The Art of Conversation

Food really is the backdrop to most any event worth anything. Tonight my friend Sonia (foodie friend Sonia) co-hosted a wine party at one of Glebe's most elite addresses (I partied in a penthouse on a Wednesday night!). The guest list featured a Hungarian businessmen, ladies from Ohio with whom I instantly bonded over shoes, Sonia's amusing friend who alternatively introduced the two of us as his wife, a part-time New Yorker Bethesda bartender, and a short guest who bragged about his tall, hot girlfriend. It was a lovely mix of guests who eschewed any professional talk, which leads me to my assessment that the art of conversation is a dying one (write large, not here). This is a key observation, because without good conversation, cocktail parties become feeding hours.

The brownies I dream about (making an outing tonight).

I will state (overdramatically and overconclusively) that associating with work colleagues professionally and personally makes ones conversational abilities atrophy: complaining about work, discussing work power plays, and ruminating about one's professional future creates a lazy conversationalist. This is no indictment of my work friends--we're all jaded enough to avoid the subject entirely--but rather work associates I casually talk to and with whom I cannot venture break past work talk. Separately, while I value and exhort the benefits of dining alone, one cannot really have a party solo, so food is inherently a backdrop to conversations there. And one has to practice (and I practiced tonight).

So, it's promising to know that real conversation can still exist among a generation that values written communication (text messages, Blackberry emails, and even old school emails by those Mezazoic communicators who use laptops... I jest) over the verbal kind, especially at a party where I noticed at one point four people who were conversing a minute previously had all pulled out there phones to enjoy the delightful glow of a radiant cell phone (sadly, me too).


However, what is also promising is that food can facilitate conversations that develop into opportunities to get to know someone. Sonia's key lime cheesecake eventually precipitated a conversation of our habitations and a discussion of the fine restaurants in Old Town (I mentioned two I had written about here). A conversation about chicken wings precipitated marriage proposals. The derivation of the party hummus led to inquiries about one of the host's ethnic roots and travel plans and the discussion of some fine cinnamon covered almonds complemented nicely a conversation about Target and Burlington Coat Factory for both bargain nuts and shoes.

It was nice--wine parties usually are, but the conversation was especially snappy (probably because we drank 10-plus bottles total). However, after eating apparently a large clove of garlic (while trying to pick off what I thought was a chicken wing morsel), I knew that only me and my Scope would be at the after-party together.