"Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after."

~Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 'Gift From the Sea'

(It’s crazy...frightening...wonderful...unfortunate how we can often intensely communicate with someone we barely know...and yet such a lack of communication with someone we know so well. Do we just lose interest? Is there nothing left to talk about? That part of it seems easier to understand. But the intensity of random acquaintances, much less so. How can I walk into a room of strangers and sit down to a conversation that leaves me speechless for days...but I can’t sit with someone I’ve known for a lifetime and do the same thing? Is it possible to change that? Would I want to? I’ve really always wondered if this is just my experience, I wonder if I just get...bored...easily. It can’t be. I also think that sometimes, we’re just seeing something that isn’t really there. What did we ever really talk about? Did we ever stay up all night just talking...talking so intensely we were unable to do anything else and quite unlikely to sleep? Even if one were to do that, I’m not naïve enough to think that could be sustained forever. Everyone gets comfortable. It’s got to remain though, on some level. There’s nothing worse than a fancy candlelit dinner, with wine and flowers and nothing to say.)



Here, just a few damn words
About nothing, meaning everything
It’s the conversation
You can’t imagine having
When we all think silence is comfort

Here is a table, set
With all the fancy, shiny
Make me happy things
Thank God I turned on the music
Because there’s nothing more to say

You took something gold
And made it cheaper
I took something safe
And made it weaker
I think the words and silence
Might be all we have left

I stop myself short
Of wondering what the other roads would do
To the way out I’ve come to
The way in you discovered too late
And all those paths that intersect

We can’t have that gold
You know, without the world
Coveting our fortune, and the safety
Without temptation showing us the edge
But maybe we can learn and prove them wrong

You took something gold
And made it cheaper
I took something safe
And made it weaker
And though the words and silence
Might be all we have left
I think that we can learn to prove them wrong
I think that we can learn to prove them wrong
I think that we can learn to prove them wrong