Arthur Rothstein: Crowds at races,
Indianapolis, Indiana (1938)

" … messier but more fully human …"

My internal dialogue rarely speaks in a single voice. It's more often an ensemble and often an unruly one. It can speak in contradictions or coherence, but it almost always features considerable noise in the channel, as if some connection was faulty. It can sometimes border on cacophony, deafening, dizzying, and more confusing than informing. It provides mixed messages that might encourage any action or any response. That level-headed reactions most often result sometimes seems like a miracle. I hear voices, some convincing recreations of voices now long past and others more similar to my own murmurings. I whisper to myself sometimes so that I can distinguish between emphatic direction and mere distraction. I seem like a ship steered by an unruly committee.

My work has always been rooted in my ability to control that crowd. When it's loud, I usually fail to hear the instructions for the exercise. I have proven capable of handing in papers that seemed to ignore the instructions just because I couldn't hear them above the crowd noise. This was a particular challenge at school, where the proximity of so many people seemed to tangle the signals I received. Even when I was supposed to be studying all by myself later in the evening, conflicting narratives would tussle between my ears. I'd catch every third or fourth word and produce some absurd response to the assignment. I didn't know it then, but most of the time, I was successfully teaching myself how not to learn. My efforts became increasingly frustrating until, as any sane person would, I took to faking that I understood. I successfully faked my way through to graduation, conflicting voices continually narrating.

My first genuine efforts at CrowdControl came when I started studying meditation. I took to the practice like a horse to oats and have maintained the discipline for fifty years. I won't insist that my voices cease when I sink into that state, but I can report that they do seem to abate to the point where they no longer completely overwhelm me. Meditation seems like a form of disciplined distraction. Successfully engaged, I might usefully miss much of my internally generated directions. I miss some of the messages regardless, but it seems an art to miss the majority of them. Sometimes, a single clear one even comes through, a Godsend. I'm not so much focusing upon anything in particular then, but more like unfocusing on the more familiar jumble that usually exemplifies my internal dialogue so that I can nearly hear some silence.

I imagine that others have mastered receiving single messages. I have stopped seeking such a state. I might prefer the ambiguity the crowd provides. Not a laser focus, but the sort of light friction produces, flinty with sparks and flashes and plenty of irrelevant distractions. The richness of incoherent stories somehow seems superior to those carrying single messages, impressionism, and abstraction rather than photographic focus. The channels color each other to produce conjecture teeming with potential meanings. My life came with something other than an instruction manual or a knowledgeable director controlling the crowd. It came with conflicted feelings and a contentious polity that rules by the crudest forms of democracy. I sometimes dream of knowing where I'm going and how before reflecting upon how I've somehow managed before now. CrowdControl seems messier but more fully human to me.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #iAlogue , #PureSchmaltz