On discovering a surprising thing

I have discovered a thing.

I am actually rather astonished by it. I did not expect it, I did not look for it, but I have found it and I am just beginning to feel like the cat that has the cream.

Last autumn I had a revelation. There are many things I haven't done because folks have told me I'm not terribly good at them. They were right too, that's not the point, and I thank them for their frank appraisals, because without them, this would not have happened.

Some time around 1984 my voice broke; I stopped singing, and for good reason. I went from being in school & Boys Brigade choirs where I did quite a lot of singing, to being a bit rubbish. I couldn't hit a note, and I couldn't control my new 'voice' that sounded like a herring gull in the wrong register.
I tried to do drawings and paintings. They were rubbish. People said so. They were right. So I stopped doing them. And so it was with other pursuits.
But the revelation came last year when I was musing how I have missed these things. I don't do them because I'm not good at them, but I miss them. And, in an unusually reckless moment, I came to a conclusion. "Fuck that" I thought. "Just do them".
I remember thinking that I had stopped doing these things because other people didn't like the result of them. OK, so my artwork was dire. But you know what? I can hit a note. And as I recently proved to myself in an underground car-park - I actually can sing. I'll never get rich from it. I may even get asked nicely to stop sometimes. But bloody hell it felt good!
The car-park was my turning point. I had to transpose up a bit, but I belted out Libera me Domine (the Fauré, natch) and my voice filled the space. I filled the space. It was a liquid warm thing, sloshing around the pillars and air ducts, splashing everything as I threw it from me.
And when I stopped, and the resonance slowly faded, I had a gleeful smile, and I did a little dance of joy.

ha! you're thinking. He's found singing again.

WRONG.

Well, OK, not wrong. I have, but that's not what's inspired this post.

I have found something quieter and softer and something I can do without waking the neighbours.

I have found writing.

I'm doing it. But I'm doing it for me, doing it and sometimes posting it up on the interwebs for all to point at if they choose but I honestly couldn't give a damn. The feeling of ideas flowing through my fingers, crafting the balance and nuance, pairing words (like that) and just letting it flow from me... it is joyous. It's like the sun coming out.

I was talking to a chum on Twitter about Thoreau and his turn of phrase, and I wanted to mention Plath and poets that I love and I realised that what I wanted to do was actually write something.
Now that I have realised that this writing is for me, not for anybody else, I have been released from the tyranny of anticipated judgement to immerse myself in the simple act of it, the product isn't important because it's defined by the act; now I realise that something comes to me, it flows, and I am discovering it as I do it, the joy of it. I could sit here and do it for hours, I think... and despite the two-hour interruption I just had, I can pick it up where I left off and nobody will ever know!

Maybe it's a thing that comes with age, this ability to do things for the joy of them. Things that I would have been concerned about doing because I was always worried about the purpose of the act - what are you writing? Why are you writing it? What are you going to do with it? What, ultimately, is the point?
Never before had I realised that the point is that I like writing, and most importantly that enjoying it is enough (something I remember reading a year ago - see Vonnegut's note on Joe Heller's understanding of enough on Maria Popova's truly wonderful brainpickings site)
You might be wondering if this is a self-confidence thing. It's not that I don't do things because I don't have the confidence. I don't want to do them for others, I want to simply do it. I know I'm not great at them, that doesn't matter. It's not about self confidence, it's about self expression.
It's not about doing, it's about being.

So.
I am going to write.
Probably quite a lot.
I might put some of it up here.

It's for me, and you're all very welcome to look.

Communication

Communication is complicated.
We use language to explain to each other what we want or feel or need.
Language is a powerful tool for communication, we all have a pretty good grasp of it. It's a universally used framework for expressing thoughts.
But language, as somebody said to me a while back, "has its lacunae" (I had to look it up, thus exposing my own. Meta...)
So, at best, all we can do is use an incomplete framework to express what we are thinking. It's the best tool we have, and it's incomplete.

This is partly the reason I teach my kids 'complicated' or 'difficult' words. If you have a wider lexicon you are more able to express yourself more precisely. They're not really complicated or difficult. They are subtle, precise.
The extent of ones art of communication by language is partially dependent upon the extent of ones lexicon; with a wide knowledge of words one is capable of greater precision, of identifying and communicating a more subtle meaning, of implying nuance, of applying a metaphysical pressure with fewer words that is greater with less effort - consider the difference between poking a balloon hard with a finger and gently with a pin.

But there's a hell of a lot more to communication than words. Language is like a shaft of light in a dark room. It illuminates only that which is within its beam, and there are things which it can never convey.
We are so used to language it can be hard to imagine much else in that dark room - but the room is a metaphor for all possible experience, and language can only describe the ingredients of the idea.
Imagine that instead of language we had Lego. Now, build a sphere. You can approximate, you can make something that is accepted as spherical within the limitations of the bricks, but it's not a sphere.
The approximate sphere is close enough that the person you give it to will recognise what you are getting at, and it will trigger things in their mind that show them the precise sphere elsewhere in that dark room in their head, some sphere they have experienced in the past.

An admission: I have introduced by the back door another shaft of light into your dark room - the idea of Lego as a form of communication. With Lego, one can make an approximation of pretty much any physical thing. So it's a good method of communication of aspects of the physical world, but it's lacunae lie in the description anything other than objects.
There's a reason I have done this - Lego is better at communicating some things than language. The two shafts of light in the dark room we now have are not parallel; they may or may not touch, they certainly pass close to each other, and they are of different hue and diameter and intensity. But whatever their relative strengths and weaknesses, they are both shafts and leave the rest of the room in darkness.

Now we can start to see how many forms of communication there are - anything that evokes a response and triggers recognition of other experiences not in the direct beam of whatever medium you are experiencing. Anything at all.
Language. Lego. Sculpture. Architecture. Painting. Pottery. Design. Music. Movement. Touch. Human contact. Sex. Food. ... Anything.
All of these things and any other man-made stimulus communicates with us on some level or other. Whether or not we are conscious of it, they affect us, effect a response somewhere, trigger recognitions. Our dark spaces are illuminated constantly and in so many colours and from so many directions. It is the moment-by-moment framework of understanding of the world around us that is in effect. And, of course, there are some things those illuminations can never touch - the essence of experience is only referenced by the abstractions of the communications that come to us; we can never actually feel the experience that is related to us through whatever communications are received.

Once we understand this stream of communication and the myriad sources, we can start to understand better how to communicate better with others.
Communication is key; it is the projection of ourselves into the world, and the world perceives us through our communications.
Talking to people is one thing. Language is ubiquitous, widely understood. It's great for most purposes. But if you really want to communicate, language can leave people in the dark.

...

Two further things for consideration come to mind, and I may devote blog posts to them later...
Firstly; what about the emotional responses we experience from non-human generated forms? Is the feeling of knee-weakening impact I experience from certain forms in the South Downs the result of something we can call communication?
Secondly; the feelings we get from some people when their words do not 'ring true' - what else do we pick up on? What is the mismatch between our expectations and the received verbal communications? Does the sender of those communications understand them, or even recognise them?
I shall think on and share what I come up with.
Thanks for reading!