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Writer's pictureAishwarya Jayal

Volume Control

Turn the volume control down

all the way

till it emits an unembellished dialect

of zeros and ones

and dots and dashes

and everything basic -

unearthed from the camouflaged code

that crawls in the hairy underbelly

of ordinary communication.


It probably never held siege over sound

language

or codes,

but rather steered the rocky seas

at the buxom of perception -

Emotions.


What you hear,

is coming neither from ungainly ears

nor from the paltry human uttering them,

but is the ricochet off

the convoluted chamber

that pumps so you can survive.


Too complex,

and it feels arrhythmic

in the palpitations

it induces,

behind dilated pupils

and gaping mouths,

expelling and intaking air with such frequency

that for a short while

sound of the breath itself

becomes the insurmountable enemy.


Turn it down

to the bare basics.


Fear

Joy

Sadness

Anger


These basics will speak

without varnish

and lay bare truths

that you color with perceptions.

Peel each layer of paint

until what remains

is a silent black.

This is where

you can transmute.


Let the dashes stretch out the dots

and the dots lend finality to

what the dashes desire to continue.

Till only the one that ends

in continuity,

remains

and all else fades into the

heart that beats in fluid twos.


If you set store by numbers,

let the beginning and ending not be the selfsame

infinite yet worthless whole,

but be succeeded by a finite end

- one of the 1.


Now turn it back up.


And you see,

you can speak

without echoes

without ping-pongs

without loud breaths exhaled

into words you are unaware of forming

that carry meanings bearing

borrowed trappings.


You can speak your own tongue.

And now you have it -

the control,

back in your hands.

Volume control your language

Image courtesy: Every 90s household's radio's volume control button.


Ever wondered why communication fails? It's so simple - use a certain pre-defined number of words to convey what you think to another. And yet ordinary communication often fails miserably because of the very essence that has escaped the previous "simple" take on it. Emotions.


You see, we're magical creatures with our own little worlds. In these worlds, each word is a different color and weight to us. (As you and I have discussed during our various exploratory conversations.) Excuse me for taking a mathematical example (with my limited understanding) to illustrate the point: If you are to add and/or multiply things - you would use + and x to lead to a number. But if you were to solve for the center of gravity - well then you'd use integration which is a lot more of symbols dancing around x's and y's, then leading to a number. As additional elements are added into the language, the complexity increases far beyond simple comprehension - you would need to learn the basis of such a complexity itself to solve for it! The complexity of emotions however is one that can never be truly resolved. Because neither are we a 100% sure of what we "feel" nor is the person we are communicating with. Simply put, my x is not your x and vice versa. It's often an integration of various factors that we possibly cannot peel back if we were just to have the numeric answer to start with.


So then, are we doomed to misunderstand one another till we eventually stop trying or pass away?

Maybe.

Mostly not - but this requires harder work than Zuckerberg and Musk are putting in for their face-off. It requires painstakingly exploring hitherto unchartered territory - you.


Today's prose attempts to take on a crucial yet preliminary step in solving for communication - being an objective you. Here's to wishing for a Sunday and more, of effective volume control.


As always, look forward to your take on our thoughts: please feel free to drop in a comment or a message and would love to discuss :D


Happy Sunday!


P.S.: I've long believed in binary and morse being indicative if not conclusive of the power of symbols, numbers over words for effective communication. But if you've read some of my earlier work, you'd know that. If not, I'll keep circling back to this in different ways, so stay tuned for more. Paragraphs 8 and 9, derive directly from the visual interpretation of the four basic emotions in morse code and binary respectively. Including both these details here for your own interpretations which I'd love to hear more about:


Morse Code:

Fear (..-. . .- .-.)

Joy (.--- --- -.--)

Sadness (... .- -.. -. . ... ...)

Anger (.- -. --. . .-.)


Binary:

Fear (01000110011001010110000101110010)

Joy (010010100110111101111001)

Sadness (01010011011000010110010001101110011001010111001101110011)

Anger (0110000101101110011001110110010101110010)


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