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{wanted: communication whore} jack wilder I met a man in the nuthouse that once asked me: Son, what’s another four-letter word for intercourse? Before I could utter my favorite word of all time, he looked shiningly at me and said, with teeth missing and all: It’s “talk”. Now get your head out of the gutter. I’ll admit: I am a nymphomaniac that’s horny for a good conversation. It seems that all of my whores have come down with some unbearable, communicable STD. So now I’m in the process of finding new lovers. New cum-munication buckets. I am looking for a new word slut. A correspondence cunt. Somebody that will talk-fuck me real good. I mean, why is that all of my one night stands these days have been so sloppy, and sometimes, even gross? It seems that I have landed in a pocket of the laziest, rudest and most selfish communication lovers that I have ever known. They don’t even care if I cum-municate! Is it too much to ask for? All I want is a good fuck. Er, talk. More than that – when I reach for my naked self under my sheets at night, I am thinking, lusting, dripping wet over this one fantasy that I have: of sustaining a correspondence with somebody. Somebody. Anybody. A sustained, beautiful, insightful correspondence. I’m dying to fuck someone’s brain empty in a letter and in return, have my head raped repeatedly. I hear the old timers scoff at these new forms of communication: text messaging, electronic mail, instant messaging, Myspace, Facebook, etcetera… The old timers ask: What happened to a hand-written letter? And I shrug. Thing is, I’m right there with them. In the last fifteen years, I’ve probably received about the same amount of hand written letters, or queries for one thing or another. The old timers like to scoff at our new forms of communication and I find myself, being of a younger generation – trying to support our methods for making contact. I tell the old people: I like text messaging. I can completely omit sticky greetings and salutations with people. No more awkwardness. Text messaging is straight to the point. I say, electronic mail is convenient. It’s easy. It makes my life a lot easier – what with the type of work I do. In the past, this same work was ten times as difficult. I say that I find it interesting, as a human and a linguist, to see how language is used in instant messaging. I find it interesting to see how language has morphed. What new words have been added to our lexicon. How people have combined some words, omitted others and still abbreviated even more. Inexorably, I am asked: Do you think we’re better off with these new forms of communication? To which I always answer: I have no fucking idea. When I first was answering this question, of whether or not we’re better off, I would answer: yes. We are better off. In supporting my claim, I would cite the innumerable ways in which our daily lives are enhanced (see above). Then I remembered that I’m a reformed misanthrope. (On this day, it’s more appropriate to call me a lazy skeptic when it comes to my assessment of humanity.) But now when I am forced to answer this question, I still hold the same position: we are better off for these forms of communication. You know why? Because it shows us just how fucked up we are. How stupid we have become. And how we are truly embarrassing ourselves. Truly we are the unsociable, sociable creature. We are forced to be social, but boy do we suck at it. I would like to look at this embarrassment by employing something that Jack Kerouac said: It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. To begin, I want to comment on what we say. Sure, we have a complex language system. And for the most part, we know how to use it. We conjugate verbs, create simple and complex sentences. We actually illustrate a wide aptitude in our linguistic dexterity. So, why is it then, that we can’t spell the word, “embarrassing?” That’s pretty fucking embarrassing, if you ask me. It is believed that, in oral cultures – knowledge was passed down through spoken word. Things were learned by articulating their pieces of knowledge, rhythmically. The rhythm was the device to help the memory make it stick. In this, it is also said, that because of how knowledge was passed down – orally – intelligence was a communal thing. Not an individual thing. I sometimes wonder if we are able to bear the own weight of our intelligence. I wonder if we are willing to bear the full responsibility of our cognitive processes. Now onto the latter half of Kerouac’s quote: How we say what we say. While I agree with the notion our lives can be enhanced, and while productivity can be expanded with these new forms of communication – I also agree with the idea that our new forms of communication have made us lazier. More apathetic. And busier. As a result my last year has seen some truly bizarre behaviors: Inappropriate abbreviations. I am wondering: is too much to spell-out the word “to” instead of using a “2”? The same holds true with spelling-out “see” instead of employing a capital letter “C”. I don’t find any of this clever or helpful. At best I find this all very juvenile, threatening and really: gross. It feels as though our own users of language are raping it with the grocery-store-express-check-out-line efficiency. Surely it’s not the academics that are employing these methods. It’s the stupid people. And we all know that the dumber you are, the more kids you’re apt to have (yes, Mormons, I am talking to you). Laziness. I believe that abbreviations within our modes of communication are an example of laziness. This is beyond a simple greeting line, or a signature following the body of your correspondence, especially in email. As a result of our new forms of communication – people are busier. Now you can receive emails on your phone. And while I just graduated to this technology as of late, I woke one morning to find 27 text messages, emails and missed phone calls on my phone. And this was a Sunday. In part, I don’t blame people for the laziness – because they are busier. Stalkers and pedophiles alike can litter your inbox with garbage quicker than I used to be able to tee-pee our neighbor’s house. + I have found myself becoming irritated with those that don’t respond to my text messages. My emails. I know they’re receiving them. Still, it takes some people three days to respond (doesn’t she know that we were supposed to have a date this weekend?). Still, I am culpable as well. With my profession, I sometimes answer and receive twenty, thirty, sometimes forty and fifty emails a day. That’s on top of the ten, twenty or even thirty text messages I will get each day. By the end of my days I will not even answer the phone – no matter who is calling. And sometimes, I receive a text message when I’m at dinner. And I’m having drinks. And I forget. And so, while forgetfulness is certainly understandable – I do think that our modes of communication draw these human infirmities out of us. And it is these modes of communication that have concretized the idea that: we suck. And still, I do believe that our lack of etiquette around our communication is indicative of our modes of thinking: Our simplistic polarizing ideologies, our loss of chivalry and anything that is thoughtless or takes more than five minutes to engage with (goodbye literary industry). And while I may suck as horribly as you do, and while I may fall on my face just as much as you do within my attempts at communication – I am still dying, lusting, fantasizing about a good correspondence. A hot sentence. An appropriately-punctuated email. A clever salutation. Idiosyncratic and playful syntax. A diverse and provocative vocabulary. An original idea. Eh, in all reality: I’d probably just take some good punctuation and get off with that… So, dear reader, here is the imperative: Get me off and do something unheard of – write a great letter, to me: jackwilderwrites@gmail.com. |
