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Inaudible Conversations

9/27/2013

** I am very fortunate to be able to introduce a guest blogger for this post edition! Juliet McHugh is a self-described "bloodthirsty writer from the North East of England, thought to be human, blood tests pending." She's also a good friend and a great writer. You can find more from Juliet at: http://julietmchugh.co.uk/index.html
I think you'll agree that Juliet makes some very thoughtful and thought-provoking points in this posting. Thanks Juliet! Enjoy everyone!

Inaudible Conversations

What an honour it is to make a guest blog appearance and for the wonderful William no less. If I were speaking, this is the bit where I’d drop my notes and bash my head on the mic whilst picking them up. But I only do such things when people are actually there to see. And point. And laugh. It might not be so bad if it wasn’t that I usually do the speech thing only at funerals.

It’s a strange feeling to blog outside one’s usual blogging ground. All kinds of questions come to mind. What will William’s audience be interested to hear? Will I get the tone of voice right..? I wracked my brains for something to talk about, read William’s blog backwards and forwards to get the vibe and then it came to me. The clue was in the questions.

Here I was trying to think of something to talk about when I wouldn’t really be talking at all. I realised that all I seem to have done for the last few days is talk and yet never speak a word. Emails, discussions, facebook, forums – I’ve never shut up. I’ve talked to some wonderful people, made some new friends, listened to many new ideas and perspectives, all in wonderful, soothing silence bar the clattering of my keyboard. But was it really talking? I say it most definitely was.

Most of the people I’ve encountered have been thousands of miles and several time zones away. Whole rooms full of them. Some would say ‘but it’s not real’. I assure you it most definitely is. You speak to someone over the telephone - you can’t see them, can’t shake hands to say hello and goodbye - but don’t question whether they are real. Why is a type-written voice any less so?

It’s curious that in talking about talking without talking, I’m still assigning vocal terminology to an inaudible conversation. That’s surely like a blind person being able to see by touch. The unique voice of a person still comes across in type and so very clearly it’s astounding. It’s a fantastic way to converse and despite what scaremongering media like to tell us, anyone with an ounce of sense can tell exactly who and how a person is and whether you’ll get along. Often it takes less time than if you’d met in person and here’s why I think that is:

It’s easier to get along when there is no pressure to actually do so, which in face to face situations, even were they holographic, is unavoidable. We second guess each other when we can see a face. We also say far less when we feel watched. Feel unheard when we’re talked over. Removing the physical and audible presence of people and distilling their personalities into a typeface has a remarkable effect. A person projects more of their distinct being into what they say because they can’t gesticulate or alter pitch and tone. Facial expressions and physical appearances don’t matter. After a time with the same people you can tell who is speaking just by how they phrase things. There is no other explanation for it than that distillation of personality. We talk without talking, speak without speaking, meet without meeting, and to anyone who still says ‘but it’s not real’, I still say the exact opposite is true.

You can tell whether a person’s intellect is likely to work well with your own, whether their sense of humour is agreeable, whether they are warm or cold, quick or slow, relaxed or intense. All within the confines of a written message and with no visual cues. Your own confidence grows because you can’t mishear a written word. You can’t stumble over your tongue or suffer from a speech impediment. Nor do you feel anything like as pressured. I was reading William’s blog “If I… Will You?” and the reason that guy made so many sales was probably the body language, applying pressure by posture. They don’t call fighting talk posturing for no reason. Online there need be none of that.

I very much value the people I meet without meeting and conversations I have without speaking. I’m blown away not by how different we are but how very much the same the world over. Nationality, colour and creed do not matter. We’re all just a font on a virtual page. What matters is that we communicate on common ground, No Man’s Land if you will, and appreciate the human qualities in one another.

Nevertheless, there is a converse to this. Paranoia can creep in. Is someone talking off the boards about me? Is that a system error or has someone blocked me? Why haven’t I had a reply to my message? Things you can’t sense that you would be able to in a physically present situation and things again distilled because really, you’re sitting somewhere by yourself, unable to look anyone in the eye for reassurance. This is when you need to extract yourself for a while, log off and focus on something else.

Nothing gets under your skin quite like these inaudible conversations. They give you so much freedom to be yourself and really connect with people you would never otherwise have met. Sometimes it can be so intense that it does make you a little bit crazy. One could become too obsessed and quite ill through a lack of vitamin D as well, but as with everything else in life, used in moderation can do you the world of good. Those silent conversations can bring so much invaluable insight into anything and everything; they cannot be a bad thing. Provided you can walk away. And if you can’t walk away, buy a laptop and sit outside so you still get some sunlight and tangible world. As for me, I think next time I do a funeral speech I’ll hook up a projector and post it on screen. It seems the way forward.

Happy talking

Juliet

** Again, please be sure to check out Juliet's website http://julietmchugh.co.uk/index.html.

You'll be glad you did!

