What does a conversation look like?

I got a new tattoo recently. It’s based on a sketch that, if I had to guess, took about five seconds to produce. Someone posted it on Instagram without context half a year ago and I knew right then I’d put this scribble in my skin one day. I’d never met this person but every once in a while we’d reply to each other’s stories like, that’s cool, this is nice, good job.

So, this person—what do you call someone for whom friend seems premature and acquaintance not precious enough? I could tell these pixels could shapeshift into a friendship. We actually ended up meeting in Amsterdam recently, where neither of us lives. We talked about hospitality in Balkan villages, high-frequency antennas, and witchcraft. Fruits of the sea were consumed. The air was fraught with the spectre of rain. We agreed that, for all the regrettable consequences of social media, it’s cool that things like this can also happen.

I wrote her the other day to tell her I’m getting the sketch tattooed. “haahahahahaha really?” was her reply. Unsettling! “I can tell you what it was when we drew it or you can never find out,” she said. “Your choice,” she added, for ominous effect. She assured me it was wholesome, something we’re doing right now. Breathing? Typing? Becoming friends? Ok, tell me, I said.

She sent me another sketch, a different interpretation of the same thing. “I drew one and my friend the other one,” she said. “We were talking about what ‘conversation’ means to us, how we see it. Then we both drew it to try to explain to the other one.” Wonderful, I thought. Very good. I can go ahead with this; charming origin, universal but not obvious.

I have my own interpretations, of course. But I also think it’s fine to just say, I saw this thing and it made some neurons do some transmission. No need to retrospectively assign meaning to little black lines making my brain go brrr.

I’m grateful that’s also how Ali, the tattoo artist, saw it. I gave him the impossible task of giving shape to what was fundamentally shapeless—the collaboration between one person’s imagination and another’s neurochemical reaction to it. After a few attempts at sketching it out in his own style, he said, “You know what, man? Let’s leave it as it is. It’s what made you feel something in the first place.”