Intellectual Seriousness, Part II: Patience and Ideas in America
In my last post, I talked about intellectual seriousness, and as a follow up, let’s add intellectual patience to the list.
We’ve all heard about the “town halls”, with the anger, misinformation, fear, and antagonism that many of us hoped and expected the last presidential election would put behind us.
The hopes, fears, and illusions around health care have proved that intellectual patience in the United States is in as short supply as ever, even with (or in spite of?) a public intellectual who can speak the people’s language as President.
I suppose the problem with the cult of the personality that surrounds presidential politics today is that so much hope and fear surrounds candidates, and Barack Obama is the largest repository of hope and fear imaginable. He appeared and still appears to personify so much possibility or so much danger, depending on your point of view, that people forget about their own responsibility as citizens to think, read, and talk to their representatives. After all, representatives make laws. The President only enforces them, or, that’s what’s supposed to happen. But we left that constitutional viewpoint in the rearview mirror a long time ago.
Unfortunately, Barack Obama appears to be a “strict constructionalist” or Constitutional literalist in that regard. He hoped to be a facilitator in this regard, but people expect him to lead, put out his own plan, and let the individuals of Congress pick it to pieces. After all, that, too, is a representative’s job. The Founders wanted, above all, a decentralization of power, or “checks and balances”, if you will.
But I digress. Intellectual seriousness…
Right.
Intellectual patience.
Right.
I have often thought that in this most impatient of societies that two issues around which people do show intellectual patience around is the Constitution, with its complexity, and baseball. I find it remarkable that such an impetuous populace as the American one can consider baseball, the game of the lazy days of summer, with its lack of a time limit, its endless nuance, its amazing and bewildering serious of required decisions and possibilities, as the National Pastime.
But the health care debate has brought out the constituents into the streets, the Talk Show hosts, with their aging and passionate storm troopers, vs. the equally hard-charging partisans on the left, such as Moveon.org.
Lost in the discussion about health care, is the discussion of cost and health insurance, the yelling about which has drowned out the word “care” in any meaningful sense.
(By the way, I urge people to read two wonderful articles on health care, emphasizing the word care, attempting to divorce care from insurance, because the partisans on both sides are missing the boat, and enforcing a dialogue of the deaf that will necessitate that real reform from a CARE point of view will not happen.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care
These two authors talk in the sort of depth and complexity that we all need to in order to fix health CARE, as well as health INSURANCE. They’re not the same thing, and only intellectual patience will get us to understand that.)
After all the shouting stops, we will have no one to blame but ourselves for what we get.
Keep thinking and grappling, people. Avoid easy answers, and get out of your comfort zone, including and particularly your intellectual and political one.
Stay tuned.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Soul Satisfaction
Well, it’s been almost two months since I’ve contributed a post, and one kind reader (I seem to have one or two) suggested it might be time for another, so here goes.
My themes have loosely followed 1) speech, particularly political speech; 2) my intellectual evolution and how I see thought/reality/consciousness; and finally 3)simply how to express yourself.
Where do I go from here?
Well, let me start by admitting why my posts have lagged at late. I certainly do enjoy writing them for the few of you who read them, and I like to think they add some value to the world of thought and communication, but at the moment, my posts aren’t tethered to the rest of my business in any substantial way.
Maybe it's time to somehow change that.
I started Ideas That Speak to contribute to both speechwriting as well as help non-profits with their fund-raising copy. No one has asked me to write speeches for them, but a couple of clients and prospective clients, have asked me to write fund-raising material. Both these entities have come from the niche I want to help the most, theatre companies.
Why? Because I enjoy writing plays.
Since I was a kid, I found that the idea of intellectual seriousness provoked my deepest interest, and I reserved my strongest disagreement with those who were and are intellectually superficial, contemptuous of ideas and implications (NOTICE, I DO NOT SPEAK ABOUT INTELLIGENCE) from professors to business people to George Bush the younger. My great challenge is to sustain intellectual seriousness, to grapple with important issues of politics, history, the “humanities” as a whole, ethics, religion, and more in every way I can, through reading, speech, thought, writing, and, especially creative writing.
Here’s a list of things I don’t like.
I don’t like it when people say that disagreements simply come down to “semantics”. Well, semantics are words. If we can’t express disagreements clearly in words, we get desperate and resort to a lack of respect and violence, so we can’t simply think that labeling disagreements as “semantic” differences is a good thing.
I dislike “easy answers”, people resorting to “usual sources” when it comes to expressing opinions that come from their “comfort zone”.
I dislike laziness and a lack of curiosity.
How do I push back positively against these negatives? Well, I write plays that incorporate playfulness and idea exploration. My latest play performed (thanks to the Vermont Playwrights Circle’s Tenfest) was The Aspirants.
In Aspirants, a chartered flight is full of people who ostensibly do one things, but would rather do the other. The only passenger, who, it turns out, has boarded the plane by mistake, who isn’t an “aspirant”, ironically, is an actress.
I won’t tell you what happens, since I hope that it will get performed again, and you might see it. Much that happens on the surface is silly, but the play’s seriousness lies in the individual’s perpetual search for not just vocational satisfaction, but soul satisfaction.
I want to write non-profit copy because so many causes out there need someone to champion language on their behalf, and I am just the person to do it; these groups bring hope and joy to the world, especially theatre companies, and we ought to help and support them any way we can.
You might say that I aspire to help them and bring deepest contentment to my soul in the process.
Stay tuned.
My themes have loosely followed 1) speech, particularly political speech; 2) my intellectual evolution and how I see thought/reality/consciousness; and finally 3)simply how to express yourself.
Where do I go from here?
Well, let me start by admitting why my posts have lagged at late. I certainly do enjoy writing them for the few of you who read them, and I like to think they add some value to the world of thought and communication, but at the moment, my posts aren’t tethered to the rest of my business in any substantial way.
Maybe it's time to somehow change that.
I started Ideas That Speak to contribute to both speechwriting as well as help non-profits with their fund-raising copy. No one has asked me to write speeches for them, but a couple of clients and prospective clients, have asked me to write fund-raising material. Both these entities have come from the niche I want to help the most, theatre companies.
