Friday, May 28, 2010

Time and Sound

I was talking to my students about visual and oral presentations of argument yesterday. I took them back to Elizabethan times when Shakespeare's audiences were more dependent on the spoken word to get meaning than they were on visual effects or the printed word. After all, most people then could neither read nor write. So they took lots of information in through their ears rather than their eyes. Hence, they were more attuned to the spoken language of the play to understand what sort of light was crossing over Juliet's balcony because there was no electrical source of illumination. Props, light sources and pyrotechnics were not part of the way they took in their world views at the time.



Then I brought the students to the speed changes that have occurred in my life time. My parents had an alarm clock. They wound it every night. They could plainly hear it tick, and if they wanted to know what time it was, they had to turn on a light. They were awakened by an ugly and irritating ringing sound that had to be shut off by touching the right switch. So they were very involved in the process of informing themselves about time. Much of what they learned about time depended on sound.



I have a device in my bedroom that looks nothing like a clock. It shines red, digital figures on the ceiling at night that inform me not only of the time, but also of the temperature outside. It makes a steady buzzing sound in the morning that can be easily tapped to allow me ten more minutes of sleep. At this point there is no message on the ceiling but the digits appear on the device itself. I am much less involved in how I get information about time. I simply use my eyes with very little involvement for my ears.



So that's an example of how contemporary people take in information. We are much more used to accessing our experiences through sight. We use flat screens to learn about our daily lives and take in gigantic special effects when we are entertained at the movies. We are persuaded to consume through graphics of all kinds, many of which require no words to influence us.



Tomorrow morning I will experience a more gentle awakening. My sister will rouse me around four a.m. so they we can be at Owl Grove by dawn. We hope to re-trace the parent owls of last spring and discover if they are raising a new family in the same place this season. We will depend entirely on our ears for information access as we hike through the wooded area and strain our ears for owl noise. We will need to depend almost entirely on the sounds in the environment to learn what we need. We'll communicate with each other at a bare minimum. It will be interesting to see how well we take in information the old-fashioned way. No brightly lit trails, no hidden speakers, no road signs, and not a single arrow will point us on way. Our ears will have to do the majority of the work.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Details and Multi-tasking

I'm at the liquor store. It doesn't open until 11:00 and I wonder why. But I take some time to continue reading the interesting article in "The New Yorker" about these people from the United States who lived in China for many years and then moved back to the U.S. The differences between the movers there and here was amazing. In fact, the difference in the social behaviors between the people of the two countries was amazing. And then I go into the liquor store after being pushed aside at the door by the people who wanted to be first. So as I'm looking for some "good" vodka and pretending like I know what that is, I get sidetracked with watching the customers-the man with the rubber hand, the tiny, fat woman with a voice like a cartoon character, the furtive man in the business suit-until I finally just grab something and stand at the back of the line to pay. My, those customers are fast! They all know exactly what to buy.

On the way home, I study a woman I've seen once or twice who gets on the #33 bus wrapped in a long, fleecy, self-belted garment that's really a robe. And then I go to my knitting group and one of my co-knitters tells this story about her parrot which she's had for 33 years and how if you get a parrot you'd better prepare for a life-long commitment because they live as long as humans do. Her parrot's name is Hawkeye and she gave him away once for five years when her children were small because he imitated their crying and that drove her crazy.

Riding back, my friend JoAnn told me this awful story about these friends of hers whose daughter died. The child's father, who's really a strange person, took custody of their granddaughter and he won't let them see her. They are in the process of trying to gain visitation rights so the lawyer advised them to have lots of people sit with them at court so the judge can see all the support they have. And they didn't tell the father of the child so he was there with only his new wife and his parents.

So I'm talking on the phone with my sister. I sit in my dark bedroom so I won't be distracted. But I'm really trying to keep from multi-tasking while I'm talking to her and which she can always sense. Then she gets all over me because I don't remember details. But how can I when the world is so full of Chinese moving men, liquor store customers with rubber hands, a parrot that sounds like a crybaby, and a mean father who won't let his eight year old see her grandparents???? No wonder life's details escape me. No wonder I'm no good at multi-tasking anymore.