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When speaking in a room filled with noise, gesture becomes more important than ever.

I discovered that even while traveling in a country where I did not speak the language, I could still speak with curious people. Today, teaching a juggling workshop in a gym full of chaotic rotations of large groups of elementary students, I rediscovered the magic of speaking without anyone needing to hear the words. The words were utterly secondary to gesture. The words needn’t have been there, really.

[Touch your shoulders, like this. Turn your hands out, like this. Now here are two imaginary dots, slightly above your head. When you throw the ball, it passes through the dots, see?]

{Watching. Smiling at a toss that’s improving. This is how you learn to juggle.}

The Notebook

Don’t let Da Vinci intimidate you. The notebook can hold everything, even your shopping list. Your dreams, your doodles, your diary. It doesn’t have to look like perfectly calibrated depictions of metatarsals, gear ratios, or written in the Vicar of Nibbleswicke’s script. It can have flaws and it can be your source of inspiration during dry seasons. Write anything you feel like writing, no matter how trivial. It gets you in the habit of writing down your ideas.

(Source: talk with creator of Zits comic strip.)

The nice thing about sharing ideas is that you tend to remember them better. Some of the most creatively energetic moments are ones in which ideas are shared freely in a big stew, without caring so much about who threw in which ingredient or stirred when and with what rotation. This kind of synthesis can happen at the level of an exchange between two people, the chavruta. Or mutual support/inspiration can happen at the level of a small team or group, like the Inklings, which included “Tollers” and “Jack,” who you may have heard of by the names of J. R. R. Tolkien or C. S. Lewis, respectively. Or, of course, we now have the grand scale of the internet for sharing ideas.

And sometimes it’s a lottery, like this: http://thelistserve.com/. The lottery is completely hit or miss, but the idea is what’s important. What would you say in 600 words or less to 20,000 people if you had the chance? How would you say it? How do you fit what you say into a meaningful context for the random medley of readers instead of launching into something so random that even the spontaneous people who have signed up won’t be receptive? I might have read a recent story more favorably if:

1.) It didn’t seem like an intensional tease to manipulate me into asking for more.
2.) There were a more graceful transition into the story itself, telling me directly why it mattered enough to the author to share it.

The introduction certainly read like a promotion. What is common amongst the Listserve? It’s hard to say. An attraction to having a large number of readers, certainly. And a tolerance for surprises, at least enough to give it a try.

The thing is, the internet already provides the service of the listserve. And you can reach a more targeted audience, people that are already interested in what you have to offer. Nevertheless, there is a sort of foragers’ allure in opening a message without knowing whether it will be something that stinks or something that opens up your world.

Thanks to Homeslice for tipping me off about chavruta, Jedi for the Inklings, and Bouton for The Listserve.