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Articles about our conversation salons
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DEEP THOUGHTS Idle chit-chat has no place at a modern-day by Allison Kaplan Flash back to 1969, but take away the hallucinogens, the touchy-feely stuff, the greasy hair. Leave behind the dumb pick-up lines, the superficial talk about the weather and the trite-polite banalities of everyday conversation. Now push through a beaded curtain, following the incense scent, to a candle-lit family room covered wall to wall in tie-dye pillows. A framed Jim Morrison poster hangs on the dark blue wall. A Ravi Shankar disc plays in the background. Seated in a circle, with fluffy cushions propped behind backs and oversized goblets of red wine balanced precariously between knees, are 15 stocking-footed men and women–graying and slightly paunchy, credited with advanced degrees and teenage children. They have come to this suburban home for the purpose of engaging in stimulating conversation with strangers. Tonight’s topic: The Ideal Social Gathering. Our hostess, Kathy Hamill, opens the discussion with memories of being 18 and crowding into a smoky Chicago bar at 2 a.m. to hear Little Richard play. At 46, Hamill looks more vintage hippie than attorney in her loose cotton skirt and tank top, with blonde hair cascading past her shoulders, an ankle bracelet of silver bells jingling each time she gestures. She closes her eyes for a moment, then wonders aloud whether those blissful memories of yesteryear could have more to do with the intention to have fun than with the actual circumstances. Hmm. The cleverness of tonight’s topic is not lost on this social gatherings. Actually, it is examined. From every possible angle. “It is very self-referencing,” Hamill acknowledges. “I think it’s fair to say we’re striving towards being ideal and trying to elicit hints.” Talk wanders from “inebriants,” (liven up a gathering but make it less meaningful) to pagan ritual (too hung up on ceremony to be fun) to anti-Seinfeld sentiment. (Hamill’s live-in boyfriend, Robin Slater, 55, doesn’t enjoy socializing with people who liked watching the “Seinfeld” show, which tends to diminish his options.) SALON: Activities are metaphors Eventually, the discussion evolves into the importance of community. John Wallace, a 58-year-old Des Plaines business owner with a thick head of gray hair, uses surfing (waves, not the Internet) as an example. Half the fun, he says, is not the act of surfing, but sitting around with other surfers recounting the experience in great detail. “Activities become metaphors,” Hamill suggests, urging the conversation along. Around the circle, most people nod. Some more vigorously than others. An odd intimacy pervades the group, mainly due to the intentionally cozy setting. But these forty- and fiftysomethings met just a few months ago, through a personal ad placed by Hamill and Slater, a computer programmer for Sears in Hoffman Estates. The ad, listed under “Seeking Friends,” solicited “suburban unconventional thinkers starving for imaginative, intelligent conversation.” “I figured a few people would call and it would fizzle in a month,” Hamill said. Instead, 20 people from all over the suburbs showed up for the first Salon–as they simply call the group–at Hamill and Slater’s time-warped abode in a rural neighborhood on the western edge of Elgin. Five months later, Hamill and Slater are hosting two Saturday night Salons each month to accommodate the growing interest, since 15 is about the most they can comfortably seat on their family room floor. The Salon mailing list has swelled to 115. “It’s like college–sitting around, sharing ideas,” said Tom Nall, a Crystal Lake engineer. Nall is a widower, raising two children ages 12 and 8. “I really miss having intelligent conversations. No one wants to do that anymore.” Wedding rings are a rarity at Salon. In fact, the only “couple” on this particular night are the hosts, Hamill and Slater. While Salon wasn’t intended as a singles venue for the middle-aged, it does seem to be attracting mature adults who feel alienated from their family-oriented suburban communities. One woman shouts out, only half-jokingly, “I’m odd enough already in my neighborhood–I’m the only homeowner who doesn’t use Chem-lawn.” A few Salon participants even started dating each other. “I had a couple of experiences with singles ads that were less than satisfying,” said 43-year-old Mike Lawrence of Naperville. “So I decided to look under ‘just friends’ and I found this group. All the women I meet my age are married. Especially in Naperville–even the YMCA is called the ‘family center.’” Lawrence is certainly open to the idea of dating someone he meets at a Salon, but making a love connection is not his goal in attending. “I’m just glad to find a few people who I can sit down with and get to know slowly,” said Lawrence, an architectural designer. “I like to think of it as sharing a similar structure of the brain. You find very few people like that.” Hamill wonders how long it’s been since some Salon participants met their intellectual equals. The way they rattle on, she said, “you’d think they hadn’t had a conversation in two years.” Wallace, who jumps into the conversation frequently, says he’s actually rather shy. But Salon makes conversing easier, he said, by forgoing the social niceties that usually proceed any meaty discussion, to get right to the interesting stuff. “I’m not looking for anything–I just want to sit down and talk to people,” said Wallace, who is recently divorced and finding it tough to make friends outside the couples framework. “This way, you have a captive audience. And no assigned reading.” With only one short bathroom break and a momentary interruption to clean up spilled wine, the group gabs past the pre-set 10:30 p.m. end time. Around 11, several head over to Applebee’s, as has already become the custom among Salon regulars, where they talk until the restaurant closes. “I feel really uplifted and exhilarated,” Hamill says at the end of the evening that was, as it turns out, awfully close to the group’s definition of the Ideal Social Gathering. “I think we got verification that the kind of things we’re doing are consistent with the group’s interest in an interactive social setting,” Hamill said. Even though most of the Elgin Salons are filling up with reservations weeks in advance, the personal ad continues to run. “We keep the ad running,” Hamill said, “for the possibility of finding more extraordinary personalities.” The search for conversation Elgin residents Kathy Hamill and Robin Slater drove all over town in search of an interesting conversation. They tried the Unitarian Church, the Free Inquiry Network and the Skeptical Humanist organization, which handed them a stack of eye-poppingly tough reading material. “We wanted the social side as well,” said Hamill, an attorney. “We like talking to each other, but we were looking for something else to do.” Hamill recalled reading about conversation salons in the Utne Reader. The alternative magazine first wrote about “How to revive the endangered art of conversation and start a revolution in your living room” in the early ‘90s. Since then, Utne Reader launched its own online salons, which can be reached at www.utne.com, and came out with a book “The Joy of Conversation: the Complete Guide to Salons.” The book is available by order, at (800) 880-UTNE. But you don’t have to follow a formula to get your own conversation group going. “We just made it up,” said Hamill, who hosts a very successful new salon in Elgin with Slater, her boyfriend. The couple paid for a personal ad to promote the group. They also provide the meeting space, wine and munchies. Hamill says it’s worth it. “This is our entertainment.” Hamill and Slater came up with the topic for their first Salon: “What, if anything, desirable an be salvaged from the 1960s?” From there, the group brainstormed ideas. Topics so far have included, “Illuminations, Joys and Epiphanies,” “The Ideal Political System,” and “The Millennium Household (envisioning domestic arrangements for the near future–what’s probable and what we prefer).” For updates on conversation topics, contact Hamill and Slater’s Salon Web site at http://www.elginsalon.org |
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