Maybe it was 3 a.m. and you were a teenager talking for hours on the phone with your significant other. Or maybe it was a heart-to-heart with one of your parents. Or maybe it just erupted out of nowhere with a friend or even a complete stranger while having a cup of coffee or going on a long walk. We’ve all had them right? Those conversations that just click, that flow, that make you actually feel good inside. They’re like the best of live jazz – a theme holds them together, but it’s the improvisation that makes them so beautiful. It’s like, rather than guiding the conversation, the conversation guides us.

So, why are they so few and far between?

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Why do those rare gems of conversation flow so easily and why are others such a struggle to keep going for more than three minutes? Is there a formula, a guide, a set of hints to finding that perfect conversational harmony?

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi thinks so. From Finding Flow:

The secret of starting a good conversation is really quite simple. The first step is to find out what the other person’s goals are: What is he interested in at the moment? What is she involved in? What has he or she accomplished, or is trying to accomplish? If any of this sounds worth pursuing, the next step is to utilize one’s own experience or expertise on the topics rasied by the other person – without trying to take over the conversation, but developing it jointly.

This makes sense to me. In fact, it tends to be how I go about the whole Art of Conversation myself. I try to find what the person is most passionate about. It’s a delicate art and more than once I’ve been accused of being an interviewer. But there is something exhilarating about seeing passion come over a speaker while they’re talking – the way their eyes light up, how their posture changes, the rhythm of their sentences become like drum solos.

But over the years I’ve come to realize that not everyone has a passion. In fact, it might well be a small minority of us who are passionate about anything. A friend tells me she prefers having conversations with those who don’t have any specific interests or passions because she otherwise feels that the conversation is fenced in by just one or two topics – topics that she likely isn’t interested in herself.

Which brings up another question: Why do we converse at all? What is the origin of conversation? What does it achieve? How are we benefited – both as individuals and as a species?

Stephen Miller, author of Conversation: A History of a Declining Art describes conversation as ‘talk without purpose,’ which sort of makes it seem like masturbation for the mouth. And Miller laments the fact that, as Green Day so eloquently put it, ‘when masturbation’s lost its fun [we're] fucking lazy.’ Surrounded by conversation-avoidance devices like iPods, televisions, and (ironically) cell phones, these days when we’re not walking past each other we seem to be talking past each other.

I believe that most evolutionary linguists agree that the faculty of language did not come about because of our need to rejoice in pillow talk. Unless, of course, the purpose of that pillow talk is to get laid. I’m being serious. The purpose of speech has always been more about manipulation than communication. We speak much more often because we want something than because we want to be understood. Which is why we so frequently resort to what “Dean and Laura” call conversational terrorism: we’re more concerned with not looking stupid than trying to get smart.

As primates walking that thin line between both holding onto our friends and trying to outdo them, we use language to present ourselves as unique and to gossip about others as unfit. Rarely do we use it to try to understand each other.

Do any of you listen to the NPR show Wait, wait don’t tell me? It’s a half talk-show, half game-show which supposedly revolves around the day’s news. But it doesn’t really revolve around the news at all. The focus isn’t content, it’s wit. Opinions are worth little whereas irony is worth everything. Sort of like the Daily Show. Like the Colbert Report. Like the Onion. Like 90% of the internet.

I happen to be a fan of these wit-fests myself. I love all the above-mentioned programs. And when I’m unable to engage in meaningful conversation, when it feels like we’re talking past each other or just waiting for the next chance to speak, then I almost always resort to sarcasm, irony, and wit. It’s so much more pleasurable than pretending.

Above the desk of my travel agent in the small port town of Guiria, Venezuela was a framed piece of paper that read, in italic type, ‘mediocre conversations revolve around people, good conversations focus on events, great conversations are about ideas.’ It was one of those cues – the wall version of the bumpersticker – that was supposed to somehow unite us. ‘I’m an idea person, you’re an idea person, let’s be idea people together.’ But then, my travel agent was (predictably) an asshole and so I really didn’t feel much like talking to her at all.

And that’s another part, right? For a good conversation to happen we need to actually like – or at least respect – the person we’re talking to. A conversation isn’t just the engagement of language and ideas … our emotions and our feelings towards others also take part in the dance.

Just like happiness, productivity, and how to avoid a hangover, I know I’ll never master the science of conversation. Because there is no science. But there are useful tips. A couple glasses of wine or tea always help. And when that perfect conversation does happen … it’s a beautiful song.