I forgot about that feeling that I get when I received a message that is personal. Not a meme, not simple how are you’s, not happy birthdays or those get well soons. More of a story than a message I suppose. Messages with thoughts put in it. Thoughts that can be read within it.

Until I caught a glimpse of the feeling when I read a thread of email exchanges between two poets, Sophie Collins and Will Harris. The exchanges felt abstract, at the same time they are real, uncomplicated yet profound (In my view not in a pretentious way). I find it weird that I wanted to read more than one or two lines, but I did. I read on. Until the end.

The end was also weird. Why is it weird? Because the conversation seems to be simple but it felt so intriguing that I want to be in that living room with them, in their next conversation.

You know, those conversations you have with a friend beyond the latest movie, beyond how is work today, or our anger towards Donald Trump’s latest shenanigans. Conversations that goes from that cat our friend just adopted to the philosophical problems of the human tendency of projecting themselves to everything, in naught to 60 seconds. Those conversations.

In this particular conversation though, my friends have a bigger lexicon than me and can string their thoughts in graceful sentences.

Anyway, you too can listen (more read) into the conversations. Here are a couple of examples that provoked me:

On colonial statues being brought down: It feels like the confected rage at the loss of those ugly pointless statues is just a diversion. Pretend you care about statues, so nobody notices the rest of it: the gardens, the houses, the institutions, the laws.

Another:

On Gushing: Often seems as though the gushing person hasn’t in fact decided on or yet understood what their response to the object actually is. So gushing can sound to me like pure incongruence, like someone faking it.

There are many more moments like this. You might say, if you like this sort of conversations, there are so many podcasts out there you can listen to.

Yes, but this is different. In each answer or response, they had time to think.

They had time to experience things and process the conversation. I feel that there is something different in that. Taking the time and analysing moments that helps them build the conversation. Not to much time, but enough. Maybe this is better, maybe this is what makes it so different. Time and considerations is what is needed instead of the knee-jerk-reactionary-keyboard-warrior-styled responses to everything. A response that we are so used to experiencing at the moment. It definitely made me read slower, I didn’t swipe right, or click away.

Perhaps it is ok to take time and to still be relevant. What do you think?