Dance After Dark Photography

The subject line isn’t going to help the joking “I’m not gay” argument I’ve had with a few friends recently, but the phrase came up in conversation several times tonight. It’s stuck in my head, which means I’m going to share it with all of you. Welcome to my mind. Be afraid.

I just finished a very lengthy and very rewarding conversation with my good friend Daniel and in this instance I’m using the phrase “good friend” for a specific set of reasons. Since Daniel moved to Orlando, we’ve had several lengthy conversations on a broad range of topics, and I’m able to exercise some mental muscles that haven’t been used in recent memory. I have had many intelligent conversations with my friends, and that’s one of the things I love best about the people I consider friends. Whether we’re talking about low-brow humor or the finer points of art history, I have friends who can contribute on any given subject. With Daniel, our perspectives and our educational backgrounds are so similar that we can follow each other down any given path of discussion.

Tonight, for example, we talked about the development of language and its progression from concrete ideas to abstract concepts, examples of this being words and phrases which become removed from everyday life, become changed in usage over time, lose their original meaning, and take on connotations which are far from and sometimes diametrically opposed to their original denotations. That entire discussion was a branch of an earlier discussion of names, which once had inherent meaning as much as the words “tree,” “rock,” or “snail” have meaning, but have become abstract and, in my opinion, empty because the original languages and the original meaning behind the names are no longer a part of our culture. They’re a carry-over from earlier times or an inclusion of an outside influence, but we’ve forgotten the context and, thus, the meaning. They were at one time words but are now just names, in effect retaining empty shells of their former existence except to those few individuals who delve into etymology and seek to understand the word as it was, as it is, as it has changed, and as it continues to change.

Our conversation moved through other subjects too numberous to remember. I was going to say “too numerous to mention” because that’s a stock phrase, but to be honest I’d write a brief discourse on each if I could remember all of them right now. Your friends page would be miles long, for I am that evil. I think I enjoy talking with Daniel about these things (and anything) because we have similar viewpoints with enough of a difference that we still exchange new ideas instead of simply agreeing with each other. We talked about that tonight, in fact, because we got on the subject of why we both find our conversations so entertaining. I’ve always believed that I can learn something from every person I meet. Whether I learn about a subject, about myself, or simply about methods for interacting with people, I learn something. In thise case, I’m likely to hit all three.

I’ve been lucky to meet more than just a few people who are knowledgeable and healthy individuals. I’m pointing out Daniel because I’ve had the chance to spend more time talking with him, whereas most of the others whom I hold in similar esteem are not as often encountered outside of a nightclub. I haven’t been going to the club, so I haven’t seen these people. I look forward to the dinner parties that I’ll host once my life is a bit more stable, when I can gather the people who are most important to me and introduce them all to each other.

Last, but certainly not least, Daniel and I can talk about philosophy, linguistics, medicine, and Jungian archetypes, pause to laugh over fart jokes and references to poop, and then continue the discussion.

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