The Conversation You’re Not Supposed to Have
There’s an unwritten rule in American small talk: don’t bring up politics with strangers. David Deighton, artist and founder of Triptych Dialogue, has spent the last six years systematically breaking that rule, with a microphone, in national parks, on purpose.
I had David on the show this week, and what started as a conversation about abstract art ended up being one of the more useful discussions I’ve had about why we’re all so bad at talking to each other right now, and what one guy is actually doing about it.
From the V&A Museum to the Grand Canyon Rim
David spent 17 years as a gallery owner dealing in everything from 500-year-old manuscripts to contemporary abstract pieces, including his own work on paper. The pivot came at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. He was there with his five-year-old daughter when he stopped in front of a 14th-century religious triptych. Half the panels were missing, worn away by time.
Something clicked. The visible panels, the missing panels, the subconscious filling in what isn’t there. That, he realized, is also exactly how human conversation works. There’s what we present, what we hide, and what we don’t even know we’re communicating. He named the project Triptych Dialogue and walked away from the gallery world.
Three Questions, One Word, and What It Tastes Like
Here’s the actual mechanic David uses. He sets up in free speech areas of national parks, walks up to strangers, and asks them three non-confrontational political questions. Then he asks them for one word that ties everything they just said together. Sometimes the word is “hope.” Sometimes it’s “corruption.” Sometimes it’s “shitshow.”
Then he takes that growing list of words, hundreds of them at this point, and asks the next group of strangers a different question entirely: what does that word taste like? What does freedom taste like? What does cohesion taste like? It sounds gimmicky until you hear him describe what actually happens in the moment. People cry. People rage. People share things with him they haven’t told their own families. Occasionally someone says something so racist he has to consciously not get triggered, sit with it, and then tell them, calmly, that he disagrees with everything they said and is also angry now because of what they said.
His framing on this is what stuck with me. He’s not trying to win the argument. He’s not even trying to change the person’s mind. He’s trying to show that you can build a bridge across a political divide on an emotional level, not a factual one, and walk away without anyone getting shot.
The Plexiglass Box at the Grand Canyon
One of David’s installations is so simple it almost feels like a magic trick. The Park Service gave him an amphitheater on the Grand Canyon rim. He set up a museum-style plexiglass box on a black pedestal with a small sculpture inside. People walked up and asked what it was supposed to be.
David would come over, casually, and explain that the sculpture inside the box wasn’t the piece. The plexiglass case around it was the piece. The case represents your worldview, your echo chamber. You think it’s expansive, but it’s actually quite limited. Then he’d pull out a smaller spice jar from his pocket with an even smaller figure inside and ask: how does this echo chamber enter that one? Should it?
He told me people would visibly process the question in real time. “Oh. I have an echo chamber? I have a worldview, and it’s smaller than I thought?” Within seconds, he says, total strangers were sharing deep things with him, both of them looking out at the Canyon rather than at each other. He told me that one moment is worth more to him than every painting he ever sold.
The DMV, Fred, and 40 Minutes I Didn’t Plan On
Speaking of listening to strangers, I told David about my recent trip to the DMV. I went in to get my real ID expecting the usual misery, got called up after five minutes, sat down across from an older guy named Fred who was curt at first, and then somehow ended up in a 40-minute conversation. I now know about Fred’s brothers, his sister, his nieces and nephews, his great-grandparents who fought Nazis in Europe, and the fact that he’s retiring in two months.
I worked retail for a long time. I know what it feels like when people talk down to you, so I try not to do that to anybody. I just let Fred talk. By the end, he was beaming and I was congratulating him on retiring on his own terms. David’s read on it was sharp: I gave Fred a thing most people don’t give other people anymore. I gave him space and an ear.
David’s own version of this is bigger and more deliberate, but it’s the same basic move. Most of us are too distracted, or too defended, or too busy doom scrolling to do the most human thing available to us in any given moment, which is listen.
France, Snails, and a Plug for South Street
We also went on a few tangents I don’t regret at all. David was born in the US, raised in France, and now lives in New Mexico, so he’s got a foot in three very different cultural conversations. He talked about how Europeans walk everywhere and eat actual food and don’t get diabetes the way we do. He told me about a neighbor in the south of France who’d catch snails out of a drainage ditch, starve them for a few days so they’d “shit out all their goo,” salt them until they frothed up like a bubble bath, and then cook them in butter and garlic.
I asked him what they taste like. “Butter and garlic, doesn’t it?”
He’s coming to Philly this fall, September through October, to install around half a dozen free speech pieces around the Liberty Bell. I told him to hit me up. We’re going to Dalessandro’s. He’s getting a cheesesteak. Possibly the Philly Taco from South Street if he’s feeling brave, which is a slice of pizza wrapped around a Steve’s cheesesteak, and is either 5,000 calories of art or a medical event waiting to happen.
Why Abstract Art, Why Now
The best definition of abstract art I’ve ever heard came from David in this episode. He called it a doorway you don’t necessarily see, but one that opens an epiphany the moment you walk through it. It takes you into a part of your mind you weren’t in before, or one you forgot. The art isn’t the object. The art is the door, and what happens to you on the other side of it.
By that definition, the plexiglass box at the Grand Canyon is doing the same job as the Triptych Dialogue questions, as the spice jar, as the project’s hundreds of “what does this word taste like” conversations. They’re all doorways. The art is what happens to the person who walks through them.
I closed by asking David what he’s come to believe about human beings after thousands of these encounters that he didn’t believe before. He paused, then admitted he didn’t have a verbal answer. He’d need to build an art piece to answer that one. Honestly? Fair.
Where to Find David
You can find David’s work at triptychdialogue.com or by searching Triptych Dialogue on YouTube. If you’re in Philly this fall, keep an eye out around the Liberty Bell. There will be half a dozen of his installations going up in free speech areas, and I’d love for the listeners to actually go check them out.
And if you’ve got a story to share, a project nobody’s heard of yet, or you’re just looking for a good two-hour conversation with someone who’ll actually listen, the door’s always open.
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