Life is an eternal after-dinner

No matter how much they invent, few things are more interesting and cause more pleasure in the viewer than attending a good conversation. The evidence is endless and goes back to the Platonic dialogues. We love people who talk a lot of good things, as Gabino Diego's character said to the innkeeper Tirso in Sunrise, which is no small thing. As viewers and listeners, we are all that Gabino Diego. When we like a conversation, we comment in admiration: he speaks a lot of good things. The best literature and the best cinema are also made of conversations.

The last manifestation of this eternal passion are the podcasts conversational (sic). The world of podcast He has flirted with many genres: documentaries, fictions, sound essays, monologues, conferences… But in the end the conversation has prevailed. We always return to the same thing, the filandón, as they say in the towns of León, or the capaco, as they call an eternal palique in my land. If the speakers are fun, entertaining, intelligent and agile, we don't care what they talk about.

That is why I have always been surprised by the distrust of super stingy from TVs (and also radios) towards pure conversation. In principle, it seems good to put chat programs on the grid – in fact, the tertulia is the hegemonic format in Spain for all channels to address any topic, from the heart to politics, including sports and culture. as long as it is boycotted and abbreviated. Conversation, yes, but with interruptions, music, resources and various distractions. They maintain that the spectator is incapable of maintaining his attention beyond a few very short minutes and must be beaten with stimuli of light and tachan-tachan so that he doesn't fall asleep or start looking at his cell phone.

In the background, a banal nostalgia sighs for the talk shows of yesteryear, and the same thing cites the Balbín of The key, which evokes the “millennialism is going to arrive” of Arrabal, without forgetting the silences of Quintero, all converted into memes. What happens to a conversation is what happens to a novel or to tomatoes: in the past they were better, deeper, tastier. Today, the usual ones complain, they don't taste like anything. Don't believe them: those conversations weren't so perfect, nor are the current ones so stupid. The only thing that is certain is that the talkative drive does not decline. Life is an eternal after-dinner meal, and we will never get tired of it.

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