--William

2 Comments

Classic Smack-Down Part 2

9/22/2013

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About a month ago I took it upon myself to throw some (admittedly) unkind, but accurate criticism at what many consider two of America’s greatest pieces of literature: “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Catcher in the Rye.” To be honest, I expected a bit of a backlash, however the comments I received were mostly from people who hated the books as well and were glad that their feelings weren’t isolated flukes indicating they couldn’t appreciate ‘literature.’ (By the way, when you say the word ‘literature’ it somehow feels better if you raise your nose a bit and adopt a slight British accent. Drop the first ‘e’ so it comes out as ‘litrachure.’) Feels good, doesn’t it?

            This time around I decided to go for the biggie. The granddaddy of all American novels. The one Ernest Hemingway said all modern novels can be traced back to: “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

            Okay, before I launch in with the negative criticism, let me get a couple of points out of the way. First, yes, in many ways the book is genius –in the way Twain uses a variety of regional dialects, the relationship between Huck and Jim (the runaway slave), and the satire and comedy he uses to skewer aspects of society. Also, in consideration of historical context, the novel was hugely groundbreaking.

            What usually makes the book controversial and placed on many banned books lists is Twain’s use of the term ‘nigger.’ You’ll notice I didn’t say “the ‘N’ word.” To me, use of the term depends entirely upon context. Are we to pretend the term never existed? Recently, a new edition of “Huck” came out with each reference to the term ‘nigger’ replaced by the word ‘slave.’ To me, that’s a denial of our own historical shame, which is a decidedly greater offense than to admit the term was in use. Twain’s use primarily illustrates how wrong the term is, so to leave it out or replace it is a greater insult than addressing it up front and then moving on. Don’t mess with an artist’s work. You’re always free to close the book and slip into denial mode.

            That being said, there are other things that, for me, cause the book to tank. One thing is the pattern Harper Lee slipped into with “To Kill a Mockingbird”: Twain will make a point regarding an ugly part of society and then beat it into the ground. Then beat it into the ground some more. Then park a paddleboat on it to make sure it was sufficiently buried into the ground.

            This is best seen in the characters of The Duke and The Dauphin, two con-men who insert themselves into Huck and Jim’s journey and engage in increasingly disturbing con-jobs. The characters are meant to be both humorous and disturbing, but in combining the two attributes, Twain only succeeds in making them annoying. An annoying character in large doses can kill any story, but double up on the annoying factor and the tediousness becomes so thick you could float a truck on it.

            Yet, Twain outdoes himself in the annoying character department by bringing in a character that many readers previously loved, then making him so annoying you’d like to bitch-slap him with a brick. Twice. And then a third time just for good measure. The character? Tom Sawyer.

            I loved “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” It is a great book with a great character who is fun, likeable, kind and fairly sharp-witted. In “Huckleberry Finn” though, Twain takes away all of the positive attributes and replaces them with whiney, annoying, mean, and fairly dull-witted.

            Tom is this way at the very beginning of the book and as a reader you just want him to go away. You start to wish that his fake drowning in his own book would have been for real. All he wants to do is play games as characters from books he’s read but doesn’t understand. When Huck and Jim finally begin their journey down the Mississippi I actually sighed with relief that Tom was now out of the story.

            Um, too soon on the sigh of relief thing.

            Twain brings Tom back at the end of the novel, but now, after having read all the experiences Huck has been through Tom is even more annoying. Jim has been captured and Tom begins planning a pointless elaborate scheme to free him –a scheme that continues to grow and grow to the point that I may have screamed out loud for a few seconds (not sure, could have been minutes). What makes his scheme to free Jim so ridiculous is that if he and Huck wanted to free Jim, all they’d have to do is walk by and open the door to the shed where he is being held.

What really sinks it altogether is that by the end of the story Huck has seen a murder, more than a few other killings and dead bodies, and has had a front row seat to the ugliest parts of humanity. He’s witnessed or been involved in things that would forever change any person –man, woman or child.

But he doesn’t change. Let me repeat that. He doesn’t change. At all.

At the end of the book, he’s still willing to go along with Tom’s crap. He still lies, cheats and steals. He hasn’t grown one iota from what he was at the beginning of the book, despite all he’s experienced. Which, frankly speaking, makes him seem pretty stupid.

Some say that this non-growth business is part of the point Twain was making. Sorry, I’ve gotta cry bullshit on that one. If that was the case, it was a pretty poor attempt.

I’ve read that Mark Twain may have written “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” in three separate time periods, which accounts for why the book feels like three pieces cobbled together. Perhaps his intent or purpose changed each time.

Throw out the beginning of the novel, and then throw out the end, and then throw out a good chunk of the center section in the middle, and Twain would have had one hell of a great novella.

