i'd hammer out danger. i'd ring out freedom. i'd sing out the love between my brothers and my sisters.

when we say "communication" we mean "prose" and the more important the communication, the more prosaic it becomes. chatty emails become fun newsletters become formal newspapers become dry journal articles. we've relegated poetry and music, not to mention visual art, to the realm of entertainment. even on television, with all its capacity for visual storytelling, Serious Information is delivered by a series of yapping heads from the yapping anchor desk to the yapping field reporter. ever heard of "show, don't tell"? yeah, right.

by selecting prose as the only acceptable conduit of Serious and Meaningful Information, we're missing the boat on the power of all these other forms of communication. imagine... the weather report delivered in song. news stories dramatized with actors. a professor delivering a lecture using dance. the laws of the land in the form of a painting. your nephew is born and instead of a phone call, you receive a sculpturegram.

sound ridiculous?

what about sign language? in case you don't really know much about sign language, i'll tell you that sign language isn't spelling out every word - unless you need to for something specific like a name - and it isn't a one-for-one transposition of any spoken or written language. it's a completely different system and involves motions, facial expressions, and body attitude. it is communication of thoughts without using words. it'll blow your mind a little if you let it.

what about baby talk? when you comfort a baby, you don't reason with her -- well, hon, i've changed your diaper and fed you and now we really all need some sleep and i realize that rainstorm is loud, but it's just water, sweetie, and some electrical conditions in the atmosphere, nothing to worry about, so just hush on up there and go to sleep. HAHA. no. you hold her and sing a little or coo or hum.

words continually get us in trouble or disappoint us. they're often inadequate. we can never think of the Right Word, if there even IS a right one. we say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but we go right on trying to corral our world into letters on a page.

imagine a peace treaty that is a piece of music. because of the status of music in our worldview, it sounds hokey to "teach the world to sing in perfect harmony" but c'mon. open your freaking little dried up raisin of a mind! we have all these forms of communication for all the different aspects of our lives, and we keep trying to force prose to do it all.

just promise me you'll at least think about it.