Monday, September 28, 2015

The Power of Pause

In a discussion about how God is "not in time", author CS Lewis uses the analogy of an author who is not bound by the time frame of the fiction he writes. He may write "Lucy stirred her tea and immediately stood up." For the character, the two actions are immediate, but a reader may interrupt their reading to go for a walk or take a nap, thus breaking a flow that was supposed to be unbroken. Though it was not his intent, Lewis highlighted one of the great weaknesses of the written tradition. This "pausing" advent affords an opportunity for disinterest or other thoughts to creep in, disengaging one from the ideas of the text and derailing the original intent of the writer.

When I was around five years old, I was playing Pajama Sam, perhaps the greatest computer game for my generation. It was not very difficult, but to increase the tension, the game threw a curve ball near the end. They imposed a time limit, and the game made a big fuss to make sure you understood that this was the most urgent time of your childhood. Now, the time limit was very lenient, and there was no real danger of losing the game, but my childish mind panicked, and I punched the computer's power switch as hard as I knew how.

That's how you reset.


Now that the game was "paused",  I had time to cool down, restart, and complete the level with a cool head. The tension the game designers had intended had withered and died.

I have had the same experience while reading. In a book, a speech, or an article, we are the masters of time. We can pause, fast forward, or replay any section of the text, at our own leisure. The author's original voice may be drowned out, since we take the power to direct our thoughts out of their hands. Although writing provides an excellent way to communicate our thoughts, it also provides readers a very dangerous opportunity to disconnect.


4 comments:

  1. I've never thought about pause in this way... and I think you're right, but also there is great positive power to pause. I guess it all depends on the audience, and is maybe better understood when it is an oral presentation, but pause can also allow audience members a great opportunity to soak up the intense meaning behind what the author is saying. This doesn't happen all the time, but I find pauses refreshing in a speech or book so I have time to really ponder.

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  2. Pajama Sam was awesome, first of all. Second, I do agree that the written word can have some faults in that readers can read something whenever and wherever they want. They can be sitting in a setting that is not ideal for the topic they are reading. They can get up and "pause" what they are reading, thereby losing the effect. Maybe that's why philosophers so strongly believed that philosophical speech was the only and best way to get a point across.

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  3. Eli, I look forward to your blog posts each time. You always help me consider things in a new light. I remember feeling that way when the seventh book of the Harry Potter series came out. My mom wanted me to go mow the lawn, but I was in so deep, it was impossible to put the book down. I finished the book and got to ponder about it as I sat, grounded, in my room.

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  4. Writing does have that ability to interfere with the kairos of a situation, which is so vital to understand context. Even when reading one of Winston Churchill's speeches and thinking, "World War II was a dark time", we don't get the full effect, much less if we pause in between.

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