Low fat diets and communication that cuts to the quick have something in common.
There is no contrast, no light and dark. They become unhealthily sanitised.
There’s a danger in the promotion of ‘low fat’ language and communication that is reduced down to sparse detail that the essence is lost; the black and white, the yin and yang the dark and light of what has communication become compelling.
The fat of marbled meat adds something to the overall cut. The fat tempers it.
A little bit of fat marbled through our communication offers contrast, and activates the lean stuff. In the delivery of the spoken word, the fat might be an um or an ah, a stumble or a hesitation. When I edit sound tracks of people I don’t take out every breathe and every umm. I might reduced them, but some are critical to the flow of the speaker. I do this by feel and by a rhythm.
So too with the written word and all forms of communication. It is the paradox, the fallibility of people that is part of their compelling story.
It is the contrast and the journey that makes a story leap off the page.
It is the authenticity of it.
Too clean, too sterile, too rehearsed, and there is no life.
There is life in the gristle and the fat of life as much as the lean mean machines.
Fat is seen as bad, to be cut off and discarded.
A story or communication reduced and spun, discards anything potentially untoward, or anything that could be perceived as negative, or showing an individual, an event or an organisation in a bad light.
But it is the dark as well as the lightthat gives a story contrast.
The fat activates the lean, and becomes one greater whole.