When the credits start rolling, you don’t immediately go back to the beginning of the DVD and say “That was great! Let’s watch it again!” At minimum you might wait another five months before you see this movie again, regardless of goodness. Whereas if you hear a great song, you can listen to it start-to-finish, over-and-over, twenty times in a day. This was pointed out (1 hour 4min in) by director and artist Oliver Gondry, Michel Gondry‘s brother. The significant difference between a movie and a song is that “it’s not a story, it’s the feeling”. Music is emotional and it’s able to transcend from artist to audience. It’s not about conveying information, but it’s about sharing a feeling.
A song consists of music + poetry. If you want to communicate a feeling, you have to infuse poetry. It’s the rhythm of poetry and music in sync that causes emotional-transcendence. If you want someone to feel your happiness, you don’t say “Hey you! Be Happy!” and the feeling magically transfers from one person to the next. No, you have bring the skills of a great poet, and intertwine it with some other medium to share that happiness.
But poetry is for pansies. It’s touchy-feely wussness prancing around in a shroud of words. So I used to turn away from its existence. My scientific mind had no room for such fluff. Science is logic and the search for an answers. The poet, Rives, performed a poetry about the internet and it bridged that scientific mind and poetry for me. Nerdy – yes, wussy – sort of, melancholic-funny-happy-awesome – definitely. His world of Slam Poetry was certainly not for the wuss and certainly didn’t lack any energy. (I wish I’d known about it when I lived a few blocks away from the Green Mill in Chicago where it emerged as its permanent home in the 80’s. Note to self: find inspirations sooner than later.) He infused poetry into performance, with the content about science.
Benjamin Zander infuses poetry into his lecture on the world of possibilities. In thirty minutes he flows with elegance, carefully chosen words, and inspires a crowd through his poetry, disguised as a lecture. I watched this video three times in a row when it was released. If a lecture can be infused with poetry, where else can poetry enter? Can I make my corporate presentations into poetry? Then, like a song, I can present it twenty times in a day and not be tired of presenting it. On top of that, the audience will want to hear it again and again. What about static designs? What about interactive designs? Where can we infuse poetry? Design can’t just be about function and form, it needs to be infused with poetry. Only then can we pursue in creating our scratch and dent dreams and create Tomorrow.
If we deny poetry when we communicate, it’s ineffective communication. Maybe you want to share the empathy of being a teacher, deafness, being Asian, or being really really Asian. That passion and feeling can only be conveyed through the poetic verse. As designer’s we can create without poetry, it’s a choice that we make before its release. That choice is whether you want the result to create any meaningful relationships between humans, or not. Learn to create, write, infuse, poetry into designs to make them sing.
