Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Conversations


Why do people blog or write Novels.

Well they do it because their are interested in conversations, one-on-one conversations to be more precise. But the issue with this approach is that it cannot scale. It is almost impossible to 'push' words onto others when they really don't want it at that particular moment in time, as they have other more important things to attend to. And if you 'ask the dust', they will tell us the same. And even if they have the time, they may not be ready. The only way for this desire to scale would be to put your words down somewhere and allow others to 'pull' them whenever they want, as per their convenience; tucked in a bed at night, on a solitary rock at the end of the beach, while travelling. And when they choose to do so, then the one-on-one conversations begin; between friends, between strangers, where the ambience is imaginary. The very first conversation, beginning, the moment the words start to metamorphize out of thin air; the conversation with oneself, between friends, between strangers.

13 comments:

Pritesh Jain said...

The fact that people 'pull' whatever they want is certainly true. We watch movies, read books, listen music or meet people. In all these we grasp whatever we think is good for us, or rather whatever we could understand. Its the way things work.

I could not find the reason you linked to your previous post. :(

Alistair D'souza said...

its not the 'content' and 'interpretation' that I'm talking about but the timing. About the lack of time, the impossible task of ppl being physically/mentally/emotionally ready at the same moment in time/space for a one-on-one conversation....

Unknown said...

A nice prospective to why people write...For similar reasons I think letters were better than phone calls. I play I saw last week "Love Letters" had a dialogue which said " I like letters better, because than you can not hang up on me"

I read your marathon blog, must say an amazing attempt. ( I mean running :D)

Made me realise itz high time for me to get down and see what my "Limits" are !

Alistair D'souza said...

@ navreet
missed that play... saw Evam's 'odd couple' on sunday... I've never really written letters.. its always been emails etc.... but I guess letters give words a deeper touch since the hand connects to the paper...

you should run the bangalore marathon this time.... its fun running long distances... :-)

Pritesh Jain said...

Yea, got it now. See thats where the differences might come. You meant something else, I took it some other way. In one way it is good coz this way only we learn new things. If everyone was in sync everytime there wont be any innovation.

You were there for Odd couple on sunday? Which show? I saw it at 3:30.
Nice play I must say.

Try writing some letters. May be just write them, and keep with yourself. I have done it whenever I wanted someone to listen to me. Somehow it gives peace of mind. Emails work in similar ways, only thing is that your hand writing is not there. Thus faking or hiding things become easy. Still they help too.

Alistair D'souza said...

but if everyone was in sync then the world would be a better place.... as ppl would understand each others needs/faults... there would be more time for other stuff like innovation for that matter.... and speaking of innovation, ppl would better understand the needs/desires of others to innovate ..... but yeah as you said sometimes the reader looks and learns abt stuff which could be totally diff from what the writer wants to convey... poetry is like that... and so is art....

I had gone for the 7:30pm show on sunday...

well letters again are just to one person... unless its a chain mail :-) I feel if you wanna tell someone something then face to face is the best way, although its sometimes difficult/impossible.... but you hafta do what you hafta do.... if you don't then it pecks at your brain and thats not a very nice thing to happen :-)

what I'm talking about in the post is the desire to communicate with many ppl.... thousands and thousands of them.... but at the same time have a one-on-one conversation with each...

Gaurav said...

Very well put Alice ! A friend of mine had a written on the same topic -
http://rekhadevarapalli.blogspot.com/2007/02/getting-too-personal.html
Have asked her to visit this post.
As for me, reading blogs many a times has left me amazed at the diffrent ways people look at things around !

Alistair D'souza said...

thanks Gaurav... will check the link out...
and yeah its a whole new world out there when it comes to writing....

Pritesh Jain said...

Now I get it. You are talking about unicasting in guise of broadcasting. :)

Innovations can also happen when you have people with differnt needs, varying ideas. If everyone had one thing in mind, after the creation of that one thing, there wont be any new creation. Everyone would be just too happy with that one thing.
Dont you think it is the charm of doing new things, trying out new things, seeing new places, reading new books, watching different movies - that keeps us going?

Alistair D'souza said...

I guess I followed up with the word 'sync' out here :-) so i'll mention it again...

being is sync does not means that you have to think, do stuff the same way.... its more about being aware of the differences that exist and then going forward to the next steps.... if you are not aware of those differences and move to next steps then at some point they will pop up and render all the next steps invalid...

being in sync might also mean that you choose not to go ahead with any further steps but you can do away with a lot of unnecessary iterations if you are aware and in sync.... and that gained time could be put to some other use...

Vaidehi Dongre said...

isn't it that thru blogs, u can express urself without any tabs, or u know its just ur own space where somebody is there to lsiten to u. many a times i write something bcoz i can open up better in writing than in person. also, if it was not for these blogs, how else wud we be able to communicate after not being in touch for so many years? :) did i go astray here?

Alistair D'souza said...

I also feel that I'm able to open up better when I write :-) some friends tell me that I'm an extrovert when it comes to writing and am pretty quite otherwise... I do get noisy in the company of friends sometimes...

but I guess we can express ourselves better when face to face too... however then we are not sure if the person is preoccupied or has other stuff to do... unless we know the person very well... getting people to be in the same zone at the same time is kinda difficult, so we use the 'pull' method as opposed to the 'push' method...

I used to send a lot of emails first.. cut paste stuff and send to diff friends.... it took a lot of time so I decided to spam people with mails i.e group mailing... still do it sometimes :-) however with that too sometimes ppl get edgy or don't have to time to read so much stuff then and there.... and when they have the time then it s buried under a heap of emails... so I thought of the blogging method since I like writing and friends can then 'pull' stuff from me whenever they want... well I also use it for writing practice but thats another story...

and yeah we wouldn't have been able to communicate after not being in touch for so many years :-)

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