Dear Sky,
I'm really bad at asking questions. But like, when interacting with people. Not of the government. I really am interested and curious about others, but I feel like I get into sponge mode and am so busy listening and absorbing that I then forget to think about a follow up question and just kind of stare blankly at people when they talk to me. I want to make new relationships and strengthen the ones I have, but worry I seem more animated talking about myself than asking others about their experiences/lives/thoughts. How do I ask more (and better) questions? How do I do this without taking a very long, awkward pause after they finish talking?
-what's that you're doing? (this is the name of paul mccartney's newsletter)
Dear paul mccartney’s newsletter,
You know all the thinkpieces about how porn ruins people for the messy realities of actual sex with other humans? Your question reminded me of that.
Listen, we used to be a society where you’d ask a question and it could take a month to get an answer, easy, if the roads weren’t too muddy and the recipient responded diligently to their post. Waiting a few seconds for a good question from an attentive table-partner is not going to kill anybody who we aren’t better off losing from the conversational commons.
In case this is not clear, you do not sound at all bad at asking questions! You discuss your own experience/life/thoughts with animation, you pay spongy attention to what your partner has to say, and then you take a moment to give a thoughtful response? You are a dream interlocutor! People should be lining up to buy you dinner! What are you even on about? Is this a thing where you write to me about how enchanting you are with your wide-eyed ingenue energy and I sigh and think, “wow, paul mccartney’s newsletter really has it all figured out”?
But: fine, let’s pretend for a moment that all this delightful authenticity is somehow a problem. This is a performance question. You’re wondering how to buff your performance of self for people who might relate to other selves mostly through screens and filters. How can you better perform an authenticity that you already possess? How can you make your genuine, attentive curiosity legible to others as attentive curiosity? You are asking how to be better perceived for what you already are. It’s giving Baudrillard, when the simulacrum becomes more real than the original, when the animal cracker is all that’s left of animality.
Shit, I forgot to answer your question again. Ok: you could get better at this performance of attentiveness by listening less attentively. Care less about what they have to say and focus on what you plan to respond instead. Over time, you might be able to train yourself out of genuine engagement and into something that might look more perceptibly like a representation of caring.
But: don’t! You sound lovely.