One of the worst things about writing is striving to capture with words the ineffable ephemera of a truly good life. There are times when naming a thing destroys it. Being familiar with both the phrase ”le mot juste,” and the tradition it represents, I nonetheless find myself swayed by the concept of linguistic relativism, which makes me doubt whether any two people actually hear the same word the same way, especially when phenomena or ideas don’t yield to a simple definition.
I also recognize the cultural fiction which allows verbal fluency to masquerade as intelligence. Language skill makes one a good labeler. It is to words and concepts what a young child’s mason jars with hole-punched-lids is to insects and reptiles. Our cultural institutions promote the idea that a thing is real only if it can be placed in a jar of words. We kid ourselves into thinking the better the description, the more real. But a bug in a jar isn’t the same as a bug in the wild, no matter how much grass you pack in.
So what if it is the other way around? What if the more bounded a thing becomes by the straight-jacket of having been defined and classified, the less the thing IS, in its real essence?
I’ve found the surest way to defile the most precious experiences of life is with hyper-verbal attempts to describe and label them. Saying too much is as bad as saying too little. It is sandpaper that dulls the shine of the truly sublime. Then you’re left only with the memories of what you called it, how you described it, the stories you tell about it, and not the thing itself. This is a kind of curse.
Our certainties, clothed in words, are the worst of us, not the best of us. It were much better for us to leave some things undefined, pure, whole, unencumbered by the clumsiness and inadequacies of language. This is an inconvenient, uncomfortable truth.
Sometimes, a smile, and an ”Aaaahhhhh,” is the best that can be said.
Narratives are everywhere! Pssst! You’re living one, right now!
The word narrative is a noun meaning: a spoken or written account of connected events, a story.
That’s it. That’s the whole definition. There is no lurking subterfuge. There is no attempted brain-washing. There is nothing nefarious about the word.
Are there some narratives that do those things? Undoubtedly. The purpose of some narratives is persuasion. The objective of others is merely revelation. But those who use the word narrative as a pejorative are doing a disservice to the language which is the coin of the realm when it comes to attempted communication.
We all listen to narratives, if only the one in our heads that assigns reasons and meaning to the things that happen in our lives. Some of those inner narratives are devoid of rationale, betraying our own neuroses and biases and fears.
External narratives are all around us. They make up the lyrics of your favorite song. They are buried in visual ads that tell the story of how much sex appeal you will instantly invoke if you buy this brand of deodorant or shampoo. Certainly, they are present in media ”stories”. How could they not be. A narrative is, after all, nothing but a ”story”.
The trick is to recognize both the point of view of a story (narrative), and its object. Is the narrator attempting to show you something, or trying to get you to believe something? If you hear a story presented in the format, People like us, believe X,Y, and Z, I advise that you proceed with caution, someone is selling something.
All stories fall apart unless they are told from a point of view, and unless they have a point to make (Even when the point is entertainment). Objectivity is impossible for a storyteller. The best storytellers can even change points of view so skillfully you don’t know it’s happening. (For a sample, try reading the excellent, Sometimes A Great Notion, by Ken Kesey. He’ll put you right inside the head of Canada Goose dropping through fog to land on a wind-tossed Oregon river.)
I find the following lines from a song to be insightful regarding the role of storytellers.
”The storyteller makes no choice
soon you will not hear his voice.
His job is to shed light
Not to master.”
~ Grateful Dead, Terrapin Station
Narratives are only scary if:
You’re unskilled at determining the perspective of the storyteller,
you find it difficult to differentiate between statements of opinion and statements of fact,
you struggle with recognizing what the story is meant to do, and finally,
you believe everything you’re told.
If that describes you, perhaps earmuffs and blinders are a solution while you learn to do so.
In case you have followed along to this point and missed the clues I’ve dropped:
This essay is a narrative told from the perspective of me. It is my opinion. (Except for the definition above, which is a provable fact). The point is to rescue the word ‘narrative’ from disrepute, so that we may disarm both it, and those who misuse the word against us. Finally, I could be wrong, so evaluate my statements carefully and appropriate them at your own risk.
You have no doubt heard the wise and oft-repeated maxim, ”Consider the source.” Which we should all do, all the time. Even when, or perhaps especially when, evaluating the narrative playing in our own heads.
So the next time someone tries to bludgeon you with the claim that you are just listening to ”So-and-So’s Narrative” about a particular topic, you can smile, nod, and know that they are listening to someone else’s narrative, too.
There is a fine word. And with much urging telling us to find and be true to our authentic selves, I thought I’d take a crack at it. To get there, let’s think on a few things.
How many people have inputs into your outputs?
Asked another way, how many people do you feel beholden to act, or speak, or dress, or function in a certain way for?
Put in the negative, how many elicit constraints upon you, causing you to refrain from acting, speaking, dressing, or functioning in ways you may privately prefer?
Or this, to whom do you feel obligated to make these accommodations?
And to whom is this obligation legitimately owed?
When people live and work in close proximity to one another, they modify themselves accordingly.
A couple remains a couple so long as they conform themselves the one to the other.
