I've been wanting to blog (I haven't journalled either), but I've been periodically very busy and very relaxed. You can be too of either or you can't blog. It does, after all, take some effort, and is hard to do when you're really going for some downtime.
However, like many writers, as much as I need to do it, I dread it. I can't remember who it was that said, "Writers only write when the pain of not writing surpasses the pain of writing." I don't know why it should be so, but it is. My housemates are watching Runaway Bride (industrial-strength romantic comedy with Julia Roberts to lend levity and beauty and Richard Gere to lend gravitas and dashing), and Richard's character, who plays a reporter (whose parents wanted him to be a novelist), said something so great I thought I must blog about it: He went into reporting, which wasn't quite what the mom wanted but, "as we all know...reporting is...literature in a hurry."
Exactly. You get it out, and it's the timeliness of it all that makes it gratifying, capturing the zeitgeist, being perfectly of the moment. You craft what you can, but it doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to bring something interesting to say, worthy of spending a few seconds on to have a few thoughts. It's so rare that we have the time and the inclination simultaneously to just sit, think, reflect, pause. String two ideas together. It's a reason writers write.
The topic on my mind is actually communication, of which writing is a form. I'm sort of in charge of general communication at my office. What am I supposed to do with it, you ask? Well, we don't really know, exactly, but everyone is certain they want it to be improved in some way. Trouble is, we don't know how, and I'm learning that one of the hardest things in the world to talk about is, in fact, communication. I even have a degree in Communication! Radio/TV/Film, it's true, but we had to take a lot of general theory as well as PR, Communications Law, Advertising, etc. - sometimes I wonder if I should have gone into advertising, which I despise. I probably would have made more money by now, but been a little less trustworthy and a lot more cynical.
Communication is this amazingly delicate thing. We're all talking all day, every day - and now, so many of us are texting and twittering and facebooking and doing all these other forms of written communication, which is new to us. This is kind of a new thing, this return to the physical production of the word as a way of communicating. We had only letters, then the phone dramatically reduced that. Then everyone had individual cell phones - and they they started using them mostly - for some people, almost exclusively - as machines to write tiny letters! Does no one else see the irony?
Texting (and other forms of short prose) is....letter writing in a hurry. And I can't but help feel something is lost. And I'm not one of those people who turn a certain age and look at the upcoming generation and think, partially terrified by them, "Kids these days!" However, that's only because I would have been saying that during almost any generation. When I say something about being hesitant about these new-fangled technologies because I think they are ruining the way humans conceive the world, the response I often encounter is, "Don't be silly! People said the same thing about TV, and that didn't ruin the world, did it?" The problem is, I do kind of think it did. Movies too, even though movies are basically my favorite thing in the world. And newspapers, maybe. I don't know how far back problems with human communication goes back, but I certainly don't think the majority of any of these things (Facebook, email, phones, TV, movies, radio, books: whatever) have made the world a better place, per se.
Why? Because these are all mediums. And the medium is not the message. Well, I think there's an age old argument about that, which I won't go into here. My point is, I have a real problem with computers, because, of all the media that have been introduced in the last...20...50...100 years, it's been the most damaging. Now, don't get me wrong. I love computers, within reason. I used them all the time. I am using one right now, to blog. I wish I didn't have to use one as often as I do (in fact, one of the reasons I get so behind is the blog, being electronic, feels like the rest of my work), but I accept them for all the wonderful things they can do.
The problem is, computers aren't supposed to be doing everything. They are a tool. It's like humans discovered the hammer, and thought, this is the BEST TOOL EVER. Let's use it for everything, and then proceeded to use it to, say, fish, or mend socks, or cook a turkey. And you very soon see that it's not at all suited to those tasks. So I think this is happening with all (or at least most) of technology. It just sweeps in and takes over everything. Most of TV is totally crap, but that's not because television shows, in and of themselves, are intrinsically bad. It's because so much TV is bad. And why is that? Because many people in the world are lost and confused, and in pain, and so a lot of the art and craft we produce is not life-affirming. Once you realize the fundamental issue is not really how we communicate, but what we communicate, you see that the medium can do all the shaping it wants, but the message is going to continue to be the central aspect of communication.
Good communication, like good art (and really, there's not that much difference between the two; they contain elements of each in the other), turns out to be very difficult to master and consistently do. People at my job - and in my personal life - often tell me I am a good communicator. Clear, they say. I try. I love clear communication. I crave it. But even if I am good at doing it, it's even harder to deal with other people's communication: teach it, improve it, work with it. That's hard.
Humor can help. The comedy I like often is about people understanding each other really well and reflecting that understanding in subtle, refined ways. Quoting - which I discuss in an earlier entry - is a unique and satisfying form of communication; to properly quote, it requires a fair amount of shared understanding as a prerequisite, so you know you're getting the good stuff. No miscommunication, if you are really quoting well.