Why? Because I enjoy writing plays.
Since I was a kid, I found that the idea of intellectual seriousness provoked my deepest interest, and I reserved my strongest disagreement with those who were and are intellectually superficial, contemptuous of ideas and implications (NOTICE, I DO NOT SPEAK ABOUT INTELLIGENCE) from professors to business people to George Bush the younger. My great challenge is to sustain intellectual seriousness, to grapple with important issues of politics, history, the “humanities” as a whole, ethics, religion, and more in every way I can, through reading, speech, thought, writing, and, especially creative writing.
Here’s a list of things I don’t like.
I don’t like it when people say that disagreements simply come down to “semantics”. Well, semantics are words. If we can’t express disagreements clearly in words, we get desperate and resort to a lack of respect and violence, so we can’t simply think that labeling disagreements as “semantic” differences is a good thing.
I dislike “easy answers”, people resorting to “usual sources” when it comes to expressing opinions that come from their “comfort zone”.
I dislike laziness and a lack of curiosity.
How do I push back positively against these negatives? Well, I write plays that incorporate playfulness and idea exploration. My latest play performed (thanks to the Vermont Playwrights Circle’s Tenfest) was The Aspirants.
In Aspirants, a chartered flight is full of people who ostensibly do one things, but would rather do the other. The only passenger, who, it turns out, has boarded the plane by mistake, who isn’t an “aspirant”, ironically, is an actress.
I won’t tell you what happens, since I hope that it will get performed again, and you might see it. Much that happens on the surface is silly, but the play’s seriousness lies in the individual’s perpetual search for not just vocational satisfaction, but soul satisfaction.
I want to write non-profit copy because so many causes out there need someone to champion language on their behalf, and I am just the person to do it; these groups bring hope and joy to the world, especially theatre companies, and we ought to help and support them any way we can.
You might say that I aspire to help them and bring deepest contentment to my soul in the process.
Stay tuned.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Words Within
I had the good fortune a couple of months ago to travel to Italy for the first time.
While I could tell you about the wonders of the places I visited, I am related to people who can and have written of these regions with more skill and evocative prose than I ever could.
But, I did make an interesting discovery, or should I say rediscovery.
Ten years ago, when I was last in Europe, I was in Denmark for around a week. While I discovered, for one of the few times in my life, that I was surrounded (or immersed, as language programs like to term it) by a language other than English.
As a result, just as when I am similarly immersed in quality music, I tended to focus on my mind and its language. Instead of thinking, in “automatic pilot” fashion, in English, my mind became untethered, looking, looking to "come out to play", searching creatively for any other language it knew, in my case, German.
I spoke in German to my relatives from time to time, rather than take advantage of their excellent English.
(By the way, people have often told me that they expected my German would help me learn Danish. Believe me, it was no advantage. German tends to be much far forward in pronunciation, Danish is swallowed. In fact, if anything, Danish shares more sounds with Old English, ie, Anglo-Saxon.)
Well, at any rate, in Italy, the same thing happened. While people spoke English to us without difficulty or objection, when they could, the immersion of all surrounding textual sounds forced me inward to pay attention, and suddenly, slow down and stop the sort of “tape loop” and automatic feeding of often mindless English through my consciousness.
Why does this happen?
Well, I am neither linguist, nor neurologist, but I do meditate, and, my guess is that the mind’s sudden realization of an alien textual context gave the mind something it’s supposed to have, a task worthy of reason and paying appropriate attention.
Once that happened, that unanchored mind, instead of meandering, undifferentiated, unthinking, and unconscious, among others conversations and my own, was forced back, by a wall of ignorance, into itself.
By the way, when I finally got to engage someone in German, a charming college student from Hamburg, she was very kind, particularly as my initial attempts to get back to that second language were fumbling, indeed. But, I got better quickly, and I was proud of myself for taking that chance.
So, be bold, learn another language. If you take up that challenge with the right attitude, you’ll be on stage, an actor in the theater of speech, and you’ll appreciate your mother tongue all the more.
Stay tuned.
While I could tell you about the wonders of the places I visited, I am related to people who can and have written of these regions with more skill and evocative prose than I ever could.
But, I did make an interesting discovery, or should I say rediscovery.
Ten years ago, when I was last in Europe, I was in Denmark for around a week. While I discovered, for one of the few times in my life, that I was surrounded (or immersed, as language programs like to term it) by a language other than English.
As a result, just as when I am similarly immersed in quality music, I tended to focus on my mind and its language. Instead of thinking, in “automatic pilot” fashion, in English, my mind became untethered, looking, looking to "come out to play", searching creatively for any other language it knew, in my case, German.
I spoke in German to my relatives from time to time, rather than take advantage of their excellent English.
(By the way, people have often told me that they expected my German would help me learn Danish. Believe me, it was no advantage. German tends to be much far forward in pronunciation, Danish is swallowed. In fact, if anything, Danish shares more sounds with Old English, ie, Anglo-Saxon.)
Well, at any rate, in Italy, the same thing happened. While people spoke English to us without difficulty or objection, when they could, the immersion of all surrounding textual sounds forced me inward to pay attention, and suddenly, slow down and stop the sort of “tape loop” and automatic feeding of often mindless English through my consciousness.
Why does this happen?
Well, I am neither linguist, nor neurologist, but I do meditate, and, my guess is that the mind’s sudden realization of an alien textual context gave the mind something it’s supposed to have, a task worthy of reason and paying appropriate attention.
Once that happened, that unanchored mind, instead of meandering, undifferentiated, unthinking, and unconscious, among others conversations and my own, was forced back, by a wall of ignorance, into itself.
By the way, when I finally got to engage someone in German, a charming college student from Hamburg, she was very kind, particularly as my initial attempts to get back to that second language were fumbling, indeed. But, I got better quickly, and I was proud of myself for taking that chance.
So, be bold, learn another language. If you take up that challenge with the right attitude, you’ll be on stage, an actor in the theater of speech, and you’ll appreciate your mother tongue all the more.
