Have you ever just been walking down the street, and a couple strolls across your path talking to each other, or someone brushes by while speaking on the phone, or you hear someone talking to their dog while you bike past - and all you catch are a few simple words, or maybe a whole sentence if you're lucky? And sometimes you hear the weirdest things that make you laugh, and sometimes you hear the most normal things - so mundane you hardly even register what was said?
Do you ever wonder about those tiniest fragments of conversation, overheard?
Because I do.
I wonder how different and how similar these conversation snippets would be when compared to the street words of a different country or era. The words themselves, the slang and vocabulary, they would be different. But the content? Wouldn’t it be similar? All over the globe, all over time? The way people pine and dream and make polite inquiries and argue and tell about their days and the way kids interrupt their parents. The sharing with each other.
These snatches of chatter, aren't they are a picture of humanity as a whole?
The way we are all so the same and all so different.
And I wonder about interaction and connection and the way it makes people come alive.
And I wonder about the individual people behind the words I catch and write down. What would they think if they knew some stranger was recording the blip they made on her radar, and sharing it with others, because she had this project idea and decided to roll with it because it was just odd enough to spark her curiosity? Do you ever wonder what random words the strangers around you hear you say? Do you ever wonder at all of the people who have heard your words, at all the lives you have played a two-second role in? Did you ever realize someone might actually be listening?
Because there is something important about being heard.
Even by a stranger passing on the street.
And I guess there's just a part of me that likes the intrigue of untold stories that come together into the Big Story of this world. And so I must capture, even a single thread, of this scrambling cacophony of conversation and stories that zips around our globe like an undulating flock of birds – chattering.
Listen with me.
Learn more about me on my main blog, Paper Raindrops!