The problem is that communication seems to be a lot like sex, in that everyone's got their own definite opinions about what's good, and their own tastes. And it's very hard to convince anyone that their taste isn't good. What is that great line in When Harry Met Sally? "Everyone thinks they have good taste and a sense of humor but they can't possibly all have." And I've got to somehow get the people at my job to talk about communication, when they don't want to - and be honest about it, and identify what is wrong, and what they want, and collectively come up with a way to make it all better, and get everyone to agree with it, and then start using it, and have everyone change what might be, in some cases, fundamental life-long habits, and then - eventually - see if the changes we all made are making things better. They might make it worse.
No problem, right? Ok, so the task seem Herculean, but also fascinating. My job is sometimes difficult, and confusing - I can get a little lost, as one does when exploring - but it's never boring. Can be tedious, but also exciting. I know it's not like putting on a Broadway play or building a bridge or feeding the poor masses, but my company does make small but important differences in the world. And as people, they are interesting. You work with a group of people for over a decade, and it's fun to try and improve communication, and get paid for it. I have to do the same thing in my family often, and no one is paying me for that.
By the way, I didn't have any definitive points I wanted to make about communication. I'm thinking about it a lot, because I am trying to come up with better ways of doing it. I posted a status update on Facebook yesterday, asking people what they really wanted in a status update. I got some really good answers, which I will reprint here (hope that's OK, friends whose work I am quoting):
Eric: "My name is Kar. I am doing this thing that is beyond eating sleeping or doing drudgery. I am Kar. I just found a fun fact. I am Kar. Three years ago I did this thing. Here is an update. I am Kar. Here is a friends product or event that is cool. I am Kar. And YOU are not!"
Mark: Don't try to cater to the populace! Be yourself! Be creative! Have some artistic integrity and shun the "focus group" mentality. C'mon... you're a writer, you can do it.
Thom: fb statuses (stati?) are like everything else: if it ain't funny or mean or sexy or gross or some combination of the above, then why bother? [later response] Yes, by all means be yourself. And do it for yourself as well. But do it funnily and/or meanly and/or sexily and/or grossly for yourself.
And some other snippets:
A Youtube aside: I read a New Yorker article lately that discussed the phenomenon of people in generally overestimating the uniqueness of their own life. I thought I wasn't do that, because I assume lots of people like the same things I do. I finally found someone willing to participate in my all-ukulele Jesus Christ Superstar with me, after years of trying, so that's a start. Years ago, there were about 3 JCS Uke videos on Youtube, and now - I just did it - there's a bunch, like a dozen or more! Is that cool? I don't know. Part of me can't believe there's that many, and part of me can't believe there aren't more.
Anyway, where blogs fall in this whole spectrum, I really don't know but I come back to my beginning idea: of all the things I do, I really and truly identify with writer the most, so here I am. Thanks for reading. Without you, I'd be nothing!
However, like many writers, as much as I need to do it, I dread it. I can't remember who it was that said, "Writers only write when the pain of not writing surpasses the pain of writing." I don't know why it should be so, but it is. My housemates are watching Runaway Bride (industrial-strength romantic comedy with Julia Roberts to lend levity and beauty and Richard Gere to lend gravitas and dashing), and Richard's character, who plays a reporter (whose parents wanted him to be a novelist), said something so great I thought I must blog about it: He went into reporting, which wasn't quite what the mom wanted but, "as we all know...reporting is...literature in a hurry."
Exactly. You get it out, and it's the timeliness of it all that makes it gratifying, capturing the zeitgeist, being perfectly of the moment. You craft what you can, but it doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to bring something interesting to say, worthy of spending a few seconds on to have a few thoughts. It's so rare that we have the time and the inclination simultaneously to just sit, think, reflect, pause. String two ideas together. It's a reason writers write.
The topic on my mind is actually communication, of which writing is a form. I'm sort of in charge of general communication at my office. What am I supposed to do with it, you ask? Well, we don't really know, exactly, but everyone is certain they want it to be improved in some way. Trouble is, we don't know how, and I'm learning that one of the hardest things in the world to talk about is, in fact, communication. I even have a degree in Communication! Radio/TV/Film, it's true, but we had to take a lot of general theory as well as PR, Communications Law, Advertising, etc. - sometimes I wonder if I should have gone into advertising, which I despise. I probably would have made more money by now, but been a little less trustworthy and a lot more cynical.
Communication is this amazingly delicate thing. We're all talking all day, every day - and now, so many of us are texting and twittering and facebooking and doing all these other forms of written communication, which is new to us. This is kind of a new thing, this return to the physical production of the word as a way of communicating. We had only letters, then the phone dramatically reduced that. Then everyone had individual cell phones - and they they started using them mostly - for some people, almost exclusively - as machines to write tiny letters! Does no one else see the irony?
Texting (and other forms of short prose) is....letter writing in a hurry. And I can't but help feel something is lost. And I'm not one of those people who turn a certain age and look at the upcoming generation and think, partially terrified by them, "Kids these days!" However, that's only because I would have been saying that during almost any generation. When I say something about being hesitant about these new-fangled technologies because I think they are ruining the way humans conceive the world, the response I often encounter is, "Don't be silly! People said the same thing about TV, and that didn't ruin the world, did it?" The problem is, I do kind of think it did. Movies too, even though movies are basically my favorite thing in the world. And newspapers, maybe. I don't know how far back problems with human communication goes back, but I certainly don't think the majority of any of these things (Facebook, email, phones, TV, movies, radio, books: whatever) have made the world a better place, per se.
