A Monologue on Conversation

We need good conversation. We are verbal creations, actually verbalized into existence and fashioned in the image of the Word. To be good conversationalists we need to be good listeners, thinkers, and speakers. Most of all we want our rhetoric to be memorable.

Conversation, as I know it, is like juggling; up go the balls and the balloons and the plates, up and over, in and out spinning and leaping, good solid objects that glitter in the footlights and fall with a bang if you miss them. But when dear Sebastian speaks it is like a little sphere of soapsuds drifting off the end of old clay pipes anywhere, full of rainbow light for a second and then--phut!--vanished, with nothing at all, nothing.

Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

Conversing well means using vivid images, metaphors, and turns of phrase. We also need fidelity to truth if we want to resonate with our discussion partners. There is nothing more tiring than listening to bubbles. It is also desirable to leave silence and not go on endlessly bubbling. Our contributions should be more like popcorn and less like posing.

Does anyone desire to turn this monologue into a cybersation?