LJ Idol Week #24 - "Babel"

[prog_schlock]

This is my entry for week #24 of therealljidol. Some strong language and epic cluelessness ahead.

---

There are 178 parent languages on our planet with over 1000 dialects
It's amazing we communicate at all ~ "AEIOU Sometimes Y" by EBN/OZNIf I were to describe my cluelessness as a body of water, it would be the Dead Sea of cluelessness. Its waters are still

Comments

[kathrynrose]

Every day on the internet. Once in the Green Room someone called me a misogynist. Yeah. Then again, when I bring that up, porn_this_way likes to bring up the time someone called her on her straight white male privilege. :)

I had a sign language student who made an epic mistake the first time she went to a social event at the deaf services center where I worked. First you need to know she was a very pretty woman in her twenties. She had just walked in the door, and was greeted by a deaf man in his eighties.

She signed "My name is..." and fingerspelled her name, then instead of saying, "Nice to meet you," ("meet" is signed by making a number one with each hand and bringing them together so they face each other with the knuckles of the bent fingers touching) she said, "Nice to fuck you." ("fuck" is signed by making a peace sign with each hand and touching them together so the bent knuckles touch.)

The greeter was very understanding. She was mortified. I barely managed to keep her from fleeing.

[prog_schlock]

Oh my goodness! That is a genuinely epic mistake!

There's a story from the jingju (Beijing opera) world in Shanghai. During the Cultural Revolution, there were only a handful of approved plays. Those plays had been carefully crafted to ensure that they communicated the correct propaganda messages and when actors deviated from the text (even accidentally), consequences were swift and severe

[kathrynrose]

It's hard for me to believe that whoever wrote that play didn't see the possibility of that happening.

I mean, come on.

[xo_kizzy_xo]

My husband insists he must have a communication issue because "everybody" (including me) interprets what he says differently from the way he mentally intends it to be interpreted. It's been a lifelong sore spot for him. Converse to Kate's comment above, he's rarely misunderstood online

[prog_schlock]

Yeah, that's a huge challenge with communication - everybody reads/listens through the veil of their own baggage. In my opinion, he's made the correct decision in choosing words as if he's not going to be understood. At least that way he can be pro-active about trying to get his point across - though you're right that sometimes no amount of explaining is going to help certain people understand. :D

Thank you for reading an commenting!

[bleodswean]

Another wonderful entry from you. I just love how thought-provoking your writing is, and I think part of that is from this unabashed sense of self you share with your readers. You aren't preaching from on high, tottering on a soap box, or making examples of anyone but your self and your experience. It makes your writing personal and human and deeply identifiable.

I wonder, sometimes, about stories similar to your Laura story, if that can be blamed on semantics/language/delivery alone. There is so so so much more going on between people when we communicate and that's how I have always interpreted that Artaud quote. Don't just tell the surface story, find the universal recognition of the experience we understand but will never have....

[prog_schlock]

Oh yeah, I think part of what derailed Laura's offer was our past history - we joked around with each other about many things (never sex though - that had just never been a thing I thought she was even vaguely interested in with anyone) so it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that she was joking then - especially when her word choice was so direct. I don't feel completely stupid about interpreting it that way. Words, man.

Thank you for reading and for the very kind comment!

[murielle]

What bleodswean commented!

The more personal our writing, the more universal it turns out to be. Bravo!

[prog_schlock]

Its funny, Season 7 I spent almost the whole time writing fiction. Its been a real challenge for me to write (almost) exclusively non-fiction this season. If this is to be my last week, I'm cool with how much I've been forced out of my comfort zone this season! Hurray for writing!

And thank you for reading and commenting!

[orockthro]

"They were amazing, in part, because they were never home

[prog_schlock]

Shakespeare was a saucy dude that way. "Thing," as you may guess, was slang for penis. Hamlet, at one point says "The King is a thing..." and everyone reacts with shock. That makes less sense if you don't know the slang. Indeed, one of the great fun things (sic) about staging Shakespeare is trying to take words that have a different meaning in this century mean the things that he intended when he wrote them.

(the example I always give my students is when they hear "wherefore art thou Romeo" they think it means "where are you, Romeo?" - which is nonsensical in context of the scene - when in fact it means "why are you Romeo?" - which makes perfect sense in the scene. An actor needs to make "wherefore" mean "why" for the listener and that can be, for some audience members, an insurmountable challenge)

I love that art released into the wild has a life of its own that provokes responses differently from our intentions. That's one of the great wonders of it. :D

Thanks for reading and commenting!