January 4, 2014

January 4, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

This letter type is called Constantia. I choose to write in this tone today because I was angry, frustrated and also a little drunk yesterday night. With the help of these letters, I bring myself back to a regular, peaceful sense of self. Just looking at this letter type evokes a sense of stability in me. Funny, how a letter type can do this to me. I would have never imagined I would be doing this, but here I am. It takes only one paragraph to bring me back to peace of mind, not an analysis of why I was feeling angry. It fascinates me that these letters and not even words, can produce this tangible stabilization. 

The wine tasted very good and didn’t give me hang over. I went to bed early and had a couple of nice dreams. Some hours later, I am surprised to find how well this letter type fits for this moment. Is this my imagination? Because my mood had changed, I had wanted to write with an angry letter type, but, as I looked for such a letter type and so to speak compared different sounds, I found that I was not feeling angry anymore. The shape of the letters that made constantia immediately appealed to me. I wonder if it were the letters that attracted me or if it I choose it because of the meaning of the word?

Since I was focused on finding a different letter type and not looking for a word, I tend to think that I really choose this letter type because of how the shape affected me. If this is true, then I choose this letter type because of its nonverbal property, not because of its verbal quality. This is getting unexpectedly interesting! Because I choose this letter type for its nonverbal impact, I became aware of its meaning and found myself being benefitted by this effect. Moreover, this writing goes very much by itself and none of these words have trouble coming out. This writing represents self-soothing self-talk.

The words I have written make me think of a feeling I have often experienced after I have written something that I found satisfying. After writing a letter or after completing a paper, there would be a sense of accomplishment. With a good letter or a well-written paper, I would derive a sense of pleasure by just looking over the text. While rereading my words I would experience the rhythm of my words. This experience has been described by me as alignment of the verbal with the nonverbal. The verbal is embedded in the nonverbal.  

Another way of saying this is that the knowledge involved in the writing is embodied. To me embodiment of sound is very real. It simply means that sound is a function of shape. A thick organ pipe gives a low sound, but a thin organ pipe produces a high sound. A thick organ pipe never produces a high tone.

The idea that letters of words are nonverbal sounds which meaningfully affect the listening of the reader is very exciting to me. Similarly to spoken communication, when we focus on the nonverbal aspects of what we say, much more can be said then when this is not the case. Inclusion of the nonverbal allows the verbal to become simple and clear, while exclusion of the nonverbal creates many complications. Exclusion of the nonverbal implies that we dissociate from our nonverbal body. Thus, the verbal is disconnected from the nonverbal when we speak with a disembodied sound. 

We are inclined to keep tensions at a minimum, because we are genetically predetermined to avoid them. Our natural state of constancy is not one of tension. Spoken communication is impossible if our ability to deal with stress is so impaired that we are constantly tense. This author strongly believes that we are often tense because we communicate in a tense manner. However, he doesn’t believe that we communicate in a tense manner because we are tense. Tension isn’t created by us, but by our way of communicating. He calls that Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). We gossip, because it relaxes us a little from our tense interaction and we read books to help calm us down. However, our need for comfort isn’t satisfied by superficial communication nor by withdrawal from communication by watching TV or hiding in a book. We need Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), that is, tension-free interaction to comfort us.