Turn the volume control down
all the way
till it emits an unembellished dialect
of zeros and ones
and dots and dashes
and everything basic -
unearthed from the camouflaged code
that crawls in the hairy underbelly
of ordinary communication.
It probably never held siege over sound
language
or codes,
but rather steered the rocky seas
at the buxom of perception -
Emotions.
What you hear,
is coming neither from ungainly ears
nor from the paltry human uttering them,
but is the ricochet off
the convoluted chamber
that pumps so you can survive.
Too complex,
and it feels arrhythmic
in the palpitations
it induces,
behind dilated pupils
and gaping mouths,
expelling and intaking air with such frequency
that for a short while
sound of the breath itself
becomes the insurmountable enemy.
Turn it down
to the bare basics.
Fear
Joy
Sadness
Anger
These basics will speak
without varnish
and lay bare truths
that you color with perceptions.
Peel each layer of paint
until what remains
is a silent black.
This is where
you can transmute.
Let the dashes stretch out the dots
and the dots lend finality to
what the dashes desire to continue.
Till only the one that ends
in continuity,
remains
and all else fades into the
heart that beats in fluid twos.
If you set store by numbers,
let the beginning and ending not be the selfsame
infinite yet worthless whole,
but be succeeded by a finite end
- one of the 1.
Now turn it back up.
And you see,
you can speak
without echoes
without ping-pongs
without loud breaths exhaled
into words you are unaware of forming
that carry meanings bearing
borrowed trappings.
You can speak your own tongue.
And now you have it -
the control,
back in your hands.
Image courtesy: Every 90s household's radio's volume control button.
Ever wondered why communication fails? It's so simple - use a certain pre-defined number of words to convey what you think to another. And yet ordinary communication often fails miserably because of the very essence that has escaped the previous "simple" take on it. Emotions.
You see, we're magical creatures with our own little worlds. In these worlds, each word is a different color and weight to us. (As you and I have discussed during our various exploratory conversations.) Excuse me for taking a mathematical example (with my limited understanding) to illustrate the point: If you are to add and/or multiply things - you would use + and x to lead to a number. But if you were to solve for the center of gravity - well then you'd use integration which is a lot more of symbols dancing around x's and y's, then leading to a number. As additional elements are added into the language, the complexity increases far beyond simple comprehension - you would need to learn the basis of such a complexity itself to solve for it! The complexity of emotions however is one that can never be truly resolved. Because neither are we a 100% sure of what we "feel" nor is the person we are communicating with. Simply put, my x is not your x and vice versa. It's often an integration of various factors that we possibly cannot peel back if we were just to have the numeric answer to start with.
So then, are we doomed to misunderstand one another till we eventually stop trying or pass away?
Maybe.
Mostly not - but this requires harder work than Zuckerberg and Musk are putting in for their face-off. It requires painstakingly exploring hitherto unchartered territory - you.
Today's prose attempts to take on a crucial yet preliminary step in solving for communication - being an objective you. Here's to wishing for a Sunday and more, of effective volume control.
As always, look forward to your take on our thoughts: please feel free to drop in a comment or a message and would love to discuss :D
Happy Sunday!
P.S.: I've long believed in binary and morse being indicative if not conclusive of the power of symbols, numbers over words for effective communication. But if you've read some of my earlier work, you'd know that. If not, I'll keep circling back to this in different ways, so stay tuned for more. Paragraphs 8 and 9, derive directly from the visual interpretation of the four basic emotions in morse code and binary respectively. Including both these details here for your own interpretations which I'd love to hear more about:
Morse Code:
Fear (..-. . .- .-.)
Joy (.--- --- -.--)
Sadness (... .- -.. -. . ... ...)
Anger (.- -. --. . .-.)
Binary:
Fear (01000110011001010110000101110010)
Joy (010010100110111101111001)
Sadness (01010011011000010110010001101110011001010111001101110011)
Anger (0110000101101110011001110110010101110010)