What Are We Talking About?
Like sex, breast-feeding, and chocolate, good communication - a good talk - creates chemically-triggered bonds between the participants that reinforce cultural realities, and sometimes forges new ones.
At its best, communication powers human productivity: buildings are built, lives are bettered, peace is forged. At its sweetest, most mystical, a good conversation gives participants the feeling that they're not alone after all. At its most mechanistic, it keeps us from eating our young.
The Mode is the Message
Communication, of course, is not just talk - it's dance, it's sign-language, it's yelling, it's silence. Like art (and sex and chocolate, I'd add) - you may not know what communication is, but you sure do know what it's not. Harper Lee's eight-year-old heroine, Scout, in To Kill a Mockingbird, describes trying to talk to a tedious cousin, by likening it to "sinking to the bottom of a lake."
This blog examines communication in the lives of people whose work and daily life revolve around communication.
It interviews poets, dancers, police officers, silent retreat participants, radio talk show hosts, construction workers, rock-climbing instructors, waitresses, scientists, and musicians. "How do you know you're having a good conversation?" "Is your mode your message? Talking without talking." "What gets you talking?" "Describe a bad conversation," and "Why talk at all?"
Smart Talk
I'm writing this for a class, learning how to post Podcasts and video, so I'll approach the whole thing couched in the context of current academic research in Communication Physiology - what you're brain's (and the brains of naked mole rats and bonobos and dolphins) doing when you're talking, dancing, singing, and rock-climbing.
Most people interviewed have already thought about or written about their form of communication, so they're already primed. Rarin' to go. So am I. Here we go.
