I walked in one day feeling a little blue, and immediately after I said "hello," they said, "Are you sick or something?"

So, I suppose I wear my heart on my sleeve to a certain extent, but what I find myself incapable of expressing in person is what it is actually like to have these feelings. The people around can tell when I'm nervous by the shakiness and quietness of my voice, and they can tell I'm pleased when I turn to them and say something ridiculous. However, I can't communicate to them the way that nervousness manifests itself to me: the strange shivers that crawl up my legs, the heavy weight that sits in my lower torso, the weird feeling that I'm hungry and full at the same time, and the unbearable chaos storm in my mind that makes thought impossible.

Any attempt to formulate these feelings aloud, impromptu, ends up being formed out of stock phrases — whatever words rise most instantaneously to my mind. And thereby, they end up sounding trite. The same holds true for any philosophical or political ideas I may have. They never come out quite how they are in my head.

One of the first authors I ever idolized completely was David Foster Wallace, most famously the author of the novel Infinite Jest as well as many popular works of non-fiction. In his work, he presents an encyclopedic breadth and particularity of knowledge, combined with an often hilarious attention to detail, all wrapped up in an extremely Midwest sort of laid-back charm. However, when you watch or hear him speak, the prevailing sense one gets is self-doubt, nervousness, and discomfort. While he is able to speak well, it is rare that he expresses an idea without immediately asking, "Does that make any sense?" as if there exists the possibility in his mind that he might have accidentally ceased to speak any language at all and instead devolved into complete gibberish noise.

I realized, through observation and practice, that such a question repeated so frequently is, frankly, quite annoying, and that even an affirmative answer doesn't provide much reassurance. I can imagine that David Foster Wallace left most of these conversations firmly believing that he came across as a total idiot. And while he didn't exactly, at least not to me, he certainly came across as someone who I wouldn't be able to understand deeply without reading his writing.

What I understand of David Foster Wallace is, in this respect, limited. I don't know how he lived his day-to-day life, or what he thought of the myriad things that must have crossed his mind throughout the day. I don't know what his personality was like when he was with his close friends or family, and I don't know how he interacted with cashiers or waitresses. In fact, I am ignorant of all of those external signifiers by which friends know what their friends are feeling. I do not know David Foster Wallace as a social being.

However, I can say at least one thing, which is that David Foster Wallace chose to write books. He wrote novels and he wrote non-fiction essays. These are the means by which he wished to be understood. And the very fact that he employed this method tells me that him and I have something in common.

Now, this method is as foolhardy as any other; I already listed above all that writing can not possibly express. What it can do, however, is get at what lies deeper and more strangely within the human psyche. Through this medium, I can, with great precision, explain internal phenomena that would be nigh impossible in person.

In Whisper of the Heart, when the main character Shizuku, an aspiring novelist, is down in the dumps, her best friend lists for her all her best qualities. She ends by saying: "And you can tell people just how you feel. I can't do that."

Each time I watch this scene, it makes me realize what a gift it is to be able to, even in the most approximated fashion, tell people how you feel. To be able to connect with people on a level much deeper than a simple conversation. To allow them to see into your heart, and for a moment recognize that perhaps the inside of their heart looks much the same.

For me, conversation is impossible as a means of making myself understood. It is equally impossible as a means of understanding others. As someone who formulates almost all their thoughts in the form of written words, I find it hard to understand others unless they translate their thoughts in the same way.

Reading literature, to me, is more than just an entertaining hobby. It is my primary means of interfacing with humanity. It is how I have come to understand people, both specific individuals and people as a whole. Without literature, I would be totally lost. I would have no idea what is going on with anybody, and nothing about our world would make any sense.

Of course, I know people in real life, and I get along with them. I do this in my own broken and bizarre way. But I feel I never would have made it even that far if it weren’t for literature. I would have remained confused about their feelings and their intentions. I would have struggled to figure out whether they felt the same way as I did, whether anyone ever felt the same way as I did about anything.

It is only by supplementing the social world with literature — which showed me the many varying perspectives through which people see and interact with the world, translated into my particular way of understanding things — that I was able to discover what all these perspectives share, the ways in which we are all just similar enough to facilitate proper understanding.

Literature, for me, is not really about stories, characters, themes, political ideologies, or philosophical ideas. It is about what all these things tell me about the person who wrote it down. It is about peering through the veil and finding out who is behind all of it, reveling in their distinct personality and the ways it differs and is similar to my own. I don't care about their biography, or what they ate for breakfast, or who they voted for: everything that I need to know is contained within the book itself. By studying it carefully, I can learn something about them, because everything you put forth carries with it a little glimpse into your heart.

To me, therefore, what is most important, what speaks to me most deeply, is books that embrace this idea: books that feel like the author spilled their heart onto the page sincerely and without affectation.

They don't need to tell me everything, but what they do tell me needs to be true. I can tell when they lie, because I speak this language too. I know how to use literature to lie, and I know the sickening, poisonous feeling that comes from succeeding in such a lie.

I also understand the limits of this medium. I know the stinging feeling that comes from pushing right against its limits, and realizing that there will always be much more left unsaid than is ever said. I know that we are all fighting a losing battle in attempting to make ourselves understood.

But I also know that how we choose to fight that battle says more than we know, and the persistence with which we bash our head against this brick wall reveals much about our character. Despite all its failings and inadequacies, and despite my own personal failings and inadequacies when it comes to making use of it, I understand literature to be my only hope and my only salvation, just as it was for many others who came before me, and will be for many who come after. As one tiny link in this never-ending chain, I consider it my duty to contribute in my small way to this vast chorus of solitary souls screaming their names into the sky, screaming with all that they have, in the hope that someone, anyone, might hear their voice.