understand

UNDERSTAND
Chuck Berry has a great, under-noticed and under-played song called "Understand Each Other."

"When I see those big brown eyes is when I take my cue,
It don't take but a few minutes, to get a message through...."

You can hear it in the film "Hail! Hail! Rock & Roll," Taylor Hackford documentary....

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Yesterday I typed a blog post and was trying to understand it later.
(I need a translator to find out what I myself am talking about!)
No seriously, I know what I mean, but not sure I organized the thoughts well, or in order.
Still working on it.
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And at home I've been listening to the film "Gentleman's Agreement" while showering / dressing / preparing for work each morning -- I'm not getting it all; you need the visuals and some of the conversation is hard to get, through bedroom and bathroom walls, because of the way actors used to talk -- think most studios sent actors & actresses they hired to a dialogue coach, or speech teacher of some kind & the teacher trained them all to speak sort of -- theatrically. (When I was growing up and I saw an old movie I would think, "What kind of accent is that? Where are they from? But now I think it's not regional, but rather, professional.)

This Saturday I'm going to WATCH the movie and study it and catch it ALL.
Going to Understand.
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Where I work, I have the pleasure of learning phrases and sentences in other languages -- Spanish, and some of the Asian languages.

The Asian ones are hard, for me. (Was told it makes a difference, when you say a syllable, which emphasis you put on it -- and whether it's high or low -- as to what the meaning will be interpreted to be. Explains why those languages sound like musical humming, to the Western ear.)

Once someone taught me to say the equivalent of "See you tomorrow" in Maung; tried it out as some workers were leaving for the day. I had it memorized, syllable by syllable. Most of the people I said it to smiled and nodded; they seemed to understand, at any rate, that I was trying to say something friendly in their language, and I think they were very tolerant and generous at what was probably atrocious pronunciation, even with all my diligent practice.

One young man was striding confidently out, swinging his lunch-box, & when I said the phrase to him, he turned around, astonished, looked up at me, and said, "What?!?"

A co-worker passing by at that moment said calmly, with a taciturn expression and no break in his pace, "I think you just told him you want to have sex."
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Understanding.
It's something we always have to work on, every day.

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