Stay tuned.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Ripping Off the Bandage
This post is the one that resembles both dabbing at the wound with disinfectant as well as ripping off the bandage.
Neither process is pleasant, but both are necessary.
When you are ready to finalize your written or formal verbal communication, you need someone who is equal parts ruthless and blunt, even if not always a help in the most global sense.
Yes, that fearsome, loud, and uninhibited voice inside you, is, dear reader(s)(I am always hopeful that more than one of you is reading these posts) is YOUR EDITOR.
Don’t cover your ears, even though last time, I negatively characterized the logical part of your writing mind; I said, “that editor’s a killer”.
How do you use that challenging voice inside you? Allow him or her (remember, editing knows no sex) to do what it does best, by doing for the editor what you do for your listeners and readers: putting the editor in a position to do what it does best, what it is meant to do.
What is the process your internal editor is best equipped to do?
Your internal editor does its best work when ELIMINATING THINGS YOU DON’T NEED.
What does that reality mean for your writing process? It means that you put off editing until the very end, when you are absolutely certain that you have EVERY IDEA somehow expressed in your words, and the only thing left to do is make sure you have expressed those ideas as clearly as you can.
Think of your editor as someone helping you move from one home to another. But, remember, this packer is always someone who took a dim view of all your belongings; as a result of this packer’s contempt for your possessions, you invite him or her in at the very last minute, when you are sure what you are bringing, but you are not sure how to fit all those things into whatever vehicle you are using for transport. Your editor is vigorous, energetic, and always sure of things, so put him or her in charge of putting stuff into the vehicle.
Where does elmination come in? Well, for example, you want to “fit an idea” into a sentence. You know you need the idea, but you call it “very unique”. Items are “unique”, because they are one of a kind. If you add the word “very” to “unique”, you are attempting to add a degree of “uniqueness” that doesn’t help explain anything to your listener or reader.
Or, to put my point in blunt editorial terms: the word “very” doesn’t add value in this case.
The notion of “adding value” is the bottom line any time your editor forces you to question the inclusion of something. That bias on the part of the editor reinforces my point that you have to make your process of “inclusion” a final act, because you don’t want the criterion of adding value utilized to judge an idea’s inclusion, just a word or phrase’s inclusion.
As I said in an earlier post, you also utilize the editor best when you limit each “pass” or “review” of a speech or document to eliminate something, such as unnecessary words; noun verb disagreements (using a plural verb with a singular noun); using inconsistent tenses; getting rid of curt sentences that hurt flow or excessively long ones (where a subject stated in the first part of the sentence might be lost; and eliminating the passive voice (unless, as I’ve stated in a previous post, you don’t want to show clearly who is responsible or was responsible for a particular action).
Remember one last thing: as you do each edit pass, read aloud. You would be amazed at what items the ear catches, but the eye does not.
If you try to do too many things in a particular view, you are empowering the editor to now become that mover who is telling you to throw things out and not move them rather than how best to pack them in the moving vehicle. We don’t want that, do we? Of course not! When we move into our new home, we are the best judge of what we need there. We just may not know how to get it there in one trip.
Stay tuned.
Neither process is pleasant, but both are necessary.
When you are ready to finalize your written or formal verbal communication, you need someone who is equal parts ruthless and blunt, even if not always a help in the most global sense.
Yes, that fearsome, loud, and uninhibited voice inside you, is, dear reader(s)(I am always hopeful that more than one of you is reading these posts) is YOUR EDITOR.
Don’t cover your ears, even though last time, I negatively characterized the logical part of your writing mind; I said, “that editor’s a killer”.
How do you use that challenging voice inside you? Allow him or her (remember, editing knows no sex) to do what it does best, by doing for the editor what you do for your listeners and readers: putting the editor in a position to do what it does best, what it is meant to do.
What is the process your internal editor is best equipped to do?
Your internal editor does its best work when ELIMINATING THINGS YOU DON’T NEED.
What does that reality mean for your writing process? It means that you put off editing until the very end, when you are absolutely certain that you have EVERY IDEA somehow expressed in your words, and the only thing left to do is make sure you have expressed those ideas as clearly as you can.
Think of your editor as someone helping you move from one home to another. But, remember, this packer is always someone who took a dim view of all your belongings; as a result of this packer’s contempt for your possessions, you invite him or her in at the very last minute, when you are sure what you are bringing, but you are not sure how to fit all those things into whatever vehicle you are using for transport. Your editor is vigorous, energetic, and always sure of things, so put him or her in charge of putting stuff into the vehicle.
Where does elmination come in? Well, for example, you want to “fit an idea” into a sentence. You know you need the idea, but you call it “very unique”. Items are “unique”, because they are one of a kind. If you add the word “very” to “unique”, you are attempting to add a degree of “uniqueness” that doesn’t help explain anything to your listener or reader.
Or, to put my point in blunt editorial terms: the word “very” doesn’t add value in this case.
The notion of “adding value” is the bottom line any time your editor forces you to question the inclusion of something. That bias on the part of the editor reinforces my point that you have to make your process of “inclusion” a final act, because you don’t want the criterion of adding value utilized to judge an idea’s inclusion, just a word or phrase’s inclusion.
As I said in an earlier post, you also utilize the editor best when you limit each “pass” or “review” of a speech or document to eliminate something, such as unnecessary words; noun verb disagreements (using a plural verb with a singular noun); using inconsistent tenses; getting rid of curt sentences that hurt flow or excessively long ones (where a subject stated in the first part of the sentence might be lost; and eliminating the passive voice (unless, as I’ve stated in a previous post, you don’t want to show clearly who is responsible or was responsible for a particular action).
Remember one last thing: as you do each edit pass, read aloud. You would be amazed at what items the ear catches, but the eye does not.
If you try to do too many things in a particular view, you are empowering the editor to now become that mover who is telling you to throw things out and not move them rather than how best to pack them in the moving vehicle. We don’t want that, do we? Of course not! When we move into our new home, we are the best judge of what we need there. We just may not know how to get it there in one trip.
