Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Pajj blathering, as Pajjes tend to do.

Language is a useful medium for communication - so is art, so is music, so are physical demonstrations and body language.  But all of these mechanisms are imperfect.  There is no way to properly express what I see internally, what my brain is imagining at one particularly instant.

What I am thinking about right now, I can attempt to express to you:  a mountain, with an apartment complex in front of it;  trees waving in the breeze, sounds of birds, particular makes of cars driving by, the precise hues of a Colorado sunset - but I can't communicate to you *perfectly*, so that you feel exactly as I do.

A video?  That might come close to giving an accurate representation, physically, but how do you know what I'm -feeling-, what my reaction would be to this environment, emotionally?  Would I be remembering peaceful moments, companionship, or something more unpleasant?  Do I have any connection to this setting at all?  Would I think it beautiful, or feel irritated by having a rugged mountain blocked by a building?  

The more mediums provided describing a particular scene, the more familiar you would become with that idea, and that situation.  I guess that's why I read so much, about physics, about literature, about everything that interests me.  I want to KNOW it.  I want to be so familiar with that particular idea that I can have a chance at explaining it to another person (albeit imperfectly).  When I think of relativity, or quantum electrodynamics, I want to KNOW it, like I know a lover's body - every freckle, every scar, the pigments, how their flesh feels in every sort of temperature.

... This probably doesn't make a lot of sense.

But that's the point, right?  I'm using only one medium - the English language, as written hurriedly in a blog post - to express a multifaceted concept.  It's deliciously impossible to convey what I'm feeling.

But Jesus, I love trying :)

<3s and stars.