Closer To The Ideal

Over on LinkedIn someone asked why the word “uh” is so common in people’s speech. I offered this answer:

At one point I did a series of interviews with actors and actresses about their careers. When I transcribed the conversations, I was stunned to realize how far spoken language departs from written language.

In my innocence, I first set out to create a “literal” transcription. I thought I would just write down what people said. But I soon realized this was a misguided notion. People do not speak in full sentences. I offer you this one example:

Question: What first interested you in dance?

Answer: I was at North Carolina, I mean Chapel Hill, and uh, we, I mean Mark and Jeffery and I, ah, we were going to meet, ah, we met with Alex and we, Alex is the professor, and um, we met with Alex and, okay, I should add this was after we’d begun to rehearse, and uh, but the thing was the words we were speaking sounded false, I mean, when I said them, when Mark said them, the other people in the class, I was watching their bodies, and uh, it was all false, I had trouble believing anything people said, and I said this to Alex, but uh, he, uh, he, he, he kept insisting that we just needed to get more into the roles, but that wasn’t working for me, for me, and I, uh, I can’t remember why, but, I started to doubt that approach, even Stanislavski, that whole approach, uh, and, for me, it came back to the body, to body language, cause, because, there is so much there, in the shoulder and the face and the spine and the pose and your gestures, right? And, I just, I felt, I thought, uh, I was thinking that we needed to focus more on the body, on body language, because if your mouth is saying one thing but your body is saying something else, uh, then I have trouble believing you, believing that kind of acting, that kind of acting, that kind of interaction. So I started taking dance classes and, uh, pretty soon Mark commented, Mark and Jeffery, they both noticed the difference and when for the second class, I mean the second semester, they took the dance class too, and, uh, we saw, we saw how much of a dramatic change it brought to our acting, because now we were acting with both our bodies and our words.

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The above is from my one attempt at a “literal” transcription. If you ever try to transcribe a conversation, you realize early on that you need to edit the thing rather heavily, because your readers are going to expect full sentences, and no one (absolutely no one) talks in full sentences. Verbal communication depends on the ability of the speaker to correct what they are saying. They can edit as they speak. If they start a sentence, and then realize they are phrasing things the wrong way, they can simply re-start the sentence, which is what people often do. In such situations, people tend to use a neutral sound such as “uh” to fill the void, and also to indicate that there is about to be a transition, or possibly the statement is going to start over again. A speaker can listen to the words coming out of their mouth and correct or qualify whatever seems wrong to them, for this reason, there is less need to get things right the first time. With written communication, one needs to get the communication correct before sending it to the audience.

Lark and I took off our pants yesterday and rode around on the New York City subways. It was the 9th Annual No Pants Day. A few thousand people took part. This is one of those ironic, subversive jokes that’s lets you see, very visibly, who else belongs to your tribe (your cultural tribe, that is). The event was organized by Improv Everywhere. The way it works is, people gather at a few points around the city, then go to the subway, and get on the trains. Once you are on the train, you take off your pants. It is important that you act totally normal. You should not laugh. You should not look at each other. You certainly shouldn’t act like something odd is going on. If anyone asks you why you don’t have pants, you are suppose to respond with something like “I was feeling warm. I think I overdressed this morning.”

The reactions we got from people were priceless. We had about 15 pantless people on our particular train car. Commuters would get on the train, look around, see that most of the train was dressed in their underwear and… well, we got all kinds of reactions.

The context is important, especially the weather. It was 16 degrees when I woke up. At the warmest part of the day, it got up to 25 degrees. On a hot summer day this stunt would be less obvious, but when it is 25 degrees, no pants is noteworthy.

The event started at 3 PM. Lark and I went into Brooklyn, to a park near the DeKalb subway station. There were something between 100 to 200 people there. A man with a bullhorn explained to us the rules. There were also 10 captains – as I said, this was well organized. We divided into 10 teams, each to target a particular subway car. One of the rules was that only a few people should take off their pants at each stop. We divided ourselves up into 2s and 3s of people who would take off their pants at each stop. Another rule was, after you take off your pants, you have to get off the train at the next stop, then get on the next train – this is to ensure that a lot of people end up seeing a pantless crowd.

Then we walked to the subway. We talked to each other while waiting for the train. Once the train arrived, we had to pretend that we did not know each other. We all got on. The train started moving. The first couple took off their pants. Then they got off at the next stop. Lark and I had volunteered for the 3rd stop, so after the 2nd station we took off our pants. There was a very large, heavy set black man sitting between us. He kept looking back and forth at us, more than a little puzzled.