I have a theory that he knew the book was different and he wasn’t sure how it would be received. I also think he knew that in many ways the book simultaneously sucks and blows. I think that’s why he prefaces the book with:

NOTICE PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narra- tive will be
prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons
attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR,
Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance.

            The notice gives Twain and ‘out.’ If the book had been poorly received, if critical reviews had been predominantly negative, he could laugh it off, saying, “Well, I did kinda point that out in the notice.”

            Hey, I never said Twain wasn’t smart.

            Maybe next time I’ll take on that Hemingway guy. I hear he’s pretty highly regarded as well.

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"Back in the day..." Auto Version

9/15/2013

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Obvious observation time: there is a lot of irony in life. Just the other day I was thinking, “Back in the day…” again. My father used to do that and I swore I would never do that when I got older. When Dad and I had a “Back in the day…” discussion, it went something like this:

Dad: “Back in the day, you used to be able to buy a candy bar for a dime and a soda for a quarter.”

Me: “Yeah, but dad, that was in the 1930’s. Did you even have a dime or a quarter? I mean, if you don’t have a dime it doesn’t matter if the candy bar costs a dime or a thousand bucks, does it?”

Dad: “Shut up, smartass.”

Me: “Yessir.”

But now, as I grow older, I’m slipping into the “Back in the day…” mode. What prompted this installment of “Back in the day…” was a recent car advertisement I watched. I forget what brand it was, but the car had a back up warning alarm, a camera for backing up (so you didn't have to twist your head or use a review mirror, I guess), front passenger airbags, side air bags, seat edge airbags and roof airbags. It had so many airbags that if you ever bumped into anything you’d probably feel like you were suddenly thrust into the middle of a marshmallow.

*Minor digression: How come you see chase scenes in the movies where they intentionally run into another car and no one’s airbags go off? The movies really ought to start investing in safer cars for their people.*

Anyway, after watching the car ad (by the way, you could simply push a button and the thing would parallel park by itself – hands free) I was struck by how far automobile safety measures have come. Back in the day, the best safety measure was to get as much metal around you as possible. That’s why so many of the cars from the 1930’s through the early ‘70’s were HUGE. You wanted more car around you than the other guy, so if you did have an accident, he’d at least come out on the losing end of the deal.

Cars were a lot boxier back then too. Seatbelts were either non-existent or, if they were in the car, you pushed them down between the cushions so they didn’t end up giving you a wedgie or wrinkling your clothes. The only airbags any one knew anything about was the term’s slang use for breasts. (Hey, I was a kid and there were about two dozen different terms we used for ‘breasts’ and we used all of them constantly. We were, after all, boys.)

Because the cars were so boxy, there was plenty of room on the top ledge behind the backseat where a kid could almost lay full-length to sleep on long rides. Of course, this totally obstructed the driver’s rearview mirror, but dad was usually intent on getting to where he was going, eyes front, never looking back. With four kids in the backseat, a fifth laying behind and above the backseat smashed against the rear window, and dad a mom up front, we still had room to get into fights with a pretty good arm swing range. Like I said, the cars were HUGE.

With so many kids in the car and I the youngest, I usually got stuck in the middle where the transmission hump kept my feet wedged together and my knees uncomfortably under my chin. If my feet slipped off the hump, it was taken as a deliberate assault on a sibling’s “car floor territory” and another fight was on.

You know, looking back, in a way I guess I was surrounded by human airbags, so I was probably the safest one in the car.

There was one pseudo-safety feature that our car had, but it was only when my mom was driving.

I figured out as I got older that mom was a terrible driver. I don’t mean it as an insult to her. She was a great mom, but as a driver she was like a cat on a skateboard going down a rock slide.

She tended to drive with one foot on the gas and one on the brake. She drove hesitantly, unsure of herself and paranoid that every other person on the road was a worse driver than she was. If a driver pulled up to a stop sign facing the road we were on, she would slam on the brakes –and that’s when the automatic safety feature kicked in. If you were a kid riding up front alongside her, she would hit the brake and at the same time slam her right arm against your chest.

I don’t know why she didn’t just dig out the seatbelts, but she seemed to think that the right arm of a 115 pound mom would stop a 130 pound kid from flying forward (her knowledge of physics was as limited as her driving skills). We were usually prepared for the sudden slamming of the brakes, so all the right-arm-guardrail-thing did was knock the wind out of you or crack against your sternum.

It was painful, but it was an act of a mother’s love. I sometimes think of it and wax nostalgic. In fact the other day I was telling my daughter:

Me: “You know, back in the day, we didn’t have all these safety features on cars and we seemed to do okay. In fact, the simplicity of the car was kinda nice.”

My daughter: “Yeah, but dad, don’t you think that if your folks had had all of the current safety features available to them they would have used them? I mean, if it wasn’t available at the time, how could you really do a comparison?”

