Communication - Life 101 lecture

Communication - the imparting or interchange of thoughts, opinions, or information by speech, writing, or signs.

We do this everyday. We impart a knowledge to one another about ourselves in they ways we interact with them. Communication is a physical outpouring of the mess of synapses that fire around in our brains. Humans live to communicate. Since we are hardwired into us the desire to learn, to expand our minds and feel the soul, we spend our lives in the process of communicating with one another. We have figured out so many ways to do this. Between arts, sciences, and with a huge range of options we express who we really are all the time. The most common of all the options we have available to us, the most common is talking.

Words are the way we take abstract ideas that fire across our consciousness and start to express them to one another. with a vocalization set of particular words that most people can understand to relate to certain concepts, we create a social understanding. So when someone says "I don't get this," people who know the same language can recognize that further communication is needed, until the idea can be understood as expressed.

The second most popular is body language. With the raise of an eyebrow you can convey a state of confusion to a certain sentiment. Facial expressions and body gestures can express a level of emotional relation to concepts. Within this category there is a subset of language for people who cannot hear.

Communication is paramount in our lives. We ask and we receive. Something as basic as asking for a vanilla coffee can be returned with you acquiring a vanilla coffee. Letting someone know how you feel can be returned with a response to your own questions of the possibility of your emotional fulfillment. Communication is the only way in which we can act and react to ourselves as well as other people. Specific lines of words can harbor deep meaning.

"leave me alone."
"I want to have your baby."
"get over it, already."
"ok, fine, you're right, I'm wrong, and everything is hunky dory."

But more than the words we also have a range of vocalizations that can help to change the meaning of statements. In a sarcastic tone of voice the following statements become almost opposite to what the words mean.

"good shot there, ace."
"really"
"i've never seen something as magnificent as that before."
"wow, you don't say"

It all works together to convey a message. Along with any message comes a personal emotional attachment to any idea. Through communication we learn how another person might feel to an idea.

One comment I have a partial affinity for is this modern term, almost always said in a non-desirable tone. "Gay." this is used in situations when something you don't like is presented to you, or when your ideas of a situation clash with your good feelings. I take this remark to mean "this is not the jovial experience i had anticipated." No this is not an insult to the homosexual culture, but a negative observation to a situation which is predominantly unacceptable. And it comes across exactly as I mean it every single time.

Language can be tricky, as it is constantly changing. But certain words will always hold the same meaning. It is in this way that we can always communicate with other another.

As a culture of widely varied interests, we have created ways to play with our own communication. The Arts were born for some people who communicate best in other ways than with body or spoken language. Stories were a long situational-based sequence of events recapping to express a particular idea or moral. Poetry opened up the door for people to jot down emotional issues or thought processes to work them through. As we are a culture of creature who likes to experience, these things were a way to learn from a distance. So when your family just didn't get it, you could open up a book and find someone (fictional or rational) who you could relate to. In this way, we are always trying to reach out for the single purpose of interpersonal comprehension. Buried deep in each one of us is the desire to be known. The only way for that to work, since the mechanism we use to work and think is internal, is with an external way to express ourselves. In anyway we can do that, we can create a back and forth play of notions to create a greater awareness.

This is why interpersonal communication is the most important thing in any of our lives. When we have a drive to achieve something specific, we can't always just think it into existence. I cannot sit here wanting a glass of water, but I can ask my roommate to get me one.

speaking of, I have grand thirst. BRB. Water yourselves if you are in need.

I have said time and time again that it is very important to express yourselves, to let out what you might be hiding from one another. The easiest way to be best received is to communicate your intentions firsthand. I do sometimes get deterred when someone asks me permission to do something I wish they would do already, but at the same time, I am grateful for people off the street not coming up and just doing whatever they please to me. Its helpful to use communicate to exchange their purposes before jumping right into the fray for many reasons. The most important being, you then have a chance to not cliff dive to your own demise. Can we really believe that Romeo would have still been a tragic character if he has just been a little more honest about his passions with others? Of course, Romeo is a archetype captured in story, but we being expansive creatures have the ability to look at words written of his actions as a real life example of what not to do.

Now lets look into images and symbols.
I was in the dollar store the other day and I found a collection of little clown statuettes. One in particular caught my eye. As the rest of her kind had a smiling rabbit balloon and a flowing pony tail, I saw first the one who was broken. Her hair stops at the bow and she has no balloon. In relation to the other ones her face is painted in such a way that she looks like she is trying to retain some good vibrations, although she is in such a state. While the others were laid back, seemingly happy for having, this one was poised forward as if pushing forward, trying to stay happy even in her loss. She was the one who came home with me. Sure, people might not want to buy the damaged merchandise, but spending a dollar for such a perfectly honest message was worth the world to me. Now that she is home, and not surrounded by a dozen or more in a better state, she looks almost normal standing between the keyboard and the eMac. Of course I remember where she was, how she was, and how likely her chances to have any existence other than one in a landfill. But now she is another proud decoration in my imperfect world. A perfect example of deficiency. It has become something which I can relate to. And now she is important to me.

This is how communication thorough art works. They are creations of intangible conceptions which tend to be crated in such a way that the reality of an ideal is not completely formulated. Art is always a work in progress. Like a half finished sentence, imagery evokes something primal within us. As a swiped red brush stoke that changes from a thick and solid line to a dry and sparse spattering on a white background is nothing more than that, it can mean anything to any various viewers. In this way communication be either vague, poignant or anywhere on the scale between. Since artistic expression is not held within the confines of language the message is dependent on the individual who accepts it for what it means to them. In this way communication shows us how very colorful it can be. A physical retort on paper, conveyed by hand and arm, based in a very real inability to convey in words the intricacies of a personal state are brilliant to experience, even if you don't understand them. There is a possibility that the artist too, had nothing else but to try document a manifesting collective of primordial incompletion which was no where close to a solid form which could be recognized as any particular thing. Just as words take time to form into lines to use to express a singular thought, art is the process of capturing a moment of pure emphatic nature. But unlike speech, when you express an incomplete thought, it could pay you millions.

With that, Class is dismissed. Next time we will go into the final weeks of class where we will cover "The Arts." Bring your open minds, because we will be delving into the muscle of what really makes us such amazing creatures.