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Rushing minds in rushed bodies

Some journalists who host talk shows or speak on them talk really fast. I wonder if it’s because they feel pushed by a time limit. I wonder if they’re conscious of their pace, which sometimes has me laughing, as do the halts, overall jumpiness, and even stumbling over words that often accompany the speed. The voices impress me as overloaded–with information that a person wishes to communicate? With emotions that must be suppressed in order to convey objectivity? Actually, the vocal rate and rhythms sound excessively excited and not at all neutral. Rushing minds in rushed bodies. Vocal urgency expresses lack of peace, lack of pleasure.

During my time as a professor, students every now and then told me that I talked really fast in class. They were right.

I’m not thinking that the rapid speech I hear on the radio or TV makes the ideas or facts that it contains any more or less credible than does slower speaking, but the hurry conveys anxiety. More particularly, I feel mildly anxious listening. The journalists’ haste makes waste of my peace, if I let it do so. When I laugh, peace resolves the anxiety.

I wonder if the interviewers and interviewees talk that fast at home. If so, I’m glad that they don’t live with me. I’d rather be living with a person of sensuous speed, meaning movement through time and space rather than rapidity; a sensuous speed that communicates self-awareness and quickens my own.

• May 22, 2010
• Filed under: Body and mind
• Comments 0