"I Can't Easily Describe"

It's tough putting words to thoughts, feelings, and experiences. It's a creative act whenever we do it. When we get beyond "How are you? "Good, thanks". It involves dredging, sifting, examining, analysing, framing, choosing. And building. Building a construction that somehow manages to express what is going on inside "me" to what is going on inside "you'.

Am I making it seem too complicated? Perhaps.

Recently I was listening to the banter between some fellas who were putting down a carpet in the house where I was staying. I was in my bedroom. They didn't know I was there. And the chat was relaxed, flowing, full of laughter, friendly, familiar. I felt a wee bit envious of the easy, natural feel of it all. And all the while they were expertly fitting carpets in complicated nooks and crannies. Amazing.

One fella was describing the experience of giving a  speech at a wedding for the first time, the previous weekend. His speech had gone alright it seems, but someone else who was speaking had frozen. That poor guy had to stop before he'd said what he wanted to say. The brain and speech have a funny relationship sometimes.

Conversation with friends can and should often stay on a fairly trivial level. The weather, sport, what we've been up to recently, and the funny, interesting or common place stories that result from those experiences.  I think that the seemingly trivial stuff is vital to life and our enjoyment of it. Nobody concentrates the whole time they are driving a car. It would be exhausting. Same with speaking. We need to be able to cruise on auto-pilot and give our brains a free ride a lot of the time.

But sometime's it's good to delve deeper. To give ourselves a word workout. If words are your thing, whether written or spoken, then you try and workout regularly and more intensively. But even if they are not your particular strength,  it's probably still good to give the Art of Describing a little bit of a walk around the block. Keep the cobwebs at bay. Use it or lose it as they say.

Although I suspect those Carpet Fitters might think I was making a shag pile out of a welcome mat.


The line "I can't easily describe" is from my next Fee Comes Fourth track Cleaning Out The Shed. Available for free next Tuesday.