Words

Words

‘It’s only words and words are all I have to steal your heart away…

Words, an array of sounds put together to express something.  Love, hatred, anger, anguish, passion, compassion. And so it goes on, encircling, tightening, loosening, crushing, relaxing the entire ambit of life.

Words came into being as an amalgamation of sounds. And words express emotions. The question is, to say or not  to say? To use or not to use.? What do we do with words? When we are asked to talk on a subject we do so, putting our thoughts together and stringing them neatly in a series of words. Using the right word for the right thought. But what happens when one is in the flow of a conversation or in the midst of a heated discussion?

Here lies the rub. Sometimes the words are not well chosen. Not enunciated in the right note. Something is meant and something else is understood.  By the time a word leaves a mouth and reaches another ear the meaning may have changed just because of the intonation or the pause or the emphasis.  The word which was meant to express a thought that has germinated in one’s mind  may reach the reach the other  to ignite a thought that the germ may have nothing to do with! How do we rectify the situation then? The thought has boomeranged, but the word has got stuck in the supposed target.

The feeling is one of helplessness. You cannot retract a  spoken word once it has left your mouth. You may be able to erase a written word but not a spoken one.  So then, what does one do?

Think before you speak. It’s okay when you’re delivering a prepared speech. Not always at the rostrum but sometimes even at home, when you’ve thought over something, over and over again, ruminated, chewed the cud et all , before pronouncing the words at what you think is an appropriate time. But then voila!  The resonance is disturbing. Not at all what you were expecting.

So before you enunciate you should be at the controls  tuning the tone,  adjusting the volume, emphasising the right syllables, making the pregnant pauses.

I am a professional ‘talker’  having been associated with the radio, television and various production houses.  I have delivered rather well ( even if I say/write so). Others have vouched for it. But now I find I suck at it  when I am speaking at home. I wonder why. Is it because I don’t work at the controls or is it because I have my guards down?

Writing about words is becoming painful. There’s so much I want to say but I don’t know how to say it.

 Making conversation comes easy.  Reactions, counter reactions, arguments, different perspectives, beg to differ, surrender, whatever. It’s all in the game. But a discussion is serious business. You have to cross your ‘t’s and dot your ‘i’s correctly, in a matter of speech . Or else there’s mayhem.

Maybe that’s why people are trying to speak less these days. It’s compressed speech. ILU ILU, LOL, kind. I seldom know what movie we are to see. The names are pronounced in letters of the alphabet. It's a quiz. In our times we were told of  abbreviations like the NATO / NAM/ ASEAN/ SAARC/ UNO.  These were matters which did  ally with globalisation.  Now if you ask a youngster  what they stand for, they might reply WTF?  And you would or perhaps wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.

 What I’m afraid of , is that we are heading towards regression in speech. We will soon be making noises to communicate. Having dismembered millennia of putting sounds together to mean something. Are we climbing up the Tower of Babel? My six month old grandson has started making noises. Am I to learn to speak like him in a babble of sounds or will he learn to speak like me? We must communicate. And be understood. Effectively.

 Right now I have done my bit. I have spoken my words in writing.  The pen, rather computer , is mightier than the sword. Action speaks louder than words. I have acted. I have written a blog. Anybody reading?