Weave a story around this mixed proverb: "Silence is a great healer."
I don't feel like weaving a story around that mixed proverb but I do feel like writing about silence and communication. Who said these creative writing prompts are written in stone, anyway? They're not the boss of me. I'm the boss of me!
When people stop talking, they start communicating. Language can interfere with communication because language limits. As soon as you say something, you've eliminated every other possibility of what you might be talking about. We also use language to separate ourselves from other people. - Joss Whedon, 2008Oh, Joss. You're so amazingly right about so many, many things.
I actually watched one of my favourite episodes, Hush, this past weekend and was reminded of its genius. Even with only about seventeen minutes of dialogue in the entire episode, it manages to speak volumes about communication. And at one point, Buffy suggests killing The Gentlemen by staking them but really ... well, you know what it looks like. The episode is worth it for the great .gif, alone.
In this episode, words get in everybody's way. Buffy and Riley (aka. The Character For Whom I Have Nothing But Irrational Hatred) talk but they don't communicate and can't manage to have their first kiss because they keep babbling. Anya has no idea what she means to Xander and Xander is either incapable or unwilling to articulate his feelings for her. We meet Tara, who clearly has things to say but is too shy and timid to say them. These are the things we're told in the beginning of the episode (where the dialogue is) but by the end, Buffy & Riley shut the hell up and start communicating (and kissing ... blech!), Xander demonstrates just how he feels about Anya when he pummels Spike for what he thought was his sinking his teeth into her, Willow & Tara get a glimpse of just how powerful each other is when they touch their soon-to-be-lesbian-lover hands for the first time and move a friggin' soda machine with their minds (Bad. Ass!) and Tara tells Willow just what a powerful woman she is. It's only when the creepy-as-fuck Gentlemen come to town and steal everyone's ability to speak that they all truly start communicating with each other.
In regular ol' in-person conversation, I have a tendency to get all fucking jumbled up. It's not at all uncommon for me to ask several times, "does that make sense?" and it's rare that someone responds with, "yes, that makes complete sense." I'm much better at writing than I am speaking because I have much more control over what I am and am not putting out into the world. When I write, I can read and re-read and edit and I can make sure everything is cleaned up and put into a nice, tidy message that says just what I want it to say. In person, I can't do that. The minute I say something, it's out there and even if it may have sounded in my head like exactly what I wanted to say, it may not be perceived as such. Like The God of Geeks said, as soon as I say something, I've eliminated every other possibility of what I might be talking about. So, when it comes to face-to-face conversations, I'm almost always trying to make absolutely sure what I *am* talking about is crystal clear. Surely, you can see where I'm going with this ... often, the harder I try, the less clear I and the less sense I make.
Words are necessary, sure. In Hush, Riley needed them to operate the voice-activated elevator that took him down into The Initiative (and fuck you, Joss, for giving me a glimmer of hope that he would be killed off so early on in the season). In order to prevent Xander from wailing on him, Spike needed to say, "I bloody well did not suck the blood of your vengeance demon girlfriend, you sod!" but couldn't. And when Buffy needed to tell Riley to destroy the box that would release the voices of everyone in Sunnydale, she was unable to speak and had to show him and hope he understood what she was trying to say (which he didn't, at first). When he finally does understand what she wants him to do, he destroys the box, voices are restored, and Buffy screams her pretty little slayer head off, killing The Gentlemen. The episode ends with Riley & Buffy sitting across from each other, their demon slaying secrets now exposed.
Riley: Well, I guess we need to talk.
Buffy: I guess we do.
There are a few seconds of awkward and uncomfortable silence and ... scene.
I value words a great deal. But I'm also a firm believer that actions speak louder than words. You can tell me something until you're blue in the face but if your actions say otherwise, I'm going to belief those actions long before I believe those words. Because the way you act / don't act and the way you treat people / don't treat people ... it tells them all they really need to know. No need for "what's he thinking?" or "what's she really trying to say?" or "what the hell does he mean when he says that?" What the person is doing *is* what he / she is saying.
We need words and we need to be able to use them in a way that lets other people in on what's going on in our heads and the bits and pieces in there we want to share with others. But sometimes those words aren't nearly as useful as just shutting the hell up and trusting that once we stop trying to talk everything into making sense, things *will* start making sense.