Stay tuned.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
HUMOR ME
I just realized that I may have left some of you behind when writing these last posts on “composing”, following the time-tested and sweet symbolism of Vermont sugaring.
What did I leave out?
Well, despite the huge numbers of bloggers out there and people with things to say of all kinds, in all kinds of forums, other aspirants lead lives of quiet desperation in terms of self-expression, because they either believe they are not “creative”, or “they have nothing to say”.
If you blog, obviously, you’ve gotten past such obstacles. If you don’t blog, and/or you haven’t moved past these significant misgivings about yourself, in other words, if you don’t think you have artistic ability, creativity, and talent in self-expression (related challenging inhibitions involve carrying a tune), then you are going to cheat yourself out of manifesting your best potential when reading or writing.
Just humor me when I tell you that you may have more imagination as an “imagist” than you think.
Okay, now try this…imagine that you are trying to compose some ideas about writing. Write down the word “pencil”. Quick, don’t think, just write down the next association that comes into your mind.
Here’s what I wrote: pencil…drama…kerchief…melody.
Wait, turn off that left brain editor, I can hear he or she (inhibition knows no sex) saying, “Stop…those connections are illogical!”; when it comes to setting out sheer creative raw material, that editor’s a killer.
When the pencil writes,
Drama and a melody
Can weave a kerchief.
Nice little haiku, just a small, subtle, but significant clue as to how ready (and probably underutilized) your right brain, your creative part, is.
I won’t argue with your needlessly vague but self-denigrating preconception that you aren’t creative; all I’ll do is tell you that you and everyone else can free-associate.
Try it, you’ll like it, and you’ll find images you didn’t know you had.
Stay tuned.
What did I leave out?
Well, despite the huge numbers of bloggers out there and people with things to say of all kinds, in all kinds of forums, other aspirants lead lives of quiet desperation in terms of self-expression, because they either believe they are not “creative”, or “they have nothing to say”.
If you blog, obviously, you’ve gotten past such obstacles. If you don’t blog, and/or you haven’t moved past these significant misgivings about yourself, in other words, if you don’t think you have artistic ability, creativity, and talent in self-expression (related challenging inhibitions involve carrying a tune), then you are going to cheat yourself out of manifesting your best potential when reading or writing.
Just humor me when I tell you that you may have more imagination as an “imagist” than you think.
Okay, now try this…imagine that you are trying to compose some ideas about writing. Write down the word “pencil”. Quick, don’t think, just write down the next association that comes into your mind.
Here’s what I wrote: pencil…drama…kerchief…melody.
Wait, turn off that left brain editor, I can hear he or she (inhibition knows no sex) saying, “Stop…those connections are illogical!”; when it comes to setting out sheer creative raw material, that editor’s a killer.
When the pencil writes,
Drama and a melody
Can weave a kerchief.
Nice little haiku, just a small, subtle, but significant clue as to how ready (and probably underutilized) your right brain, your creative part, is.
I won’t argue with your needlessly vague but self-denigrating preconception that you aren’t creative; all I’ll do is tell you that you and everyone else can free-associate.
Try it, you’ll like it, and you’ll find images you didn’t know you had.
Stay tuned.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Boiling It Down
Okay…tapping’s done.
Syrup, the tasty finished product, is next…or is it?
Yeah, you’re right…we have to boil first, or in textual terms, edit.
I know, it’s a drag, the boring stuff, but, if you have the great raw material, lots of it, and you need an accordingly sweet, best-grade finished product, you have to edit.
Remember, before, I talked about tapping into a vein somewhere out there that exists, independently of you, some creative underground stream of sorts?
Well editing is about editing the aural…don’t I mean the oral? No, I mean the aural, the product of the ear.
If you hear what’s coming out of that stream you’ve found in the universe, unfortunately, you can’t simply ‘download’ it and utilize it. It’s a staging area, like the maple tree. You take some raw material from it, you boil it down, and then you have your finished product.
If you don’t make the effort to finish it, you just have sap.
Well, how do you connect to that stream out there? You hear it: as a result, the discovery is aural.
You edit the aural. How?
You remove things that you don’t need.
You make connections among sections as clear as you can for the reader or listener.
You add things that you need, but only things that “add value”. Don’t add anything unless you need to.
Read it out loud.
Then review the whole thing all over again, removing, connecting, adding judiciously, reading out loud.
Each time you do a “round” of editing, you’re looking for something different, word choice, consistency, verb tenses, length, etc….if you require too much from a single edit, the final sweetness won’t be as good as it could be.
I know, when you saw the word edit, you gulped, and your eyes glazed over, but that wasn’t so bad, was it?
Remember, no boiling, no syrup.
Now, go find a tree, and start tapping.
Stay tuned.
Syrup, the tasty finished product, is next…or is it?
Yeah, you’re right…we have to boil first, or in textual terms, edit.
I know, it’s a drag, the boring stuff, but, if you have the great raw material, lots of it, and you need an accordingly sweet, best-grade finished product, you have to edit.
Remember, before, I talked about tapping into a vein somewhere out there that exists, independently of you, some creative underground stream of sorts?
Well editing is about editing the aural…don’t I mean the oral? No, I mean the aural, the product of the ear.
If you hear what’s coming out of that stream you’ve found in the universe, unfortunately, you can’t simply ‘download’ it and utilize it. It’s a staging area, like the maple tree. You take some raw material from it, you boil it down, and then you have your finished product.
If you don’t make the effort to finish it, you just have sap.
Well, how do you connect to that stream out there? You hear it: as a result, the discovery is aural.
You edit the aural. How?
You remove things that you don’t need.
You make connections among sections as clear as you can for the reader or listener.
You add things that you need, but only things that “add value”. Don’t add anything unless you need to.
Read it out loud.
Then review the whole thing all over again, removing, connecting, adding judiciously, reading out loud.
Each time you do a “round” of editing, you’re looking for something different, word choice, consistency, verb tenses, length, etc….if you require too much from a single edit, the final sweetness won’t be as good as it could be.
I know, when you saw the word edit, you gulped, and your eyes glazed over, but that wasn’t so bad, was it?