’Tis true, the best relationships require the least remodeling to achieve conformity, but all require some. And in the best relationships, the conforming of partner to partner is what gives each the greatest pleasure and fulfillment.
Families sharing the same dwelling and utilizing the same resources find an equilibrium conferring membership privileges to those who are least able to provide for the resources needed for the family’s well being. Parents and siblings reconfigure their lives outwardly and inwardly to conform to the needs of a new baby. They continue to do so as the child advances in years, feeling themselves obligated to conform the patterns of their own existences to provide the necessities of smaller, shorter, younger persons, unable yet to secure the necessaries of life for themselves. Good parents do this for some eighteen years, not of compulsion, but voluntarily.
And is it not true that at all stages of a baby’s life, save in the first mewling months, that child is shaped, and taught, and fashioned to learn to temper the authenticity of its innocent selfishness to the needs and desires of others? Meaning; as soon as is practicable in most households, training begins to teach and shape the baby for accommodation to the needs of the people on whom it depends for survival. Bed time and nap times are employed. An interval of feeding is established. A rhythm develops. A pattern emerges. Some kind of symbiosis evolves that allows the caretaking parents and older siblings to meet the baby’s needs and appetites without killing themselves in the effort.
It is only during infancy, and quite early infancy at that, that the person is authentic in his unconcern for conforming to the needs of those around him. (The possible exception of this is the extreme advance of old-age.) Unaware of, and unconcerned for, others except as means to his own satisfaction, the infant is a living consumer of the attentions, energies, and efforts of those positioned to give him what he wants and needs. This is tolerably cute at one month, but is a veritable nightmare by age two.
So, when we speak of adults rediscovering their authentic selves, and assign any connotation of selfish indulgence as that, and only that, which is truly genuine, we are speaking of that phase of our lives which existed for perhaps three to six months at most, then vanished, as it should have.
Why then, the desire for authenticity? Especially that described as adhering to one’s true self?
No human, save Adam, was created as a reclusive hermit to live out his days consulting only his own whims and wishes.
If cooperation and adaptability are the hallmarks of enlightened humanity, it is no surprise that Eve was formed out of Adam’s rib. She has no being apart from Adam. And it had already been determined by God Himself, and not Adam, that it was not good for man to be alone. Therefore, he lay down and slept, voluntarily giving, quite literally, of his own substance, to provide the materiel necessary for a life other than his own, he having no being worth having apart from her.
And thus, from the earliest story of our race, we can learn that it is others, and our relationships and adaptability to them that gives rise to our lives. And is therefore that which gives both meaning and richness to our lives. If this is not authenticity, what is?
No one is required to yield to the childish, selfish demands of those who have aged out of infancy and who therefore ought to know better. The law of love is naught but an appeal and reminder to humans to love others As we love ourselves.
The interests of every other person are as important and valuable to them as yours are to you. They are not greater in value and have no greater claim. One may voluntarily choose to love another More than oneself, or act in another’s interests, more than one’s own, but if that person is of similar age and situation in life, it is not obligatory, and it is no part of human authenticity requiring that degree of conformity and accommodation.
But let’s consider that it is the very nature of authentic, genuine human-ness to adapt our lives to those around us. Had not our mothers literally accommodated us in their own bodies, we’d have no selves at all, authentic, or otherwise, right? It is accepting, yielding, and adapting to the life of another that makes life possible at all.
This is a dance in which we sometimes lead and sometimes follow. We sometimes give and sometimes receive, This is human authenticity. He who practices these adaptations best is most authentic and most human.
Walter Cronkite, signing off for the last time in 1981
Saturday, March 6, marked the fortieth anniversary of Walter Cronkite signing off the air for the last time.
And that’s the way it is.
1981…No worldwide, omnipresent internet…no social media…CNN less than a year old. No news on FOX (well, that hasn’t changed), but, otherwise, it’s a different world.
I’m old enough to remember Walter Cronkite as the consummate newsman. He was trusted.
The anniversary got me thinking about how the word ”news” came to mean the entire apparatus that discovers, curates, produces, and distributes the stuff occurring during a calendar day. It became weird to me that an adjective got turned into a noun and used this way. We don’t say, I’m gonna be doing some “funs” this weekend, wanna join me? Right? So, I got to pondering.
I figure someone, no doubt a marketer, came up with the word ”news” as shorthand for the Press.
But then, I thought, ”the Press”, is just shorthand for printing press; the actual machine that was used to press print onto a page using manually placed typeset letters, and ink. The cadre of reporters, editors, producers, etc. could have just as easily been called the ”page”, the ”type”, or the ”ink”. But ”press” became the de-facto, catch-all substitute to mean professional journalism, what is also sometimes called the ”fourth estate” .
Hmmm. Let’s think for a minute. At some point in past history, say around the time of the Colonies, there were relatively few printing presses, therefore relatively few public information journals. There were only a few existing publications we now refer to as ”newspapers”, and these were limited by the cost and time involved to set up and print an edition. Maybe they could afford to print a two-column, single sheet broadside, once a week. Then, a time came when the publishers realized if they printed a daily edition of their paper, they could charge more to advertisers, and amortize the costs of hiring teams of full-time typesetters, and the ”Daily” was born.
