Kareemās Daily Quote: All the things I want to say but canāt. The Empty Box: What happens when āDisclosureā reveals absolutely nothing. The Music Stopped, but the Bills Didnāt: A look at the Hollywood collapse. Lutnick Makes Up His Own Numbers: The retail reality of the Gold Card. What Iām Watching: Hacks Jukebox Playlist: āLover Manā āWhat could be lonelier than trying to communicate?ā Denis Johnson Writer Denis Johnson understood the geography of the human soul better than almost anyone. He had this way of looking at our most basic impulses and finding how they tend to bend towards tragedy. He once wrote, āWhat could be lonelier than trying to communicate?ā That quote is something I feel deeply, even though I know that, at first, it seems it canāt possibly be true. After all, isnāt communication a cure for loneliness? Donāt we believe, to our very core, that if we can just find the right wordsāif we can put them together in the perfect way, at the perfect momentāthe person whom we are trying to reach (verbally speaking) will finally āgetā it? Will finally āgetā us? And we will at long last have bridged the gap between our internal world and someone elseās. But whenever you try to take a complex, messy feeling and use something as limiting as language to communicate it, you realize how much is lost in translation. And if youāre paying attention, thatās when it becomes painfully clear that you can never fully be known. Worse still, you canāt be fully known even to yourself. Because most utterances, no matter how rehearsed or heartfelt, arenāt what you meant to say at all. Which leads you to wonder, who is this āIā whoās communicating itself so shabbily? Iāve felt this when being interviewed. Iāve felt it scribbling notes for a book or an article at three in the morning. Iāve felt it re-reading the words I just wrote. Itās this āthingā inside you, wanting to come outā¦but the second you try to hand it to someone else, it becomes diminished, less than. The ālonelinessā Johnson was talking about is the space between what we mean and what is heard. But hereās the silver lining: when we stop pretending that itās easy, we start listening for the things that arenāt being said. We start looking for the āwires and pulleysā behind the performance, whether itās ours or someone elseās. And we realize, too, that much of our communication is nonverbal, especially with people who are close to us, or who see us every day. Because we can talk 'til weāre blue in the face, but if our words contradict what someone knows of us based on our actions, all our fancy talk starts sounding like the grownups in a Peanuts cartoon: just a bunch of āwah-wah-wah.ā So, whatever it takes, letās keep trying. Because ultimately, in spite of how much I like this quote by Denis Johnson, I do know whatās lonelier than trying to communicateāand thatās giving up on communication altogether.
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