Remember, no boiling, no syrup.
Now, go find a tree, and start tapping.
Stay tuned.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Tapping
It’s the time of the year when the maple trees yield the sap that produces that superb gift, maple syrup.
Just the right combination of warm days and cold nights, spring’s advancing and retreating, result in maple syrup…and what is it, 30 gallons, 40 gallons that make for maybe a quart of maple syrup?
Well, the right words come forth that way, and sometimes you need that much textual “sap” to yield an appropriate message. The trick is to get warm enough days in your mind to make the sap flow.
How?
Get your right brain involved…free associate with a word, or a series of words, fill up a page or two of associations, without thinking, feel the shift and suddenly, you’ve connected perhaps the dullest word to the ripest, most startling image out there.
When you make that shift, you’ve hit a “vein”, the kind of word flow that’s always going on in the universe, just waiting for you to find a way into it.
But you have to share.
What do I mean? Well, in the old days, in college campuses, wisdom was “received”. Only when you’d read sufficient secondary works or cribbed notes from some exalted scholar did the powers that be permit you to push out some minimal, timid opinion.
But if you’re willing to make that shift to right brain associations to launch you on to that flood of words that you can then edit and shape, you’re already your own authority. You don’t need any tyrant to tell you how to describe what you want to describe to people in essays, fiction, poetry, or speeches.
Offer the same freedom to others. Be open to the vein that you’ve tapped into, share those images, and then be open in turn to the folks out there as you pass on the universe's wisdom.
Stay tuned.
Just the right combination of warm days and cold nights, spring’s advancing and retreating, result in maple syrup…and what is it, 30 gallons, 40 gallons that make for maybe a quart of maple syrup?
Well, the right words come forth that way, and sometimes you need that much textual “sap” to yield an appropriate message. The trick is to get warm enough days in your mind to make the sap flow.
How?
Get your right brain involved…free associate with a word, or a series of words, fill up a page or two of associations, without thinking, feel the shift and suddenly, you’ve connected perhaps the dullest word to the ripest, most startling image out there.
When you make that shift, you’ve hit a “vein”, the kind of word flow that’s always going on in the universe, just waiting for you to find a way into it.
But you have to share.
What do I mean? Well, in the old days, in college campuses, wisdom was “received”. Only when you’d read sufficient secondary works or cribbed notes from some exalted scholar did the powers that be permit you to push out some minimal, timid opinion.
But if you’re willing to make that shift to right brain associations to launch you on to that flood of words that you can then edit and shape, you’re already your own authority. You don’t need any tyrant to tell you how to describe what you want to describe to people in essays, fiction, poetry, or speeches.
Offer the same freedom to others. Be open to the vein that you’ve tapped into, share those images, and then be open in turn to the folks out there as you pass on the universe's wisdom.
Stay tuned.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
How do you START to say something?
Last time, I talked about people wanting to communicate, wanting to get something across, but not sure if what they had to offer was valuable…a sales package, an essay, a blog post, a possible conversation with someone, a letter, an email, a poem, a novel, a play…
So, if you have a gap between the urgent need or wish to communicate something and the doubt you have about whether what you have to say is worthwhile, important, or potentially of interest to a recipient, then you have a maximum amount of stress at the “point of entry”.
How do you bridge that gap?
Well, it can start with intimates that you trust, to broach something. But that approach is not the failsafe that you might think it is. Imagine how devastating it might be if someone you really care about trashes an “approach”? You are almost better trying things out on strangers.
But let’s forget the recipient for a moment, because it’s your identification with the recipient, rather than with yourself, that’s creating the gap we spoke about above.
Your need to communicate is at least as important as anyone else’s need who has already succeeded.
So, how to begin? Let’s see.
The first thing? Let it all hang out.
That’s right, just let it go, don’t worry about it being good, bad, indifferent, important, just pick your topic and write EVERYTHING YOU CAN THINK OF CONCERNING IT, WITHOUT ONE BIT OF EDITING.
Plenty of time to do that later.
Let’s repeat that.
Just pick your topic and write EVERYTHING YOU CAN THINK OF CONCERNING IT, WITHOUT ONE BIT OF EDITING.
Or, to put it another way, imagine that, instead of writing something that uses you at the source, imagine that what you’re pouring out is simply channeling something from outside you, some force that’s bigger than you. If you allow yourself to permit that “useful fiction”, you can get away from self-blame, self-consciousness, self-criticism, and just get it out there.
Not only will you get more good stuff out there in this wildly uninhibited ‘first pass”, the good news is that the editing will be much easier…why? Because you’ll find it’s must easier to delete material than it is to come up with it in the first place, so if you provide much more than you need, you’ve just made it all so much easier.
Okay, but what if what you want to express is more oral than written? Well, you still need to start somewhere, and writing it out is the best way to do start that. Once you’ve done the “draft”, as if it’s a letter, or some sort of written piece, when you are sure you have the essentials, begin to practice speaking it out loud. Know the material cold, get rid of as much of the written aids as you can, limit yourself to 3 x 5 cards, and refer to them less and less. Lock yourself in a private place and speak it again and again.
See how long it takes, just so you know and can plan sales calls and speeches accordingly.
Once you get more and more familiar with this subject matter, you’ll make the transitions and the personalizations for particular audiences on the fly as you present this material more and more often. You won’t worry about being interrupted with questions, because you’ll have “owned” the material and feel good about it as a result.
Still skeptical?
Wondering how to tap into that “vein” out there that’s bigger than you are?
Stay tuned.
So, if you have a gap between the urgent need or wish to communicate something and the doubt you have about whether what you have to say is worthwhile, important, or potentially of interest to a recipient, then you have a maximum amount of stress at the “point of entry”.
How do you bridge that gap?
Well, it can start with intimates that you trust, to broach something. But that approach is not the failsafe that you might think it is. Imagine how devastating it might be if someone you really care about trashes an “approach”? You are almost better trying things out on strangers.
But let’s forget the recipient for a moment, because it’s your identification with the recipient, rather than with yourself, that’s creating the gap we spoke about above.
Your need to communicate is at least as important as anyone else’s need who has already succeeded.
So, how to begin? Let’s see.
The first thing? Let it all hang out.
That’s right, just let it go, don’t worry about it being good, bad, indifferent, important, just pick your topic and write EVERYTHING YOU CAN THINK OF CONCERNING IT, WITHOUT ONE BIT OF EDITING.
Plenty of time to do that later.
Let’s repeat that.
Just pick your topic and write EVERYTHING YOU CAN THINK OF CONCERNING IT, WITHOUT ONE BIT OF EDITING.
Or, to put it another way, imagine that, instead of writing something that uses you at the source, imagine that what you’re pouring out is simply channeling something from outside you, some force that’s bigger than you. If you allow yourself to permit that “useful fiction”, you can get away from self-blame, self-consciousness, self-criticism, and just get it out there.
Not only will you get more good stuff out there in this wildly uninhibited ‘first pass”, the good news is that the editing will be much easier…why? Because you’ll find it’s must easier to delete material than it is to come up with it in the first place, so if you provide much more than you need, you’ve just made it all so much easier.
Okay, but what if what you want to express is more oral than written? Well, you still need to start somewhere, and writing it out is the best way to do start that. Once you’ve done the “draft”, as if it’s a letter, or some sort of written piece, when you are sure you have the essentials, begin to practice speaking it out loud. Know the material cold, get rid of as much of the written aids as you can, limit yourself to 3 x 5 cards, and refer to them less and less. Lock yourself in a private place and speak it again and again.
See how long it takes, just so you know and can plan sales calls and speeches accordingly.
Once you get more and more familiar with this subject matter, you’ll make the transitions and the personalizations for particular audiences on the fly as you present this material more and more often. You won’t worry about being interrupted with questions, because you’ll have “owned” the material and feel good about it as a result.
Still skeptical?
Wondering how to tap into that “vein” out there that’s bigger than you are?
Stay tuned.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Got something to say?
Last time, I talked about how your listeners or your readers can have a “stake” in you.
That’s a daunting reality, as well as an exciting one.
What happens if you’re not sure what to talk about, what to say?
Well, if you’re faced with the idea of uncertainty of how to communicate, the good news is that you have lots of company. Here are some images that you can keep in mind to understand just how widespread this challenge is.
When I used to write commercials in a radio station, I noticed that some salespeople were rarely in the office, as they had established success with an established client base. They were out as long as they had to, they came back with sales, and they wasted no time in coming back and writing them up.
Other salespeople never seemed to leave. They had what the industry deemed “call reluctance”. They were afraid to “pitch” a sales package to a potential client, even one who might have bought something from them before. Obviously, this problem isn’t unique to radio…it spans the entire spectrum of businesses that rely on sales…and just as obviously, that means every business out there!
So, you may see the same conundrum we had before. Clients are listeners, and if they need to buy your product, they need to have a stake in what you’re selling. If they don’t have that stake, then you need to make them believe they do. You need to up the risk for you, as well as the opportunity.
How does this relate to speaking and writing? 100%!
How do you “have something to say”?
EVERYONE has something to say, including you salespeople with “call reluctance”; you students wondering what to say in an essay to indicate you not only know how to write, but understand the reading material you’ve been assigned; and you speakers who are trying to “connect” with your audience.
Yes, EVERYONE has something to say. The real issue is whether you believe that what you say is important.
So, up the ante, raise the stakes, take a chance, call on someone, write something for someone, speak to someone.
How?
Stay tuned.
That’s a daunting reality, as well as an exciting one.
What happens if you’re not sure what to talk about, what to say?
Well, if you’re faced with the idea of uncertainty of how to communicate, the good news is that you have lots of company. Here are some images that you can keep in mind to understand just how widespread this challenge is.
When I used to write commercials in a radio station, I noticed that some salespeople were rarely in the office, as they had established success with an established client base. They were out as long as they had to, they came back with sales, and they wasted no time in coming back and writing them up.
Other salespeople never seemed to leave. They had what the industry deemed “call reluctance”. They were afraid to “pitch” a sales package to a potential client, even one who might have bought something from them before. Obviously, this problem isn’t unique to radio…it spans the entire spectrum of businesses that rely on sales…and just as obviously, that means every business out there!
So, you may see the same conundrum we had before. Clients are listeners, and if they need to buy your product, they need to have a stake in what you’re selling. If they don’t have that stake, then you need to make them believe they do. You need to up the risk for you, as well as the opportunity.
How does this relate to speaking and writing? 100%!
How do you “have something to say”?
EVERYONE has something to say, including you salespeople with “call reluctance”; you students wondering what to say in an essay to indicate you not only know how to write, but understand the reading material you’ve been assigned; and you speakers who are trying to “connect” with your audience.
Yes, EVERYONE has something to say. The real issue is whether you believe that what you say is important.
So, up the ante, raise the stakes, take a chance, call on someone, write something for someone, speak to someone.
How?
Stay tuned.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Do your listeners have a “stake” in you?
Last time I talked about voters’ “investment” in Barack Obama, then moved to the general “investment” that listeners have in a speaker.
The word “investment” has an initial economic context, as do the words “equity” and “own”. But all these terms of moneyed wealth have increasingly taken on new fields of operation in the realms of the psychological, spiritual, and political.
So when we talk about a speaker and his or her audience we are concerned about the “currency” he or she offers the audience in their “transaction” and whether or not they accept the “gift” of that currency.
If the audience accepts the transaction, the speaker now has made the listeners “stakeholders”, at least implicitly. If the listeners begin to become at least partial disciples of the speaker, they and what they pass on comprise dividends provided by the intellectual “stock” of the speaker splitting in the event of the speech.
Curiously, the more “equity” the speaker “loses” by the spreading of his or her intellectual “wealth”, the more influential that speaker becomes through this wide dissemination of his thought. Listeners become followers, owning, at least in part, the words and ideas of the speaker.
Now, we have returned to one of the earliest distinctions I shared with you, from Kirkegaard, in my first blog post, the difference in the Danish thinker’s mind between the genius and the prophet. The prophet’s message does not “dilute” or “splinter”; a genius’ thought, however, gets “broken down”.
Keep ownership, equity, investment, and the currency of your ideas in mind as you plan your next communication.
Ask yourself whether you should worry about the essence of your ideas “breaking down” or not.
Stay tuned.
The word “investment” has an initial economic context, as do the words “equity” and “own”. But all these terms of moneyed wealth have increasingly taken on new fields of operation in the realms of the psychological, spiritual, and political.
So when we talk about a speaker and his or her audience we are concerned about the “currency” he or she offers the audience in their “transaction” and whether or not they accept the “gift” of that currency.
If the audience accepts the transaction, the speaker now has made the listeners “stakeholders”, at least implicitly. If the listeners begin to become at least partial disciples of the speaker, they and what they pass on comprise dividends provided by the intellectual “stock” of the speaker splitting in the event of the speech.
Curiously, the more “equity” the speaker “loses” by the spreading of his or her intellectual “wealth”, the more influential that speaker becomes through this wide dissemination of his thought. Listeners become followers, owning, at least in part, the words and ideas of the speaker.
Now, we have returned to one of the earliest distinctions I shared with you, from Kirkegaard, in my first blog post, the difference in the Danish thinker’s mind between the genius and the prophet. The prophet’s message does not “dilute” or “splinter”; a genius’ thought, however, gets “broken down”.
Keep ownership, equity, investment, and the currency of your ideas in mind as you plan your next communication.
Ask yourself whether you should worry about the essence of your ideas “breaking down” or not.
Stay tuned.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Investments, Expectation, Silence, and Deconstruction or Hedgehogs, Foxes, Part II:
You may have thought, given my last post, that I prefer foxes.
Well, I may be a fox by temperament, but foxes don’t have it easy.
Look at Barack Obama.
Right now, he’s got these amazing poll numbers. People appear to understand the complexity of his mission; they appear to have patience; they appear to have a high regard for his capability.
But, people don’t just appear to have high expectations of him. They DO have high expectations of him, and all these expectations are different. That myriad of expectations is one problem; the other problem is that, for each of these voters, they value certain things above others, and they think that Obama shares the same hierarchy. He cannot possibly share the same hierarchy of values with everyone, and when all those folks who have an “investment” in him (“He’s the one I’ve been waiting for”) start to worry that he’s not who they are, his situation will get even more complex, even more difficult, because on the one side, the problems won’t go away quickly, and on the other, the expectations will become part of the problem.
Let’s follow this notion of expectations away from politics and back to speech and communication in general.
Up above, I talked about “investments” and “expectations”.
What if you’re speaking to someone, your words interest them, and you fall silent.
Well, if you’re an actor on a stage, and the folks in the audience think you forgot a line, they get anxious.
But, what if, like Harold Pinter, the recently deceased and revered “angry” British playwright, you build in silence as part of the play?
Anxiety is one audience reaction to silence; increased interest is certainly another, IF the speaker had their interest in the first place.
What has happened during the silence? Deconstruction.
Deconstruction, as a literary theory, tells us that the written text has an obvious, above the line meaning.
But Deconstruction also tells us that texts also are filled with below the line, hidden meanings.
When you, the speaker, have them, then hold them with silence, you are increasing their expectations…you are adding the words and meanings inside the listeners’ heads to the overt speech you have just paused during. Now, when you open your mouth and add words to the silence of your pause, you suddenly have a dialogue where you had monologue.
This moment of renewed speech is dangerous, yet full of possibility, not unlike the moment of truth Barack Obama faces.
Stay tuned.
Well, I may be a fox by temperament, but foxes don’t have it easy.
Look at Barack Obama.
Right now, he’s got these amazing poll numbers. People appear to understand the complexity of his mission; they appear to have patience; they appear to have a high regard for his capability.
But, people don’t just appear to have high expectations of him. They DO have high expectations of him, and all these expectations are different. That myriad of expectations is one problem; the other problem is that, for each of these voters, they value certain things above others, and they think that Obama shares the same hierarchy. He cannot possibly share the same hierarchy of values with everyone, and when all those folks who have an “investment” in him (“He’s the one I’ve been waiting for”) start to worry that he’s not who they are, his situation will get even more complex, even more difficult, because on the one side, the problems won’t go away quickly, and on the other, the expectations will become part of the problem.
Let’s follow this notion of expectations away from politics and back to speech and communication in general.
Up above, I talked about “investments” and “expectations”.
What if you’re speaking to someone, your words interest them, and you fall silent.
Well, if you’re an actor on a stage, and the folks in the audience think you forgot a line, they get anxious.
But, what if, like Harold Pinter, the recently deceased and revered “angry” British playwright, you build in silence as part of the play?
Anxiety is one audience reaction to silence; increased interest is certainly another, IF the speaker had their interest in the first place.
What has happened during the silence? Deconstruction.
Deconstruction, as a literary theory, tells us that the written text has an obvious, above the line meaning.
But Deconstruction also tells us that texts also are filled with below the line, hidden meanings.
When you, the speaker, have them, then hold them with silence, you are increasing their expectations…you are adding the words and meanings inside the listeners’ heads to the overt speech you have just paused during. Now, when you open your mouth and add words to the silence of your pause, you suddenly have a dialogue where you had monologue.
This moment of renewed speech is dangerous, yet full of possibility, not unlike the moment of truth Barack Obama faces.
Stay tuned.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
The Hedgehog and the Fox
If you haven’t noticed it yet as an “embed” in the “coverage” of communication that my blog is so obsessed with, I’ll hit you over the head with it now: word choice.
In order to talk about word choice, I need to start off with something else.
One of the foremost political thinkers of the 20th century, Sir Isaiah Berlin, went back to ancient times to talk about his symbols for totalitarian and non-totalitarian political systems, the hedgehog and the fox.
The hedgehog knows one big thing.
The fox knows many smaller things.
While I won’t attempt to “unpack” these symbols in terms of Berlin’s larger political points, I will talk about them in terms of word choice.
