Lauren Flanigan - The landscape of language....

Hey Everyone,

This is in response to some of the emails I got from you guys after the last class. They were full of great questions and observations and, I thought, worthy of class discussion and not individual emails.

One of the hardest concepts to embrace in any collaborative relationship is that change and challenges to our way of thinking and delivering information implies criticism. That asking us to consider other approaches to material implies that something we are doing is wrong and needs change. In fact, what is being asked is for us to consider challenging long held beliefs and assumptions and come to our conclusions differently. 

To visualize not just the scene but the words that make up the scene is another step in the process. I want you to consider becoming active listeners and responders. To use Maggie's word 'languish' as an example: a quick look up of the word and we get faint, feeble, and ill as examples of the definition from the Old English. So we have to ask ourselves, what was I like before that was the antithesis of these words? What did I look like, sound like? What did I do when I was vital, alive, energetic, and healthy? How am I different now and what does that look like? Why would I describe myself using this word and not the thousands of others available to me? I know that I have an intellectual understanding of what this word means and what it means in the scheme of the scene and the aria but what is my visceral understanding? Am I repulsed by having to characterize myself in this manner? Ashamed? How has or has my outward appearance changed? What compromises have I had to make? How many excuses or lies have I told because I find myself faint, feeble, and ill? How have I justified this to those I live with and what has been their reactions?

It's not about what am I not doing to make my point - the conversation is always - how can I make my point differently? How can I make it more viscerally? Urgently? Poignantly? Comically? and so on........

The same gestures which accompany a discussion of sports cannot be the same gestures which accompany an outpouring of emotion over failure to secure the hand of a loved one. The words we use to describe those situations are different. 

The words we sing/use create different visual landscapes for the listener. What is ours? Do we have one? If not, why not?

More later........Lauren