conversation is an engine

Hey, You. With the Talking Stick.

In grade school I filled pages with my scrawling, hoping Mrs. Wheeler would search out the best bits and award me the “A.”

First Grade.

It turns out that later in life most casual readers—along with editors and colleagues and bosses and clients and you and (even) me—would rather not read through my brain dump, thank you. Who’s got time to hunt for sensical bits among paragraphs of nonsense?

Sometimes students still send me lots of words even though I put a low limit on the word count. Why did they do that? I suspect it is an old habit that operates in the background. That habit is to keep writing or talking with the hope that something apropos will pop out as they think it through. It’s a holdover from those early school days.

But producing lots of words is also a thing we do with our friends in conversation. That’s how we process life: we talk through the crazy thing that happened on the way home to try to make sense of it. We discharge armies of words to describe and annotate and react, all to make meaning. Some of those words stick and our friend was kind enough to listen and tell us what we just said, so now we know what it meant too.

But when some more formal assignment pops up, less is more. Getting to the point and illustrating it so I can understand the information and the emotion you feel—that’s worth 23 pages of single-spacing, 10 pt. Times New Roman blather. That’s why we sort through our main points and prioritize them and then cut them back again. That’s why we ask what does my audience know and what do I want them to feel? That’s why I create a context they can hear.

First Job.

I set a low word count to force students and clients and myself to hatchet away at all the words and tell what is most important. Tell the one remarkable thing I can remember. That is more than enough.

Last night I went to a modern dance event where at the beginning, in utter silence, the dancer slowly rotated and looked at every member of the audience—it must have taken 90 seconds. It was riveting. The space she created with that slow move wrenched every audience member from whatever hubbub they just came from. She created a space where the audience could (finally/actually/really) hear and see what this troupe would do.

We can create space and context with our words, whether spoken or written if we choose to.

Next time you have the talking stick, do everyone a favor and say only the top three things. Or even only the most critical thing. Then sit down. Even Mrs. Wheeler will give you an “A.”

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Dumb Sketches: Kirk Livingston