Unfinished Conversations - Tom McCabe

I always have an unfinished conversation ringing in my head --- look at this, where are you, are you having fun -- always with a friend as reference point, a running dialog --- a reinterpretation of the past to explain the future, an interpretation of the future that fits the past.

Where am I, why am I here, what’s going on, --- I carry an ongoing conversation with my best friends, lovers, close relatives, --- a running dialog sharing the present. They’re all here. I watch their faces as new scenes unfold. Echoes of the past coloring and shaping the road ahead. Not in the slow moving evolutionary sense but in the direct personal sense --- they’re present, riding shotgun looking out the same windshield, sharing a running dialog.

All these conversations are unfinished, separate streams of consciousness, threads of discussion that connect my past with my future. Threads that bear witness, laugh, love, cry, and most importantly rejoice. Threads of storytelling, threads holding ongoing dialog that become stories. Stories whose chapters still unfold, but when concluded become my life stories. Our stories.

The conversation threads are more than dialog, they form the prism through which I see the world. I feel love because I have loved. I see the wonder of nature because nature opened me up. I love good poetry because of Rumi and Yeats. I share great conversations because I talked with Wardell.

Everyone of the things that move me -- love, wonder, poetry, music -- I share in a conversation with a friend, and unfinished conversation.

I have gone back -- to revisit the beginnings of my unfinished conversations. Went back to the University of Connecticut where my spark of entrepreneurship was lit. Gave a talk trying to recreate the experience and ignite another generation. It’s now the yearly ‘McCabe Mathematics/Entrepreneurship Lecture’. Got the UConn mathematics department to buy in -- it’s an unfinished conversation of following a dream. The accounting period for growing an entrepreneur is way too long to assess at this point, but the unfinished conversation of following a dream is revisited and reinforced and made even more strong and vibrant.

I went back to visit old High School buddies and it was wonderful. Got to reconnect with my best friend and fill in some fifty years with a person that knew me so well. Sat face to face -- more like elbow to elbow at a bar -- to catch up with erstwhile kids and fill in fifty years. Unfinished conversations re-synced, laughing once again like kids, rekindling friendship with ‘kids’ you knew o so well, who are now graying adults you really didn’t know. And we left, with more steam and grounding for our ongoing unfinished conversations.

Thomas Taheny was an inventor who would sit on the road side curb in front of his home knocking around a new idea with a fellow inventor. My mother told the story about a heavy rain storm that broke out and my grandfather Taheny and his friend kept right on talking, the downpour unable to dampen the excitement of their idea. Living that kind of excitement stuck with me; I sought it out. I found my own invention and followed it. I often pictured explaining it to Thomas Taheny, right there on his curbside – neither of us distracted by the driving rain.

That rain soaked curbside conversation was unfinished across three generations --- to this day I tell the story, it’s still not finished.

My son Tim and I have an ongoing conversation --- we see beautiful scenery together and hear love songs together. I lost Tim in 2001 but our conversation has never left. I feel Tim with me everywhere I go.

There’s no way to wrap this up. No conclusion here, this is yet one more unfinished conversation…..shared among my fellow Artist Connection storytellers as captured by Najwa: