A Communicative Void

It is one that I encounter on a daily basis in many social forms including physical social forms and cyber social forms, a communicative void wherein the expressing of ideas do not quite meet my expectations or the ideas are never met at all. 

This void is quite common due to the rapid speed of life, our telephone conversations are condensed because we have no time, our conversations with employees at the supermarket checkout hardly take place because the person behind you waiting to be served is desperate to go home to cook their cabbage soup, our communication has just turned into that of a telemarketer's phonecall: we simply cannot wait until they are over. 

A technique that I use to avoid falling into this word-abyss is I apply abstract terms to my discourse and if the person in my vicinity catches on then they are worthy of my speech. The more abstract a conversation becomes, the more life is made sense of, and the deeper the connection to both the earth and the other, and that is the most valuable aspect of modern-day speech simply because it is now a rarity. Very scarce is the conversation which connects two and confuses others. When it is stumbled upon, it must be nestled within one's mouth and mind like it is the last ounce of gold, the last breath of fresh air, the last rare species of animal.

Mankind has moved forward since the very first steps of communication, through every artistic endeavour, every rock painting, every cavernous grunt, every dreamtime story, every song, every poem. One should not let technology abolish our one gift. There is nothing more important than to honour the skilled in conversation by building them a dialogue shrine, one conjured up in the very moment of conversing. Back and forth, the tête-à-tête should curl evenly between the tongues of participants, flirting artistically with their minds and growing like a tornado feeding on materialistic objects.

I am constantly disappointed when I eavesdrop on the conversations between others, yakking about trams and other transport deficiencies, about dinnertime and what will be cooked and consumed, about mindless television shows. Until the agenda for colloquy changes, my attitude towards socialising will not.

What Language Are You Speaking?

Most of the time, it seems that anybody that I converse with has no idea about what it is that I am saying. And because of this, most of the time I end up having to filter my words into 'street talk', a type of talk that consists of slang and bodily movements in order to make up for true meanings of words that once were.

I do not talk in complex terms. I just talk in terms that are beckoned to be forgotten by the greater public, because the greater public prefers a sense of simplicity in their speech amongst the complexities of every day life. And because of this, people like me are left to pretend to speak in a manner they absolutely loathe - slang. I am so amorous about America because most of the words I have heard coming from American tongue are words that are not spoken here in Australia on an everyday basis - they are words written by the finest Australian scholars, but rarely ever uttered. And that is what irritates me about having to converse with most people. It is the fact that I can converse better when I write because at least the people who read my writing have some form of interest in it, whereas when I speak people have to voluntarily focus that one extra bit, and it is forcibly done so because I can tell that they still have no idea about what I am saying.

I am tired of condensing my speech. I often sit alone in my study and release these words verbally and ravel in them with utter delight, I marvel at the words that I release because I never knew I was capable, but that is because all of this time I have been hiding them from other people, I have also been hiding them from myself. A piece of myself, a big piece of my inner self cannot be contained any more than it already is, yet most of the time I have no option but to leave it that way. My other bodily functions, like my tear ducts, begin to take over sometimes. They too speak words of their own, words that are afraid to come out. But like me talking to myself in the study, they too cannot be contained any longer.

It is a barren world for people with a constantly working intellect. It is cold, and barren, and there is no warmth. I have to make my own warmth, and I do this by writing, reading and drawing. They are the three things that I have that allow me to be myself, and allow me to thrive in a world where I am just me and not the me that everyone else wants me to be. When I am about to lose myself, I turn to these three worlds and they remind me that I am something, that my self worth should not go a day without being mentioned.

I can recall a day earlier this week when I was in the car with two people and they could not believe that I had written eighty-eight consecutive essays in the duration of my holidays. They could not fathom why I would even bother to write, and they could not understand my explanation of my first year thesis piece, about pedagogical third spaces, even when I placed the terms simply. So I dropped all talk of this and I continued on with their bothersome slang language. And they felt comfortable again, and my discomfort continued alongside their comfort. And that is the way that it is with me, my life, and my inner self. That is the way it always will be, I am afraid, because I am yet to be proven otherwise.

I am yearning to find that one build of complexities who can see through my slang and see my own complexities, who will allow our complexities to mingle and therefore enjoy my true company. But I suppose, just like a decent friend, it is too much to ask for.