Tag Archives: effective communication

The Park Solution

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New York's Bryant Park Source: Bristol University Alumni
          New York City’s Bryant Park
           

We should not be just of the physical world, but in it as well.

In the last several decades cultural observers like Todd Gitlin, Robert Putnam, and Richard Sennett have offered sobering assessments of the decline of the public realm in American life. Their critiques seem as valid today as they ever did. But numerous city, state and federal parks remain as important exemptions. To be sure physical separation from a dense community can be luxurious. Few of us want to live or work on the edge of a cacophonous circus. And yet there can be something magical about the shared world of a public park.

We may still bring to it some of the electronic paraphernalia of our connected lives. But a welcoming park has a way of bending us toward the comparative riches of the direct interaction with others. There are, of course, many reasons for escaping into the stunning spaces of America’s greatest national monuments. But serendipitous contact with the physical world and the ad-hoc community that populate a public space is possible in even one city block.

Consider Bryant Park in the middle of Manhattan at 6th Avenue and 40th St. This jewel of an inviting open space shares its relatively small block with the main branch of the New York Public Library. But within its limited 2 or 3 acres it contains everything a shared environment should have. It’s cooler and more shaded than midtown’s congested sidewalks and streets. It’s also full of French-style café chairs, which can be moved to the shade or near the center green, whatever a visitor wants. And most importantly, it offers a place to linger in conversation, or to be given time to allow the kind of mental reboot the city often discourages. Tor a tourist who loves cities, Bryant Park’s benches and chairs along its leafy northern border offer views of some classic Art Deco buildings, including the Empire State. For the kids playing ping pong and chess along its edges it’s probably just a place to “be.”  What’s impressive is how easily they all mix with workers who have escaped cramped cubicles in nearby buildings.  The park shelters all on more or less equal terms.

As in every city, a public common is a wonderful machine for making members of a community visible to each other. People are simply friendlier if encountered in public areas that are off limits to automobiles. In Bryant, events include  ice-skating in the winter, with free films, concerts and literary readings at regular intervals through the rest of the year. Its bigger twin to the south in Washington Square even includes locals who post signs next to inflatable sofas offering “free conversation.” Open outdoor commons like these are essential antidotes to the American preference for spending lavishly  only on private spaces.

Denver's City Park Photo: David Herrera, Wikimedia
                   Denver’s City Park
              Photo: David Herrera, Wikimedia

To be sure, Bryant Park is the lucky recipient of the vast wealth that surrounds it. But any traveler could tick off a list of special places that exist in part because of another American imperative recognized by Theodore Roosevelt that we need to be not just of the physical world, but in it as well. We grow closer to others when we are in landscapes that have the effect of deepening sympathy for our species and our capacities to connect. Among others, Roosevelt gave us the idea of preserving great national parks. But the scale does not need to be Yellowstone-grand. My favorites are dramatically dissimilar: a mere one acre tract of gardens and ponds in a hillside in Great Malvern England, a scattering of fire pits and picnic tables under magnificent old-growth trees in New Jersey’s Bull’s Island State Park, the thunderous meeting of ocean and rock at Asilomar State Beach in Pacific Grove California, or the grass carpet of Denver’s City Park, which falls away to reveal the skyline against the incomparable backdrop of Mt. Evans.

Everyone can construct their own list, and perhaps notice that their favorite park is special because it has fostered relationships that remain central to our lives.

Communication as Context

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quotes2There’s a natural truth to the familiar line, “he was quoted out of context.”  It could hardly be otherwise. 

When we think of communication we often talk of it as a product.  “This is what he said,” or “She was surprisingly angry when she explained the problem.” Thinking this way—that we can freeze moments and observe them—is unavoidable. But embedded in the recreation of our communication is a forgotten problem that frequently gets us into trouble.

We tend to forget that communication is actually a process. It exist as a reaction to a world of influences on a speaker that grow more invisible over time. While the words remain static on the page or in a recorded segment, the forces that shaped the speaker’s views drift toward obscurity. We can be like the Broadway producer that lifts the word “Amazing!” out of reviewer’s comments, neglecting the rest of the writer’s judgment that the director showed an “amazing misuse of a talented cast.”

I was reminded of how original meaning drifts far from what a source intended during a viewing of a BBC retrospective program about Ken Russell, the iconic British producer of a number of memorable films about artists and composers. His subject in one project was the English composer Edward Elgar. Everyone recognizes his Pomp and Circumstance March Number 1, which is both the unofficial British national anthem Land of Hope and Glory, but better known to Americans as the solemn march that frequently accompanies graduation ceremonies. Russell reminds us that the piece became popular during World War I, when it was more or less co-opted as a kind of anthem to British imperialism. But its use as a call to battle against Germany troubled the reclusive Elgar.[i] After all, Germany rather than fickle London was where he first gained a foothold as a recognized composer. He was also appalled to have his music associated with the defeat of so important a patron.

We are all like Elgar. Sometimes the music we have created is not what others hear. It’s a common rhetorical necessity to “correct the record” when someone offers a restatement of our views that shows little awareness of why they were made and the circumstances that produced them. “That’s not exactly what I meant” is the common reply, and a preface to contextualized details we may feel compelled to add.

This may be one reasons that reading legal documents that cite case law and precedents can be so annoying. Legal principles must stand equally for all cases ruled to be of the same type.  Context counts less than it should. But broad rules tend to obliterate important exceptions, exemptions, and unique circumstances.  For example, a law against loitering can be a bludgeon in the hands insensitive local police. On occasion we all loiter, meaning we linger in a public space, usually for reasons that are perfectly harmless.

There is also the common and often sly strategy to use another’s words for our own communication objectives. We can selectively cite an out-of-context phrase simply because it can better demonize another. The words are used as a marker of difference rather than an accurate rendering of someone’s full view. This can be a tactic of a headline writer who is intent on selling a story by making its subject look like a fool.

So there’s a natural truth about the cliché, “he was quoted out of context.”  It could hardly be otherwise. In truth, we can usually do a better job of representing the views of others by calling upon the latent historian in all of us. We often have a natural curiosity for the humanizing backstories of others. Fairness to an absent but quoted person demands at least a thumbnail reconstruction of the known circumstances surrounding their words.

[i] BBC, Ken Russell at the BBC, DVD, 2008.

Comments: Woodward@tcnj.edu

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