But first, a relevant anecdote.
In my ill-fated initial attempt to get my master’s degree, in Medieval Studies, I entered the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame.
Let’s just say that things didn’t work out, and I left after one semester.
But I did learn something quite important intellectually.
I wasn’t a hedgehog. I was a fox.
Graduate school is a hedgehog experience, and I was lucky enough to realize quite early that temperamentally, at least at that time, I was NOT happy learning more and more about ONE BIG THING (or as some people term graduate school, "learning more about less and less").
How does that relate to word choice, and how does that relate to you and speeches?
Here’s how:
When you make speeches to people, in your preparation, your organization, and most important, your word choice, you need both some hedgehog and some fox.
You need a kind of intellectual center about you that the hedgehog represents, a kind of compass that lends continuity, credibility, and authenticity to every speech you do.
However, you also need the flexibility, variety, and varied excitement and inspiration that only a fox can have to “mix it up” and speak appropriately and uniquely to each and every audience.
Still not getting it?
Here’s another way of thinking about the difference I’m trying to get across.
The sharp-edged political conflicts between and among notions of what characterizes a president certainly has killed many a forest and is likely to kill more.
However, people do agree that Ronald Reagan and George Bush the younger have similar characteristics.
Presidents Carter, Clinton, and I suspect Obama are in a different category.
I am not making a value judgment, talking about effectiveness, intelligence or any other preference.
Instead, I will characterize Reagan and Bush 2 as hedgehogs.
Reagan talked about Communism for decades. Finally, sufficient people agreed with his ideas that they elected him President.
Bush 2 talked about terrorism relentlessly. At first, after 9/11, he apparent steadfastness and singularity of speech and ideas seemed exactly the sort of leadership needed. When the language persisted despite the difference in contexts that marked the later part of his administrations, doubts increased.
Carter, Bush I, Clinton, and Obama are foxes…they can work on many things and re-invent themselves in the midst of a presidency. This sort of flexibility can be just as valuable as leadership, and it can also appear to be “flip flopping”.
The hedgehog’s obsessive urge is to continually grapple with a single set of terms of reference in the world; in terms of leadership, a kind of intellectual fundamentalist can make a difference in the right context. A leader who appears to only care about one thing and expresses that one thing over and over again in a crisis, IF he reaches a point of “congruence” with his constituents, can point the way forward even in the darkest time.
However, when contexts change, the variety of tools that the fox employs can be more useful.
After almost three decades in my intellectual “Long War”, I was sufficiently established as a fox that the idea of pursuing an advanced degree not only didn’t turn me off, I enjoyed the process, and I was ready for it.
Never forget who you are or what’s important to you when you talk to people.
In between those times, never stop learning, never stop creating new terms of reference, new ways of considering context and terms, never stop trying something new, because communication means getting something across to people…always try to outfox yourself.
Stay tuned.
In order to talk about word choice, I need to start off with something else.
One of the foremost political thinkers of the 20th century, Sir Isaiah Berlin, went back to ancient times to talk about his symbols for totalitarian and non-totalitarian political systems, the hedgehog and the fox.
The hedgehog knows one big thing.
The fox knows many smaller things.
While I won’t attempt to “unpack” these symbols in terms of Berlin’s larger political points, I will talk about them in terms of word choice.
But first, a relevant anecdote.
In my ill-fated initial attempt to get my master’s degree, in Medieval Studies, I entered the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame.
Let’s just say that things didn’t work out, and I left after one semester.
But I did learn something quite important intellectually.
I wasn’t a hedgehog. I was a fox.
Graduate school is a hedgehog experience, and I was lucky enough to realize quite early that temperamentally, at least at that time, I was NOT happy learning more and more about ONE BIG THING (or as some people term graduate school, "learning more about less and less").
How does that relate to word choice, and how does that relate to you and speeches?
Here’s how:
When you make speeches to people, in your preparation, your organization, and most important, your word choice, you need both some hedgehog and some fox.
You need a kind of intellectual center about you that the hedgehog represents, a kind of compass that lends continuity, credibility, and authenticity to every speech you do.
However, you also need the flexibility, variety, and varied excitement and inspiration that only a fox can have to “mix it up” and speak appropriately and uniquely to each and every audience.
Still not getting it?
Here’s another way of thinking about the difference I’m trying to get across.
The sharp-edged political conflicts between and among notions of what characterizes a president certainly has killed many a forest and is likely to kill more.
However, people do agree that Ronald Reagan and George Bush the younger have similar characteristics.
Presidents Carter, Clinton, and I suspect Obama are in a different category.
I am not making a value judgment, talking about effectiveness, intelligence or any other preference.
Instead, I will characterize Reagan and Bush 2 as hedgehogs.
Reagan talked about Communism for decades. Finally, sufficient people agreed with his ideas that they elected him President.
Bush 2 talked about terrorism relentlessly. At first, after 9/11, he apparent steadfastness and singularity of speech and ideas seemed exactly the sort of leadership needed. When the language persisted despite the difference in contexts that marked the later part of his administrations, doubts increased.
Carter, Bush I, Clinton, and Obama are foxes…they can work on many things and re-invent themselves in the midst of a presidency. This sort of flexibility can be just as valuable as leadership, and it can also appear to be “flip flopping”.
The hedgehog’s obsessive urge is to continually grapple with a single set of terms of reference in the world; in terms of leadership, a kind of intellectual fundamentalist can make a difference in the right context. A leader who appears to only care about one thing and expresses that one thing over and over again in a crisis, IF he reaches a point of “congruence” with his constituents, can point the way forward even in the darkest time.
However, when contexts change, the variety of tools that the fox employs can be more useful.
After almost three decades in my intellectual “Long War”, I was sufficiently established as a fox that the idea of pursuing an advanced degree not only didn’t turn me off, I enjoyed the process, and I was ready for it.
Never forget who you are or what’s important to you when you talk to people.
In between those times, never stop learning, never stop creating new terms of reference, new ways of considering context and terms, never stop trying something new, because communication means getting something across to people…always try to outfox yourself.
Stay tuned.
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