Lately, I’ve been talking a lot to inanimate objects such as sticks, fridge doors, car keys and shoes — that sort of thing.
These are not lengthy philosophical conversations I once might have had with the dear departed Prince Finski, but more abrupt exchanges such as “Oh, get in there, will you?” or a short sharp curse, which is not appropriate to print here.
To give you an example — I often can’t find my car keys in my shoulder man-bag because it’s stuffed with old face masks and Bunnings receipts. So, I’m searching blind, and my hand is turning these things over endlessly until I eventually give the keys a stern ticking off along the lines of “For God’s sake, where the hell are you?” — and then my fingers magically find them. It works every time.
Or I might be stacking the lounge room wood fire with kindling and gum leaves, and the damn things keep falling out onto the hearth. Then a severe “okay, that’s enough — just get in there” usually does the job.
The most satisfying retort in my armoury is the half-smiling, long, drawn-out “Yeah, thank you” drizzled with sarcasm.
This is particularly useful when things don’t do what they’re supposed to do, such as open fridge doors that shut while your back is turned while you’re getting vegetables out of the shopping bag or a front door key that just won’t turn while you’re holding two bottles of champagne and watermelon under your other arm. I find a quick dose of biting sarcasm sorts this annoying misbehaviour right out.
And it’s not just things that attract comment. When I learned I would have to choose between two rather unappealing candidates for our new McEwen Ward, my annoyed “Yeah, thank you” response to the whole system seemed entirely appropriate.
I thought everybody did this sort of thing, but I was pulled up sharply when I admitted talking to everyday stuff during a late-night conversation with friends. A corduroy jacket of embarrassment descended on our gathering, and I realised I was alone. Nobody else talked to misbehaving things. This was more than mild eccentricity. Apparently, I was living in Bonkersville.
But then I remembered human conversations about things that had been happening for a very long time. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors did it all the time. Animism was around long before all this rule-bound invisible monotheism invaded our heads. People spoke to plants and rocks, rivers, animals and weather because, in those days, everything in the world possessed a distinct spiritual essence.
I am also reminded of more recent firm ground when it comes to conversations with inanimate objects.
I find the memory of John Cleese as Basil Fawlty whipping his car with a tree branch when it refused to start very comforting.
Similarly, the conversation between Dave the astronaut and HAL, the demonic computer in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, brings a certain worrying reassurance.
“Open the pod bay door, HAL,” Dave commands when he gets shut outside his spaceship. When HAL refuses, Dave’s maverick human survival instinct wins the day against the cold logic of the computer.
But artificial intelligence is a stealthy thing, and believe it or not, it seems we are already speaking to inanimate objects such as televisions, cars, laptops and central heating systems.
Nevertheless, I just can’t bring myself to speak to any of these things in a sensible, respectful sort of way. But if either of them stopped working, I would have no hesitation in delivering a “Yeah, thank you” spear in a hunter-gatherer animist sort of way.
I’m old-fashioned like that.
John Lewis is a former journalist at The News.