Saturday, August 31, 2019
Could anyone ever really describe his or her life? Detail every bump, so to speak? List every book read, every mental connection made, any coinciding event inner and outer? Obviously not, and if it could be done, who would want to read it? The equivalent would be to have a map on a one-to-one scale. As your professor said, so many decades ago, if you had one, where would you store it? The same goes for maps of moments. However, consider expression to be a process of successive compression.
Interesting way to put it. Selective editing, is what I might have said.
Successive compression gives the sense of it a little better.
- First is the living of it, then
- the rough recording of it in memory, then perhaps
- the jotting down of notes as in journal entries, then perhaps
- the transcribing of some of those notes, then perhaps
- the compilation of such notes as articles or books.
At each stage it is a process of selection and arrangement (even if only by chronology or by topic). The process swells and contracts, for at every stage in the process, notes may need to be more fully expressed, and items discarded as irrelevant. Selection produces clarity. A literal transcript of everything would be useless until condensed according to the need of the user. And this is an exact description of the process, the nature, and the use of ILC.
I remember how hard it was at first, sensing various possible phrases and meanings, and not knowing which was more accurate. I often could not tell which of two words or phrases or even, sometimes, directions, was what “the other side” wanted to convey. I learned to go ahead without so much angst, and eventually I realized that intent is more important than exactness, provided I was intending to do my best, the message would come through.
Eventually you came to see that any of the alternatives would go where we wanted to go – which is what you just said, but we thought it was worth the rephrasing and repetition. Now speak of Jones Very, and you will make our point.
Jones Very was an intuitive, a poet, who came to Emerson with transcriptions (so to speak) which Emerson recognized as genuinely inspired. However, Very would not allow a word to be altered, because, as he said, it was the word of spirit. Emerson is said to have drily remarked that it was clear that spirit didn’t always know how to spell.
Yes. You see, Jones Very was in touch; he received. But he placed too much reverence on the word as he received it, not realizing that he was necessarily part of the process. (Thus, we warned you repeatedly not to treat our words as scripture, but you still aren’t comfortable rephrasing or paraphrasing what you get this way.) Intent is the determining characteristic. All else is technique and detail. To those who read your reports: Lighten up, free yourselves to receive by realizing that you will always be part of the process; confide that mistakes are always corrected in process, provided sincere unflagging intent to be in genuine and helpful connection.
Take this encouragement and go forward.