These caught on because of course readers wanted access to the most current events; at least those deemed fit to print, which often meant print to fit. So phrases like, ”hot off the press”, and ”scoop”, come into vogue. This created a climate in which reporters and papers were always vying with one another for the freshest information, the newer the better.
By 1900, the competition for readers becomes so fierce that papers would print nearly anything as ”News”: not only the newer, the better; the more sensational, the better. The term ”Yellow Journalism” refers to this period. It’s what is commonly called tabloid journalism. Catchy headlines, spotty reporting, and unsubstantiated rumors are the stock-in-trade of this new brand of ”news”.
Warning: Rabbit Trail:Unfortunately, the remnants of yellow journalism practicioners have stuck around to this day, and are in the midst of quite the revival. Scandal-mongering, non-factual-salacious gossip, and fear-and-anger-inducing disinformation sells. Sadly, many people take it seriously. Not only is there now no penalty for lying to the public, lying can actually confer benefits to the liar, especially if the liar(s) can obtain the complicity of ”news” organs to help with propagation of the propaganda. Claim anything you want, stamp ”news” on it, and gain instant credibility with the intellectually lazy. By intellectually lazy I mean anyone who gets their information solely from television and/or the internet. I regard print media as the true, last bastion of serious professional journalists. YMMV.
Finally, the term ”news” is born as that which is reported, distributed, and consumed as the most recent events of the day. It literally gets its meaning from the French plural noun nouvelles used to designate ”things which are new to you”, and ”things you haven’t heard yet.”
This usage of nouvelles first applied to current events in French radio broadcasts. Information could be presented by radio more quickly than by print. This was decades before television became the go-to medium for current events, ”news”.
But, Cable Things Which Are New To You Network, or Cable Things You Haven’t Heard Yet Network, just don’t have the same ring as Cable News Network or the even shorter, CNN.
But presenting only “news” is a dog chasing its tail. Is it okay to sprinkle in some olds for context? Watch news programming, and the most recent information comes with a banner proclaiming, ”BREAKING”. Which, as we know, is to compete with the proliferation of instantaneous information coming from those highly trusted sources Twitter, FacebookLive, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and various live-streaming blogs, which serve as proxies for legitimate, trained, responsible journalists. Yet, most watchers know even when the banner screams, ”BREAKING”, the information could be several hours old. And hours old is hardly current ”news”, right? But ”RE-CYCLED BREAKING NEWS” definitely won’t work as a catchy banner graphic.
I predict it won’t be long before some clever marketer coins a term for ”Nows”.
Anyway, like I began, the anniversary of the legendary and trusted Walter Cronkite signing off for the last time got me thinking about the absurdity of the word ”news” as used for current events media.
I find it amusing that there is such a thing as the ”24hr News Cycle”. That’s shorthand for anything that can capture the attention of the fickle, ADHD public for one day. Not much!
The news cycle is so meaningless (in every sense of the word), that I think I’d rather watch the 24hr Olds Cycle. It would be like watching M*A*S*H* and Kung Fu re-runs in the student lounge at my dorm in college.
Someone could sign on in a deep, serious voice:
Coming up, an hour of things you’ve undoubtedly seen and heard by now. Just in case you missed it on our sister station when it was News, we present the following Olds.
An hour later the same serious baritone could sign off:
My mind was blown and my soul touched by Amanda Gorman’s recitation of her poem, The Hill We Climb during yesterday’s inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th President of The United States. Her words were inspired and inspiring. Her tone, honest and hopeful.
The text of Miss Gorman’s poem can be found at a number of places online, here is one:
I encourage everyone to read it. I encourage everyone to soak it in and to soak in it.
I happened to hear an interview last night with Miss Gorman during which she was asked if she visualized images as she created her poem. Her response, paraphrased, was that she is a poet working with words and text, not images. She went on to explain how she had wanted to re-elevate the simple power of the word after an era when words have been both misused and used to mistreat, and to mislead.
This resonated with me. Words mean things. Words can build up or tear down. They can bind up invisible wounds or they can cut deeper than a sword to create jagged, pain-filled new ones.
Words are containers of meaning. Speakers and readers of the same language use abstract sounds or squiggles and marks on a page to transmit an invisible part of themselves to their hearers and readers. This transmission of oneself into another by the means of communication is an invitation to a shared world (or the casting out from one); a window to a shared reality (or a slammed door); a link that bridges the gap between two souls (or a wall of impediment).
Miss Gorman’s carefully chosen words, some of which I have excerpted below, are a blueprint of an America that I believe in.
I want to live in and be part of creating an America where:
”…we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know, to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.”
”Because being American is more than a pride we inherit; it’s the past we step into and how we repair it.”
We each have a chance to step away from the brink and into a new way of speaking to and listening to one another. Though we are not all poets; we can, and we must, choose our words carefully, the ones we speak and the ones we listen to. After all, words mean things.