Me: “Shut up, smart-aleck.”

My daughter: “Yessir.”

Ah, the irony of the circle of life.

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Why Did We Kill 'Why?'

9/7/2013

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Most people remember when they were wee little kids and liked to ask adults ‘why.’ A lot. I think it starts with a young child’s innate curiosity. At first, a parent or adult attempts to satisfy that curiosity by answering the ‘why’ question. But we all know what inevitably comes after providing the answer.

Yep. Another “Why?”

We may attempt to answer that one, but we already know the whole ‘why’ thing has slipped into a vicious cycle.

For example:

Small child: “Daddy, why do you go cut firewood?”

Dad: “So we’ll have it to burn in the stove.”

Small child: “Why do we burn it in the stove?”

Dad: “So it will heat the house.”

Small child: “Why do we need to heat the house?”

Dad: “So we can be warm in the winter.”

Small child (now starting to turn into an irritant): “Why can’t we burn something else to stay warm?”

Dad (now starting to become irritated): “Because wood works best.”

Small child: “Why?”

Dad: “Because it burns hotter and cleaner.”

Small child: “Why?”

Dad – now through clinched teeth: “Because I say so.”

Small child: “Why?”

Dad: “Because I said so, now shut up with the ‘why’ business and go play with your toys.”

Small child: “Why?”

Soon, the child, however small, discovers that the ‘why’ question is a hot button, just so long as they keep hitting that button over and over again. Soon, the adult doesn’t want that hot button hit, so they go into the “Because I said so” mode much more quickly. I’ve seen parents whose child has hit the ‘why’ button so many times they literally yell, “Because I said so. Now don’t ever, ever, EVER ask me why again.” Some simply dismiss the “Why” question by firing back with “Why not?” This is akin to the age old “I know you are, but what am I?” argument.

These responses are the first death knell of the question “Why.”

Kids move on into school where they often run into the same thing. They are experiencing new things, new people, new concepts and ideas and they naturally ask “Why?”

Often, the same cycle of ‘why’ that happened at home is repeated in elementary school. As the child grows the question of ‘why’ becomes less and less welcome. Eventually, the child will ask it of a teacher who either is insecure in what they do or simply doesn’t know the answer. That teacher becomes angry about the ‘why’ thing and the student now has a teacher keeping a close eye on the potential trouble maker. Some teachers will obliquely punish a student for hitting them with the ‘why.’

Teacher: “That’s a good question and a great topic for a short essay. Everyone, your homework for the evening is to research and answer that question in a two page paper due tomorrow.” Students groan and glare at the ‘why’ student.

Sometimes ‘why’ can be unsafe or even dangerous.

Many teachers in our educational system don’t like the ‘why’ question for another reason: ‘Why’ questions are hard work.

What, when, where, who, how are easily asked by a teacher and usually through a True/False or Multiple Choice format. These can even be done with a Scan-Tron form where students fill in a bubble and their forms are fed through a machine for grading.

‘Why’ questions…not so much.

That’s not to say the other questions are not valid, but that they primarily give a teacher the breadth of a student’s knowledge. The ‘why’ question is much better at demonstrating a student’s depth of knowledge. The downside is that ‘why’ questions are typically short written answers, short essays, or full essays. Writing is hard work and grading that writing is difficult as well. The teacher has to actually read to determine what the kid knows. At this point, it isn’t only the teacher who shies away from the ‘why’ question, but the students as well. After all, the shoe is on the other foot now and they have to answer the ‘why’ question.

At this point, 'why' becomes curled in a fetal position on the floor and is in danger of disappearing from a person's life entirely.

I admit, I am a ‘why’ kind of guy. Almost a ‘why’ junkie. I have to know why I’m being asked to do something. What is the gain? What is the potential loss? (You never gain ANYTHING without losing something.)

College was a bit different. Teachers were more interested in ‘why.’ Although I had one who, when I asked ‘why’ assumed I was challenging her and her teaching ability. I tried to point out that that’s how I learn. By asking why and then reflecting on the answer. She actually went nuts on me in a classroom once because I asked why. I think shortly after that scene she had a bit of a mental breakdown and her contract wasn’t renewed. Who knows? Maybe too many people asked her ‘why.’

‘Why’ leads to depth of thought. ‘Why’ pushes us to learn to use empathy. ‘Why’ moves us from the sidelines and into the action. ‘Why’ leads to a greater and fuller understanding of our world, our life and our place in it. ‘Why’ is the most important question…ever.

Reclaim your childhood. Empower yourself. Begin asking ‘why’ again.

And if anyone questions your use of ‘why’ by asking why you keep asking ‘why’…

Well, you can tell them because William said so.

3 Comments

Inaudible Conversations

Classic Smack-Down Part 2

"Back in the day..." Auto Version

Why Did We Kill 'Why?'

William Martin

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