Bruno,
I so enjoyed reading your posting about your sense of rhythm in
communication. I want to reflect on it here.
You write that "rhythm is simply a pattern in movement." Simply? Would not
the theories and reveries of great musicians inform your own thinking
regarding rhythm? Surely they have. For me, rhythm is something so
profoundly basic to my humanity, but which connects me further with many
other forms of life. When I hear rhythms in music I react. When I discern
rhythms in writing and speaking, I also react. Because of my experience,
my background, I am conscious of the former and latter.
For instance, when someone delivers an address, short or long, I focus on
the rhythm of speech. How does this person pause for effect? Where are
words elided? How is the underlying rhythm supported by timbre and pitch
and volume? In this American season of politicking, I am especially
sensitive to the presidential wannabes and the president himself. In Mr.
Clinton's case, from the very outset I found his speech rhythm peculiar,
in that he "inserts" a unique pause at what are for me stilted intervals
in his sentences. These pauses seem unnatural to my personal ear. Worse,
these pauses always move me to feel an insincerity on his part. From the
very first, when he was campaigning in my state of New Hampshire, he made
me feel this way. I spoke with him personally for about three minutes in
1994 when he visited my plant for an hour. I was responsible for his visit
preparations, and so had the opportunity for the one-on-one with the
president immediately before he left. There were no such pauses in his
intelligent banter with me. They are confined to his public persona, it
seems.
You write:
"If we have a system of communication, where we are trying to create
movement within the other person's bag of concepts, our best hope of
avoiding chaos, of controlling the movement, is to control the rhythm so
that the movement/reasoning we are emiting is in harmony with the
movement/reasoning the other person is able to process. Thus getting a
higher chance of communicating."
Hmmm. Is that necessarily true? I agree with you in some ways, but I also
think that our rhythms should generate a certain provocation, too,
polyphonic at least some of the time, rather than monophonic. At the level
of ideas, we write so often about how many people retire into the status
quo rather than consider new, sometimes disquieting thoughts. It's
natural. But the Academy, this list, Speaker's Corner, etc. are ways to
mix the rhythms, so that they are no in harmony.
I enjoyed reading your thinking about the rhythms in writing. A former
English teacher in high school, I found my communications were too wordy
for the business environment where I now live. There developed a need for
me to have two writings, one for the business rhythm, the other for the
Song of the Reed (to paraphrase the poet Rumi). In the former, brevity,
repetition of words, clarity, singular format; for the latter, the giant
red onion.
Interestingly, I brought to my company a format called Information Mapping
which has become a template for the twelve hundred or so ISO 9001
documents which define what we do to serve our customers. This format is
so amazingly nuts-and-bolts; it allows line workers and product managers
alike to share and understand information in the name of consistency of
practice.
You write that rhythm is all about velocity and pause. I smiled at that
one, thinking about the rhythm method for birth control. Velocity and
pause, indeed!!
Remarkably, your words put not only a finger, but an entire hand on the
matter. At least for me. I like to write my words the way they SOUND in my
mind's mouth. Punctuation, pauses. With much time spent on a theater
stage, and having participated in advanced Mime and Movement training, I'm
keenly aware of rhythms surrounding the body. Jacques Lecoq, in Paris
where I studied, created along with architectural students from the
Sorbonne, a "House of Calm" based upon spaces and body rhythms. Through my
training, I understood intuitively what this meant.
Remember the rhythms of Chekhov? In his plays, we read his actual stage
direction, like "long, long pause." Ah, so difficult to act in such
scenes. The passage of generational, cultural time! And then there's the
gaming in Waiting for Godot, a rhythm so masterful, playful and
captivating, broken by Lucky's tirade rhythm in the second act.
I don't think you need a hand, Bruno. I think you have stated your ideas
most beautifully; that others will respond will demonstrate it so.
I'll end with an enigma for me about this logic we try to bring to so much
of our experience. Rumi wrote this quatrain:
No better love than love with no object,
no more satisfying work than work with no purpose.
If you could give up tricks and cleverness,
that would be the cleverest trick!
Best regards,
Barry
--Barry Mallis, Manager - Training and Development MARKEM Corporation www.markem.com | email: bmallis@markem.com voice: 603 357-4255 ext. 2578 | FAX: 603 352-0525
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>