January 1, 2014

January 1, 2014

Dear Reader, 

This writer writes with a letter type which is called impact.  By doing so, he brings what he writes under discriminative control of how he sounds. He speaks with a voice which makes the meaning of what he says come through.  It is necessary to speak with another letter type and to produce a different tone, so that the reader can hear what is said instead of only just casually reading it.  If the reader doesn’t realize that this writing is the same as speaking, he or she isn’t getting what this writing is about. Most writing doesn’t equal speaking because the tone doesn’t require the listener to hear it. Casual reading is the same as inattentive listening, but it isn’t caused by this writer.  Unlike other speakers, this writer alters his tone of voice. He isn’t stuck, like most talkers, to a dissociative sound and doesn’t want his readers to be passively involved with what he says. He speaks only to active readers and makes sure these words aren’t lost in a sound that only distracts.   

By reading these bold words, the reader responds, because the tone of this text impacts their autonomic nervous system. Unless these words have that effect nothing is accomplished. Their intensity level restores the listener’s ability to listen. Just because readers can read doesn’t mean they listen and understand. They can only understand what is made clear to them. What is usually conveyed is that it is okay not to interact with the written words. Readers were made to believe that interaction wasn’t needed, but this author argues that it wasn't allowed. The listener has been lulled into a passive, slavish stupor by most of what was said. However, this tone of voice makes sure this content elicits a nonverbal response. The physiological reaction that this writer creates makes the reader embody the communication.   Readers don’t hear what is said as long as they disconnect from their body.Books and other technologies, which make us more advanced, have taken us further away from our conversations with each other. Our tone of voice, which supposedly made others listen to us, has been minimized by tools, which alienated us from our nonverbal experiences.  We were led to believe that our dressed- up words mattered, that our elaborate representations of the real world sufficed, but we became an emperor without clothes. We wanted to be verbal emperors, but we bought into a communication in which we are without our voice.  

     

We are without words, because we have seemingly lost our voice.  Yet, our voice is much stronger than we usually allow ourselves to sound.  Our habit of not letting our voice sound the way it is, is such that we speak with a sound which isn’t ours.  The sound which we ourselves create also determines how we listen.  When we repeatedly drown out the sound that pertains to our strength and our clarity, we become deaf to those who know from experience that sounding good is the same as feeling good.  They don’t try to sound good, they just do. And, they don’t accuse anyone who doesn’t sound good from not sounding good, but they state the simple fact that trying to sound good prevents sounding good. Only they can say clearly:  if you don’t sound good, you sound terrible! This is not an insult or an argument. This is how you sound. The either-or-quality of your sound may not have occurred to you, but it did occur to this writer, who stimulates you to sound good again.  

By getting your voice back, you will find the words to explain what you think and feel. Nobody can do this for you. We can’t speak for each other. This writer isn’t speaking for the reader. This writer is speaking with  the reader. The reader who understands this writer will speak with him.  That reader, the listener, will try to get in contact with this writer, the speaker.  That reader will succeed because he or she will speak with anyone who listens. Few people know how to listen because few have been listened to. We have to do our own talking, but we also have to do our own listening. As long as we don’t do our own talking, we aren’t capable of doing our own listening. This is why we don’t  and can’t listen to ourselves while we speak. We listen to others, that is, we try  to listen to others, but we can’t  listen to others as long as we don’t listen to ourselves.  We want others to listen to us, but, since we don’t even listen to ourselves, they don't listen to us.  

  

No matter how much we try to listen to others, no matter how much others have been trying to listen to us, we still don’t listen to ourselves. Self-listening requires an entirely different way of communicating. When we listen to ourselves while we speak, we say completely different things from what we are used to. That unusual way of communicating is the only real communication, whereas our familiar way of communicating isn’ t real.  This doesn’t mean we speak in a language which we don’t understand. It means that we strike a different cord with a different tone of voice. These bold letters have served their purpose to say what had to be said.