Why? Because these are all mediums. And the medium is not the message. Well, I think there's an age old argument about that, which I won't go into here. My point is, I have a real problem with computers, because, of all the media that have been introduced in the last...20...50...100 years, it's been the most damaging. Now, don't get me wrong. I love computers, within reason. I used them all the time. I am using one right now, to blog. I wish I didn't have to use one as often as I do (in fact, one of the reasons I get so behind is the blog, being electronic, feels like the rest of my work), but I accept them for all the wonderful things they can do.
The problem is, computers aren't supposed to be doing everything. They are a tool. It's like humans discovered the hammer, and thought, this is the BEST TOOL EVER. Let's use it for everything, and then proceeded to use it to, say, fish, or mend socks, or cook a turkey. And you very soon see that it's not at all suited to those tasks. So I think this is happening with all (or at least most) of technology. It just sweeps in and takes over everything. Most of TV is totally crap, but that's not because television shows, in and of themselves, are intrinsically bad. It's because so much TV is bad. And why is that? Because many people in the world are lost and confused, and in pain, and so a lot of the art and craft we produce is not life-affirming. Once you realize the fundamental issue is not really how we communicate, but what we communicate, you see that the medium can do all the shaping it wants, but the message is going to continue to be the central aspect of communication.
Good communication, like good art (and really, there's not that much difference between the two; they contain elements of each in the other), turns out to be very difficult to master and consistently do. People at my job - and in my personal life - often tell me I am a good communicator. Clear, they say. I try. I love clear communication. I crave it. But even if I am good at doing it, it's even harder to deal with other people's communication: teach it, improve it, work with it. That's hard.
Humor can help. The comedy I like often is about people understanding each other really well and reflecting that understanding in subtle, refined ways. Quoting - which I discuss in an earlier entry - is a unique and satisfying form of communication; to properly quote, it requires a fair amount of shared understanding as a prerequisite, so you know you're getting the good stuff. No miscommunication, if you are really quoting well.
The problem is that communication seems to be a lot like sex, in that everyone's got their own definite opinions about what's good, and their own tastes. And it's very hard to convince anyone that their taste isn't good. What is that great line in When Harry Met Sally? "Everyone thinks they have good taste and a sense of humor but they can't possibly all have." And I've got to somehow get the people at my job to talk about communication, when they don't want to - and be honest about it, and identify what is wrong, and what they want, and collectively come up with a way to make it all better, and get everyone to agree with it, and then start using it, and have everyone change what might be, in some cases, fundamental life-long habits, and then - eventually - see if the changes we all made are making things better. They might make it worse.
No problem, right? Ok, so the task seem Herculean, but also fascinating. My job is sometimes difficult, and confusing - I can get a little lost, as one does when exploring - but it's never boring. Can be tedious, but also exciting. I know it's not like putting on a Broadway play or building a bridge or feeding the poor masses, but my company does make small but important differences in the world. And as people, they are interesting. You work with a group of people for over a decade, and it's fun to try and improve communication, and get paid for it. I have to do the same thing in my family often, and no one is paying me for that.
By the way, I didn't have any definitive points I wanted to make about communication. I'm thinking about it a lot, because I am trying to come up with better ways of doing it. I posted a status update on Facebook yesterday, asking people what they really wanted in a status update. I got some really good answers, which I will reprint here (hope that's OK, friends whose work I am quoting):
Eric: "My name is Kar. I am doing this thing that is beyond eating sleeping or doing drudgery. I am Kar. I just found a fun fact. I am Kar. Three years ago I did this thing. Here is an update. I am Kar. Here is a friends product or event that is cool. I am Kar. And YOU are not!"
Mark: Don't try to cater to the populace! Be yourself! Be creative! Have some artistic integrity and shun the "focus group" mentality. C'mon... you're a writer, you can do it.
Thom: fb statuses (stati?) are like everything else: if it ain't funny or mean or sexy or gross or some combination of the above, then why bother? [later response] Yes, by all means be yourself. And do it for yourself as well. But do it funnily and/or meanly and/or sexily and/or grossly for yourself.
And some other snippets:
- Just as long as you enlighten while you entertain...
- Only set fires with your wit
- I can't stand reading status updates in which people promote themselves, their careers or their businesses. Other than that, I enjoy reading everything. (Diane)
A Youtube aside: I read a New Yorker article lately that discussed the phenomenon of people in generally overestimating the uniqueness of their own life. I thought I wasn't do that, because I assume lots of people like the same things I do. I finally found someone willing to participate in my all-ukulele Jesus Christ Superstar with me, after years of trying, so that's a start. Years ago, there were about 3 JCS Uke videos on Youtube, and now - I just did it - there's a bunch, like a dozen or more! Is that cool? I don't know. Part of me can't believe there's that many, and part of me can't believe there aren't more.
Anyway, where blogs fall in this whole spectrum, I really don't know but I come back to my beginning idea: of all the things I do, I really and truly identify with writer the most, so here I am. Thanks for reading. Without you, I'd be nothing!
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