Talking to strangers

(Drunken) ramble alert!

This post by Dave Trott has been stuck in my mind over the last week or so. In the comments, "john. w." quotes David Abbott: 'If you don’t have a life, what are you going to put into advertising?', which I'd never heard before and has been chasing the John Webster anecdote inside my pretty little head.

Maybe it's because I'm getting a bit pipe and slippers (or at least wine and telly), but I find myself thinking a lot about how many interesting situations I used to find myself in. Or to put it another way, how many interesting people I bumped into by being in these situations. My life then seems more random and surreal than the humdrum cycle of work, media and TV that I live in now.

I've been trying to pinpoint the cause of this descent into homogenity, and it stuck me that maybe it's because I talk to strangers less.  Sure, I strike up conversation with people I don't know at coffee mornings and networking evenings, but these are events set up for exactly that and conversation is usually ringfenced within certain topics (unless you're talking to me, and then you will be talking about food).

The most interesting people I have met, the most interesting stories I've heard have been on a random, whether that's been at the bar in a pub or protesting against the capitalist forces of evil in Genoa (don't worry kids, I'm free market socialist now). In fact, a lot of the more random things I've done have been while I'm away (driving round Moscow with Armenians, handling firearms in the projects). Maybe that's because when you're abroad and out of your comfort zone you are more likely to strike up conversation with someone that isn't a lot like you.

Anyway, after much mulling, I've come to a conclusion. I don't talk to as many strangers as I should.

"Like Allan Bennett and Peter Kay, John Webster knew how to take ordinary things and turn them into ideas." Anyway, that was Trott's takeout. But I'm all about using extraordinary things because we're entering an age of fantasy - ask Collyn -  and I believe we respond well to managed fantasy. And where better to be inspired rather than things that actually happened? Truth is stranger than fiction etc, etc.

Comments

[Mark Hadfield]

Nice post Priyanka.

In my mind you're talking about two things here: 1) Being interesting and meeting new people by chance, 2) Living the life of the 'typical consumer'.

I'd guess that the thing you're questioning about yourself (vegging in front of TV, not handling guns in council estate) actually makes you more like the majority of the population. More people in the UK will sit in front of their TV watching stuff and say they should be doing something else, rather than actually doing it. I reckon, anyway.

As planners we're all about trying everything all the time. To learn from new situations, to learn from new people. Well, that includes the millions of people that watch TV 5 nights a week and drink on Friday/ Saturday nights.

I reckon... anyway.