Whenever I have an assignment that calls for two people, I generally rope my poor husband into doing it with me. (Thus far, he has been a cohost for a podcast and an interview subject for a research paper.) I imagine this is pretty standard for students in long term relationships, but it ended up posing difficulties for me with the first blog entry. Why? Well, because after nearly seven years of marriage (and living with each other for nine years), we are incapable of having conversations with each other that are not laden with in-jokes and one liners that only the other understands. Therefore I am sparing you all the boredom and discomfort (as well my own personal embarrassment) of having to read our sappy pablum and not posting a transcript of said conversation.

However, I did pick up on something during our conversations that I do think is pertinent to the assignment. During the last class, the idea that conversations and human interactions have internal, self-regulating mechanisms was discussed. I've become sort of "hyper-aware" of the rhythms of speech and dialogue since then, and during that conversation, I found us bantering back and forth with the easy rhythm of a well-played tennis game. We have a tendency to do that, and since we both have a flair for the dramatic, we really have a tendency to do that in front of other people. In a way it reminds me of a band that's been playing together for years - they can jam and improvise because they ''know'' each other so well that they can predict where the other is going. You end up breathing so much of the same cultural air and living in the same spaces that you fall into each other's rhythms as naturally as you exist within your own.

(Of course, there are times when our interactions have all the rhythm of a marching band falling down the stairs. I imagine this also is pretty standard for students in long term relationships.)

I'm a big fan of conversation, even if it is simply for the sake of conversation. I am fully aware of the gender assumptions that come loaded with such a statement, but nonetheless, I stand by it. A good conversation, when everyone is fully engaged and hooked up to one another's rhythms, is like playing a team sport, except with a really, really good team, because while not everyone grows up knowing how to play basketball or football, nearly everyone grows up knowing how to talk. The act of conversing is a social glue in and of itself. The idea that talking should only be goal-oriented and that everything else is just frippery is bullshit (and oftentimes sexist bullshit at that). You look each other in the eye, you tell each other jokes, you interject with the perfect word or statement at the right time - you get into each other's rhythms, and then you ''bond''. I am one of those odd people who enjoys talking to strangers, and this is why. Because it helps me remember that other people are not just obstacles to be overcome in my path through life, but that they are people like me, who have bad days and who feel anxious about their hair and who worry that everyone heard that weird nasal-y sound they just made in the back of their throat. It's hard to be scared or disdainful of others when you see them as equals.

As to what rhythm is - the only definition I can come up with is 'order through repetition'. Listening to music over the past week, I realized that most music consists of a sequences of notes repeated several times, and then a new sequence of notes, and so on and so forth. Of course it is a bit more involved than this - not just any notes sounds good played next to one another (although I think Phillip Glass might beg to differ). But like a sonnet, within that framework of tonal sound, the possibilities are endless. It's through repetition that rhythm forms and begins to take hold within our minds. Without it, there is nothing familiar to return to, nothing that is comforting about the notes.

Beyond that? I got nothin'.

Go home.