Bandwidth
Sean Moore
Water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink.
It was a whisper. Or a whimper. A little flutter of a thought, not borne out through the vocal cords, but rather exhaled, warm breath barely escaping the lips.
That whisper, whimper - whatever it was - it left your lips and tumbled toward the ground. I didn’t catch it. I never do. Wonder if I ever will, am ever supposed to, should even try. Wonder if you ever want me to.
I didn’t catch it. So then it’s on to the questions. The inquisitions. The accusations. Wonder if it’s even about that first uncaught line. That’s just the trigger. The yodel that launches that avalanche of questions.
All the questions. None of the answers. Never any of the answers. Wonder if there are ever any answers. Wonder if it’s even about the questions. Do the questions matter? Should I bother to ask? If you have to ask, you really already know. Should already know. Don’t want to admit that you know.
But what do I know? Maybe it’s just about the attention. About the connection. About the confrontation, one-sided as it is. About me and you having a moment. A back and forth. A choreographed little dance.
A dance. ’s alright with me. I’ve always loved the movement, always enjoyed the rhythm. Always enjoyed leading. Always known that I’ve really been led. Was it me or you who loved the twirls more? Me, because you were always so beautiful spinning around in my hand. You, because you never had more fun than in that moment.
No, a dance is alright, will always be alright. Have to remember that a dance is no substitute. There’s Real Life, and then there’s the little plays we put on to fill in the details. To dramatize it. Make it a story worth telling, to someone, someday, somewhere. At some point real life needs to come back in. Can fawn, and faux, and foil for only so long.
So I keep coming back. To the whisper, that whimper, or whatever it was. And I wonder, whatever was it that you were really trying to say?
Whatever is it that I’m trying to say?
What if you and I could only say one thing a day to one another? Each of us having a single chance to get it right for the day. Changes things, doesn’t it.
Now what about a week? A Month? A year? And what about once in a lifetime? Only one more thing to say.
Something happens, when you only get one shot to say something. First you pile it all in, every moment, every little detail, every possible thing that might be important. More, more, more. Wouldn’t want to miss something.
But then the timespan dilates. And interestingly, there’s less to say. But not really less – less only as in the quantity, less only as in raw bits and bytes. Because suddenly, there’s more to say. There’s more gravity, there’s more at stake for saying the right thing.
So you compress. You cut. You edit. You slim down. You trim. You are ruthless. You nip and tuck. No need for the details. Because all you need is all that matters.
In the end, it's all about bandwidth. When there's a lot if it, too much if it, all those unnecessary bits creep in. When it's limited, when every word and phrase counts, you make the most of it. Have to make the most of it. And something better comes out of it. Earnest. Honest. The truth. Everything that matters.
Communication has become so commodified, so prolific. Saying a thousand things in the course of a single minute is hardly a challenge anymore. We are inundated. Flooded.
But aren’t we really parched? Commonality brings frivolity, and frivolity destroys all meaning, all significance. What we sought was a connection; what we got was nothing more than a pile of words.