Newsletter the Twenty-fourth

I had the honor of a long phone call, talking poetry and typography with Robert Bringhurst, renowned poet and author of The Elements of Typographic Style. It was Robert who wrote one of my favorite lines: "Writing is the solid form of language, the precipitate."

It makes sense, right? After all, raw speech is like a cloud: a word or phrase is said, it hangs in the air, it seems to have form, but it doesn't; it's ephemeral and soon dissipates. But writing falls out of language, like rain falling from a cloud, like energy shifting to matter, like snapping the camera shutter at just the right time to capture the emotion, the idea, the moment.

And what is writing but the careful combination of symbols — some letters, some punctuation, forming words and sentences and paragraphs and stories. It's amazing that you can make the tiniest adjustment to a symbol and change the emotion that is conveyed, the meaning of the message.?

The next time you write or type something, see if you can watch the process happen: the impulse turning to language turning to symbol, then pooling on the page. It's fun watching the rain fall.

What the Wh?

There’s an old theatre vocal warm-up that goes: “Whether the weather be cold, whether the weather be hot, we'll be together, whatever the weather, whether we like it or not." I love this because it forces you to emphasize the distinction between two completely different sounds: "w" ahd "wh".

Yes, I am one of those hardy few who still care about diction, enunciation, and clarity. You can imagine how much eye-rolling my teenage kids exercise as I rant (for the 400th time) about why rap and hip-hop musicians should at least care enough to speak their horrible lyrics clearly.

My friend Sara Rosinsky wrote recently about how the word is spelled "whoa" (not woh or woa, etc.), and I thought: If people said it properly, this would not even be a question.

OK, I understand that sometimes "H" disappears. We don't emphasize it in ghost, hour, or rhinoceros… we wouldn't say it in rhubarb or exhausting. The "H" is complicated. The British like to pronounce the "h" in "herbs" and "schedule," while we Americans don't.

But when it comes to "wh" I say: let the "h" be silent no more! What, which, who, why, when, and where! Whetting your lips as you whistle at whales! Whimsical whirlybirds with wheels that whinny and whistle! Say it loud and say it proud.

Why Social Media is Awesome

My favorite thing about social media is seeing interactions between people from completely different parts of my life. For example, my son's fourth grade teacher recently responded to one of my posts… and my fourth grade teacher (from 45 years ago!) responded to him. It was such a delicious moment of temporal and spatial resonance — like a jazz progression of dissonant chords that works even when it shouldn't… or like finding that two streets you often drive down are actually connected in a way that you never knew.

In fact, I believe that one of our core jobs, as humans, is to be a conduit for making connections. Sometimes it's as simple as connecting two thoughts in our own head. Sometimes it's about introducing two people who go on to marry, or work together, or discover they each have half the answer to a puzzle they've been thinking about.

Social media gets such a bad rap, but for all its foibles and misuses, it's ultimately a connector technology.?

So I love seeing my friends from middle-school arguing with my business colleagues, who are agreeing with my distant relations, who are commenting on ideas written by people who I'm looking forward to meeting someday… It's like flashes of electrochemical fireworks charging through a vast network… like the workings of our own minds, as we search for meaning through making connections.

Thank You!

I enjoy sharing my musings… and I enjoy hearing yours! Feel free to follow this newsletter, share it with a friend, follow me on LinkedIn, and send me feedback. You can always reach me at [email protected]