If I am very, very lucky, at around 5 or 6 pm, a little ding sings out of my phone. This happened yesterday. The Insomnias. I have to say, I am delighted.
The Insomnias have come to be one of my most favourite things. Perhaps I should tell you more about them.
For context, let’s begin with this:
Many of my most loved people live far away from me. They’re in time zones that are pesky for proper conversation- one is alive and frisky while the others in a coma- so friendships are conducted via an energetic and loving ping pong of voice messages long enough for podcasts collected when each respective party is awake.
Of course, it’s not that I wish sleepless nights upon my friends, but should they happen, then I consider what I’m providing is a service. A Dial A Friend hotline for when all available ears close to you are snoring and asleep.
One of my dearests, Tania, lives in Scotland and occasionally falls into The Insomnias. She is very, very smart and I imagine ideas and inspiration speed around her insides like a fast-flowing river so it’s no wonder wakefulness besets her.
Who can keep such magnificence inside a sleeping body? That peppiness needs some open eyes!
Whatever the opposite of small talk is is what Tania and I do. Is that Big Talk? When The Insomnias come on, Tania will ring me, and we will do the Big Talk. She, in her little house in Scotland, and me in New Zealand, tidying up the end parts of the day.
The Big Talk covers mountains and universes and all the things and is like a creative workout. We’ve Big Talked so much that we’ve mutually decided that most probably human happiness depends on it.
That we’re designed for the Big Talk, to work our idea muscles out, to unknot something gritty through shared and robust conversation.
The Big Talk, of course, includes the Small Talk. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to unleash my Mabel*’, we might say, or ‘I have to have a whinge’ and then two minutes later we’ve moved on to Quantum Theory and does that help us feel better about death and good lord aren’t we lucky to have a life full of interesting things and I’m not sure if you can hear that bird but they’re really astonishingly loud.
I recommend the Big Talk when you can.
xx Jane
*Mabel is the name Tania gives her alter-ego wots a little grumpy.