communicacion...

Communication is so interesting. It's so hard to know sometimes what communication really is. We're given these words to work with when we're young...just these sounds that represent things so incompletely...one word, for example, to represent the complex notion of love...one group of letters to communicate confusion or fear or happiness. It's not fair, really... It reminds me of the line from another Over the Rhine song: "I have five senses, I need thousands more...at least." I feel that way with language...I need thousands more ways to express myself.

Tonight, I was at a coffeehouse with some friends and we were about to leave to go to a different cafe. One girl still had half of her drink left, so I told her I'd stay with her so she could finish her drink. She said no, that it was ok. I figured she was being polite and not wanting to make me wait, so I tried to insist. "No really...you have half of your drink left! I have no problem staying!" But she kept saying no...I was confused and wished she would have taken me at face value for what I was communicating instead of thinking that I really wanted to go but was only trying to be nice.

A few minutes later as we were leaving, I found out that before I had arrived, some guy had bought her that drink and was trying to use it as an excuse to talk to her in German though she speaks no German...it was a funny situation and she was happy to leave half of the drink there along with that guy. Had I known that, it would have changed our conversation greatly. Had I taken HER at face value when she said, "No, I don't need to finish the drink. We can go." instead of assuing that she was just being polite, how would the interaction have been different?

I realized after that conversation that it is difficult for me to take words at face value. I often assume that more is being communicated than what is expressed with words, for better or for worse. And one small word or change in voice tone can communicate so much more.

So, I'm working on this whole second language thing. My natural instinct is to translate the words from Spanish into English since I already have a language as a frame of reference. But I'm trying to connect the Spanish words with the concepts as best as I can in order to understand all the meanings that go along with that word that might not also be attached to the closest translation in English. It's a difficult process, but I love what it has revealed about both languages. For example: When I say, "Me encanta esta cancion" it basically means, "I love this song..." but a more specific translation of it would be: "this song enchants me" which paints a much richer picture in my mind of the same concept. Are the meaning and the translation the same thing? And what is the face value? In the example, which is more accurate: to love (an action that I take) or to be enchanted (an action that i receive)? Perhaps both are correct...but again, it pushes me to the point that words are incomplete...

At this point in the argument/debate/inner dialogue I get frustrated. I know that we have to use the confines of organized language in order to communicate, but I still hope for something better. I think we feel that about a lot of aspects of our lives...we have systems and relationships and languages and "rules"...but we will always wish for something more complete.