Communication Of Skill

It is at this time of year that they talk of the blahs. The aftermath of supposed expectation, I guess. The blahs seem to have a cycle that loosely follows the change of the seasons. I feel sorry for the blahs, such a tired and regular schedule. Marching out in January, mulling about in the late spring, poking up in mid summer and early fall. Why after a nice change of damnable routine we are met once again by damnable routine?

It all becomes routine after a while I suppose, walking, running, swimming, jumping, living breathing doing something, anything. After a while it becomes that which we are all trying to escape. It’s what forces us to strive for new experiences. All this bookishness is making me one of several things. Firstly, It makes me sound like I’m from another era. Secondly it makes me restless because I’m not being active.

Although I feel intellectually I have more tools at my disposal, it really just seems like all I have is more scores of metaphor. Or should I say more stores of metric score. It’s all a poetic mess that comes from hundreds of years ago. Slowly reprogramming me into the ‘Earl of Whositwhatsit’. What does this new knowing give me in terms of communication with my community of peers?

Latin was the mode of communication for intellects all over the Elizabethan world. It established what one could regard as a community of some sorts, like the genius club or Mensa. This community of like-minded people could thus find comfort that their words and style were being accepted into a classroom where everyone has done all their readings, and even the most obscure passage has been memorized. But if I understand Professor Kuin correctly it wasn’t what we know as rote memory work that was of interest to the Elizabethans, it was the skill of language use that they admired.

Reciting from memory is like describing an event using words written on a wall. Those words say the detail of the happening but impart none of your own experience. You are simply a mouthpiece. By reading words off a wall you are imparting a certain kind of knowledge. Specifically you are saying ‘Hey, I can read, look at me!’. Or rather you’re saying ‘look I remember how to read and am demonstrating that skill thusly.’ Saying something from memory is of course the same thing “Hey look at me I can memorize! I’m a memorizing machine!’

In class I learned today that there was more going on than simple poems written in the metaphor of a bygone era. That reading ‘Astrophil and Stella’ in Elizabethan times was filled with a certain kind of technical knowledge that made the reading even more enjoyable than it’s A-B-A-B format suggests. 16th century communication was a meta-communication of skill.

What those 16th century smarty-pants-club members where doing was demonstrating the wielding of a skill that would combine with paper to impart to others of the club an experience that was unique to the composer and not the composition.

So what of this world of cell phones and computers? I think people are still interested in how one handles his words with others and of course it is all based on the language and metaphor of our modern day. But what is our skill? The knowledge of the 16th century was seemingly won through birthright, privilege and intense schooling. Where completion of your schooling then finally gave you passage into a community of your peers. It wasn’t enough to be rich you had to be rich and smart. Its like winning the lotto only to discover that you’ve also won 5years of hardcore Latin instruction in a country who’s language you don’t even know- ouch my brain!

What is it that makes us feel that we are in league with those around us? What tool have we all worked for that gives us the sense of passport into an established community? Is it something that I am taking for granted? Or is it something that people have forgotten to talk about. Maybe it’s the reading and writing that I learned in grade one. Now that everyone is literate how special is the mastery of that particular faculty? Maybe we honor that faculty every time we send an email or write in a journal…

Beyond that, I know that I am part of a community, and my friends and I share something unique, I know it and love it yet can’t describe it. I may be held in esteem among my peers for something, even though I may not recognize what that something is. A community exists nonetheless. We all have grown up having access to all the same tools of freedom, literacy and unrestrained expression. It is these tools that we wield to harness this world and demonstrate our skill at living. The adeptness with which I put that skill to use may over time come to be seen as my own composition.

Fitzroy Ford “Bloggers Unite!”