It’s springtime here in my part of the world, in upside-down land, which means that all the birds are out in force, hitting double shifts to prepare for summer’s new mouths to feed.
One of my favorites is the humble blackbird.
I don’t know why, I just like ’em. They can seem almost friendly as far as wild birds go. Plus, you’ll often catch them doing this goofy pose in the summer sun where they fan out all their feathers and open their beaks to make this weird v-face like this
:V
I’m a sucker for goofy animal tricks.
The other thing they do is sing. There’s a tall tree nearby where one of the males will perch way up at the top and sing his heart out all afternoon. This has been a spring ritual for several years now.
Today he found a rival.
Another male sat up top of our back fence and sang back to the first bird.
At least, that’s what it sounded like. One would sing, then the other sang back in the pauses. It was like a blackbird duets out in the back yard.
I don’t know if they were actually communicating with each other. It might have been a happy coincidence of timing.
I’m suspicious because animals don’t have language the way we have animals. They can communicate with signs by responding to things going on around them, but that’s not at all like what we do with speech and writing.
No, I’m not going to say more on that today. You’ll have to bear with me.
This blackbird singing contest does raise a real question about what it means to communicate.
Better yet, what it means to MIS communicate your meaning.
With my peculiar dialect of English, I’m doubly prone to failures of understanding. In the US, I’m the Southerner. In New Zealand, I’m the American. That unusual situation creates a high risk of misunderstanding whenever I attempt to get my point across. Even when it goes well, there’s always a little burr of disturbance in the ether.
Sometimes it’s on me. Other times, you wonder if they’re actively out to get you… or not even paying attention.
So it is.
The failures make it all the sweeter when communication works.
When you nail the words just right and they hit like an arrow in the bullseye.
In text it’s so much easier, Socrates be damned. Here in the written word, I can write a character who tells “stories about nothing”. I rarely ever write as the real flesh-and-blood person with my name and address.
There’s an art to this, but a good deal of it is plain old technique, hard-won through consistent practice like any skill.
For my money?
Understanding comes down to the clarity of slow patience and concise, precise wording.
Easy to say, sure.
Half the reason I write here is to get those reps in. Maybe 60%.
Another thing I’m doing is tripling down on my own business-writing business.
Just today I wrote up a little “un-portfolio”.
It’s a sample of my writing that explains why I don’t bother giving writing samples when clients ask for them. Very meta, much post-modern.
I’m making it clear as a church bell on a cold Sunday morning why I won’t do certain things just because “everybody expects it”.
I don’t like working with bureaucrats and robots and I’d rather they sort themselves into the “no thanks” folder sooner than later..
Since I haven’t spent any time nurturing this list for this purpose, you may not be interested in that.
Or maybe you are. Or maybe you’re just morbidly curious.
Either way, you can have a look at this link:
https://mattperryman.com/portfolio/
And if you happen to know anyone with a small business… who isn’t a micro-manger, flake, or psychopath… and might want to chat about using articles or emails to create new business, feel free to send them my way.
(I reward kickbacks.)
Matt Perryman