Everything's a Nail

Louise Banks: Let's say that I taught them Chess instead of English. Every conversation would be a game. Every idea expressed through opposition, victory, defeat. You see the problem? If all I ever gave you was a hammer...

Colonel Weber: Everything's a nail.

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Dear Kate,

Since you've missed the prayer meeting I led two weeks ago you've been asking me a couple of times to tell you about it, which I took as your way to say, Do it again, on paper if you must, at all cost.

I declined once and declined again.

It has to do with a human conversation that had happened in a very specific time and space, not something I can recount without taking away from what it really was.

Of course I went prepared, as always, over-prepared too.  And what did I set out to do?  This is what I am going to tell you today.

I went like Louise Banks, the Amy Adams character in the movie "Arrival," to explore with everyone present the language that was spoken to us, and see if we could hopefully engage ourselves in a dialogue with the speaker(s).  I meant "hopefully" in both senses.

The words spoken, in this case, is a passage from John 21: 1-14, with all the verse numbers and title taken away, good-intention distractions that weren't there when the words were first spoken. I held up a sign here and there to encourage awareness of this element or that, nuance and off-screen space, obvious questions we've trained ourselves to ignore, sadly, often with the help of teachers of the "words of God."

I saw myself as a linguist facilitating a kindergarten grammar class.  This is not a put-down on anyone or anything.  We all come as little children.

I will do this again tonight with my small group, a bit differently but really the same exploration.  I asked people to imagine themselves as a movie director staging a scene with the same passage above as their screenplay.

In an email I sent out to the group this past Monday I wrote: "Imagine your choice of music and/or the background sound, your visual strategy (e.g. How far are you going to place your camera?  Close-up, or from a distance?  How at when?), and be prepared to "direct" each actor to play his part.  You will need to explore the interior of each character and guide the audience to observe from the outside."

So I hope here I've somehow somewhat satisfied your request, sprinkled enough tools on the ground for you to pick up more than a hammer.

We are learning to speak a new language, about an alien we've come to have so intimate a dealing with that we've done to it the first and foremost human thing: to give it a name.  COVID-19.  Then we started to build a word-stock of vocabulary and lay down the principles and processes of our creative speaking.  Sentences become paragraphs, words become flesh, and a few story-lines emerged.  Are you aware?  What part have you been playing in this reshaping of our imagination?

"Language is the foundation of civilization. It is the glue that holds a people together. It is the first weapon drawn in a conflict."  So wrote the Adams character.

In the movie a physicist disagreed and retorted, No, the first weapon drawn is science.  Face-mask and vaccine, distance and curve, curses and cures, which country is evil, doctor dumb, politician weak, some of us know them all, quoting experts and high priests to build a new religious order.  What are they asking us to worship, to bow down to?

Are you aware?

Yours, Alex