Did You Hear What I Said?

I heard something and it was probably what you said, but I can't guarantee it was what you meant.  When you spoke to me just now, your words passed through my filter of personal associations, feelings, and experiences.   Not only do we all see things that other people don't see, but we also "hear" things that other people don't say.

In my first marital breakup, this conversation occurred:

Me:  "You said you'd take care of me."
Him:  "I thought you meant sexually."

If I'm speaking English as a second language, then your words also pass through the filters of understandable and expected phonemes and morphemes.  North Americans might be familiar with the expression "bus loop."  This is the area where a bus turns around, but is often an area where buses converge from different parts of the city.  A friend of mine, Gijs from Leiden, Holland, was in Vancouver visiting friends.  I was in North Burnaby and he was down near Kitsilano.  His English was quite good.  When he phoned, I told him to get on any bus and ask how to get to the Kootenay Loop.  I would meet him there.  I told him that all the bus drivers would know how he could transfer to the Kootenay Loop.

Yes fine, he said.  No problem.  I said Kootenay Loop, but that wasn't what he heard.  When he got on a bus, he asked to be taken to the Kookety Koo.  When the bus driver looked confused, he tried Koodely Doo, and Kootchety Koo, growing increasingly embarrassed and frustrated.  Luckily, he found a bus driver who figured out what he was saying.


In this wonderful poem, Troy Jollimore shines a little light on the fuzzy interface between perception and experience:

Lake Scugog

1.

Where what I see comes to rest,

at the edge of the lake,

against what I think I see

and, up on the bank, who I am

maintains an uneasy truce

with who I fear I am,

while in the cabin's shade the gap between

the words I said

and those I remember saying

is just wide enough to contain

the remains that remain

of what I assumed I knew.

2.

Out in the canoe, the person I thought you were

gingerly trades spots

with the person you are

and what I believe I believe

sits uncomfortably next to

what I believe.

When I promised I will always give you

what I want you to want,

you heard, or desired to hear,

something else.  As, over and in the lake,

the cormorant and its image

traced paths through the sky

                                  
             The New Yorker, July 27, 2009