On 23rd February, Gem and I went to our first Conversation Dinner; something I’d been hoping to do for some time, being a supporter of Theodore Zeldin’s ideas about conversation and personal history (for those who don’t know, my MA dissertation was on collaboration in Theodore Zeldin’s life writing).

The first thing to note about the evening, held at the Hayward Gallery, is what excellent value it was. The dinner and talk preceding it cost just five pounds a head (although wine was charged at typical London prices), for which we got an evening of physical and emotional nourishment (forgive my pretentiousness).

Zeldin speaks not to inform or explain, but to inspire. His talk this evening contained little factual information. He invited his audience to go on an adventure, the key feature of which would be that you wouldn’t know where you would end up. Such adventures, he emphasised, do not need to be physical: the real explorers of the 21st century will be those who converse and think in new ways, perhaps without travelling far at all. These ideas were not new to me – Zeldin’s books, An Intimate History of Humanity and The French, had already persuaded me of the need for new ways of making connections between people. But Zeldin’s quietly persuasive rhetoric nevertheless excited me, made me eager to have such an adventure myself. When the talk ended, we moved into another room for the main part of the evening.

It was the first time I have ever entered a restaurant on my own; and, as I took my seat at a randomly assigned table, I felt some of the nervous excitement of (I imagine) waiting for a blind date. As others entered and took their seats, I wondered if my conversation “partner”, whoever he or she was, had taken one look at me and escaped. I had that odd sense we sometimes have of having put ourselves in danger, when really we know that no harm can come to us. I suppose that what I felt was emotional danger – whatever happened next would be a new experience for me; I was outside the safety zone of my normally comfortable life.

Eventually my partner did arrive, and we began the adventure. The first thing I notice when trying to describe the experience is how little I register physical features. Despite having sat opposite this woman for well over an hour, I can only describe superficial physical traits, such as hair colour. I could try and argue that the essence of the person is not physical, but emotional or mental, and I certainly retain more of those kinds of details. But it does make me wonder what I might learn if I looked at people more.

Once we began talking, I felt very comfortable. On our table was a “menu of conversation” which listed not dishes to choose from, but questions designed to make us explore ourselves, talking openly and intimately despite being strangers. Questions which feature prominently in my memory are:

“When are you at your best?”
“When have you felt lonely and isolated?”
“What sensations do you avoid?”
“What do you need more or less of?”
“What are the limits of your compassion?”

What struck me was how naturally we both answered these questions, and it occurred to me that perhaps both of us were accustomed to talking about ourselves, including our weaknesses and aspirations. Would this occasion be of more value, I wondered, to people who are less comfortable having such intimate conversations, who need more prompting? At points I wondered whether our familiarity with talking and thinking about ourselves might result in the conversation being less intimate and revealing than one might hope. Perhaps, after all, we were just performing for each other?

However, I do feel that we both learned something. My “partner” (about whom I should not write much, since I do not have her permission) initially used our difference in age and experience to explain our differing outlooks; but later in the conversation she seemed surprised at what I had “already” learned at only 25. For my part, the surprise was what apparently very simple questions can make us realise about ourselves. When asked about when I had felt lonely and isolated, for example, I initially began with a very familiar (to me) answer about my current job: this was certainly no new topic of conversation for me. But the question that followed – “What are the remedies?” – challenged my understanding of the story I am so accustomed to telling. I had always thought of this situation as a problem I would need to escape rather than solve. But in response to this deceptively simple question, I found myself acknowledging that, perhaps, I was expecting too much from people, that we should judge people by what they can give us rather than by preconceived notions of what we want from them. The question made me see the situation in a new way.

At times, it felt as though we were collaborating to reach a new understanding of certain concepts. We asked each other what was meant by “compassion”, and came to the conclusion that it was one of those words that do not explain themselves properly, perhaps because of over-use. A similar word, my partner suggested, was “respect”, of which there are many different kinds. It was productive, I felt, to have this discussion, as it helped to make my understanding of certain concepts more precise, more interrogative.

Although the conversation did achieve a level of intimacy, it would not be true to say that it helped me to “know” this person in any depth. What was achieved, I felt, was a brief collaboration, which might lead to new ways of thinking or behaving for both participants. It was refreshing, however, to have a conversation with a stranger that did not once involve the traditional clichés of meeting situations: “What do you do?” and the like. Interestingly, we both mentioned our jobs (they are, after all, a large part of our lives), but neither of us revealed what those jobs actually were. It was refreshing to talk in this unburdened way about nevertheless familiar concepts.

People started to depart, and Gemma came over to our table to say hello. I must say that after such an intense experience, it was a real wrench to get up and leave. Brilliantly, we had some parting words and there was no hint of exchanging contact details. Gem and I left inspired, buzzing with new things to tell each other, and also wanting to attend more of these events, to organise conversation dinners of our own. I am not sure what was quite so inspiring about the evening. My suspicion is that it was simply the randomness, the unexpectedness of it. You could not choose who you ended up with, and the substance of the evening was simply what you and your “partner” chose to make of it. There is something brilliant in that for someone who (I realise as I write this) usually expects too much and too little from most of the people I exist alongside.