We got off at the next station. There were 3 or 4 pantless people getting off from every car in the train, so now there were about 30 pantless people standing on the landing. The landing was dead empty of normal people, so we felt free to talk to each other.

Then the next train came. We again pretended we didn’t know each other. We got back on. We were headed into Manhattan.

The urge to laugh was so strong that for the first 15 minutes I had to stare at the advertisements, which I read over and over and over. Once I made the mistake of looking toward Lark. I almost instantly started to laugh, so I went back to reading the ads.

I’d say we got 2 basic reactions – “You are a freak” and “This is a hilarious joke”. The younger people generally got that this was some kind of stunt. Older folks didn’t necessarily get that it was a joke. One woman got on our train, looked around, saw that most of the train was in its underwear, and immediately she stepped off the train.

I was standing by the door. One woman came in through the door, saw how I was dressed, decided I was some kind of freak, and then she immediately backed away from me, and turned to move elsewhere in the train. Then she realized the whole train was full of freaks. She
simply stood there, rigidly, for the rest of the ride.

At one point some women were taking off their pants next to some teenage boys. Their facial reaction was something like “Oh my god, are all my secret fantasies finally coming true?”

Among the commuters, I saw a lot of women who were trying to be polite by not laughing out loud. They would get on the train, look around, then cover their mouth with their hand. I could tell they were laughing from the way their shoulders shook, but they did not laugh
out loud.

Once I’d been on the train for 20 minutes, it got easier to not laugh. One 20-something guy got on our train, did a double-take at all the half-dressed people, and asked me, “Why is everyone on this train in their underwear?” I was proud of the fact that I never broke a smile when I replied, “I was feeling warm. I think I overdressed this morning.” Frustrated by that answer, he turned to Lark and asked her. She said, “I have no idea.”

One of the oddest reactions we got was from a young guy who got on the train, saw how we were dressed, and started photographing all of it with his cell phone. Possibly because we were trying to act normal, he felt no need to respect our normal personal boundaries. He would lean in close to people’s crotches and take close-up photos. Of course, we all pretended that this was normal. We ignored him.

Some gender stereotypes were mostly true – the men had boring underwear (boxers) the women had cute underwear, but a few of the guys wore very tight briefs, so you could see everything underneath. With both genders, there was a range of exhibitionism, some showing more, some showing less.

All of the various subway rides ended at Union Square, where there was a big pantless rally. The tourists were walking around us trying to figure out what was going on. It would be an understatement to say they were confused. They went around taking photos of this interesting New York fashion custom. Benjamin Franklin once said, “3 people can keep a secret only if 2 of them are dead”, but he would have changed his mind if he’d been at the rally. The tourists kept asking “Why isn’t anyone wearing their pants?” and no one ever gave them a straight answer. “I was just getting comfortable” was a common answer, though not very believable on a day that was 24 degrees. I also heard “InStyle had an article, they said skin is the new black.” This is rare – hundreds of people all keeping the joke, not breaking character.

I guess because this has happened 8 previous years, but there were jokes being made on the joke, irony piled on top of the irony. One guy at the rally was going around evangelizing people about pants: “Have you accepted pants into your life? Millions of people, all over the
world, have accepted pants into their lives, and it has brought them joy and fulfilment and meaning.” He did a fantastic parody of a Christian preacher. This was a very elaborate joke, too, he had printed up hundreds of pamphlets about the history of pants, pamphlets with testimonials from other people who had accepted pants into their lives and found happiness, and he had a big sign around his body that asked “Are you missing something?”. He stayed in character the whole time.

The biggest surprise for me was how long it was possible to deal with the cold. I was worried I wouldn’t last 5 minutes, but somehow the nervousness, maybe the adrenaline, made it easy to withstand the cold for a long time.

If I’m around next year, I’ll do this again, but in a business suit, with expensive shoes and an expensive silk tie, and loud, polka-dot boxers. The contrast should be pretty damn funny.

Here is a reason I love New York – aside from San Francisco, where else in the country can you organize a joke like this and get a few thousand people to participate?

There is a video of last year’s events on the Improv Everywhere site.

Just being yourself is a creative act:

But why lie to appear competent or likable? Why not just be yourself? In fact, “just being yourself”, if we examine it closely, takes creative effort. Our expression of who we are involves choices that reflect social and interpersonal context, our mood, our personality, our need to maintain our self-image and so on. If we consider self-presentation as a creative process, we can see how it can easily slide into deception. Every interaction involves decisions about which attributes to emphasize and which to minimize, which impulses to follow and which to ignore. At some point, we may not be choosing among our actual traits and our sincere reactions. We may simply fabricate the traits and reactions the social situation calls for, or that we think it calls for. In other words, we might lie.