Zoom Bloom

Last week, I  “attended” the Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA) Novel Retreat, an event that was supposed to be held on campus but like so many summer events became an online retreat via Zoom.

I’m better on Zoom than I am in real life. Many complain about the platform’s impersonality, and I certainly understand Zoom Fatigue. I believe human beings were not meant to stare at screens all day. I think it’s bad for us.

And yet. For me, the body, and physicality in general, can be a supreme distraction. External noises like traffic, nearby conversation, or random industrial hum can throw me off. Even pleasant externalities like birdsong or rows of brightly colored houses, sensory variety of any kind can dismantle my sense of coherence. Zoom filters all this out.

In conversation, I rely heavily on non-verbal cues. Body stance, hand motions, shoulder movement, shifts of eyebrow, mouth or head position all alert me to how I am being received. Conversely, when I speak I use physical cues to get my point across. You’d think, then, that Zoom, which offers almost no non-verbal communication, would strike me dumb. Not so.

I share more on Zoom. The platform forces me to drop all my theatrics and just use my words. Also significant: on Zoom only one person can speak at a time. This makes discussion a challenge, but it also eliminates interruption. I’m an almost-reformed (still-working-on-it) interrupter. And I’m exquisitely sensitive to being interrupted. Often when I’m speaking, I’m anticipating interruption, which causes me stress.  Zoom acts as a Native American Talking Stick: the person speaking holds the floor until she is done. The other screen squares can either react to the speaker or change the subject. But they can’t interrupt.

Two people talking at the same time means no one understands a thing. I saw it time and again last week; when that garbled rush of multiple speakers occurred, people were immediately contrite and apologized solicitously. “No no, you go ahead.” There is no physical bullying on Zoom, no elbowing one’s way to the front of the crowd, no sharp sidelong glances and no angry frowns.  Even eye-rolls are discouraged; can you imagine people seeing your face so close up, in its own little square, and rolling your eyes? Unthinkable.

Also impossible is the dreaded side conversation. When I was a seminar teacher, breakout talking struck me as rude, as if students were disagreeing with me by making a show of not listening. To this day I find it tiresome, that moment when the person sitting next to me at a lecture or any event, even book group, leans over and starts whispering.

There is no whispering on Zoom.

On Zoom, I speak. In as few words as possible, I tell my truth. At my retreat I told a “room” full of writers that I view my first drafts as research, as if I’m a grad student gathering data for her dissertation. When we talked about literary citizenship, I admitted that for me, being active on Twitter feels like a hustle. I also asked questions. I asked other participants to clarify what they’d said. One faculty member wrote a novel about a gay relationship between Jesus and John the disciple. Wasn’t he intimidated, I asked, to write about a story the world knows so well? Another writer read seven pages of moving prose about an enslaved adolescent coming of age. How did she get the chops to stay in that scene so long, I asked, to let it take up such space and allow it to impact the reader?

In short, I loved it.  Again, I believe that people are meant to be with one another. We thrive on the energy and connection that comes from real time interactions with our fellow man. This is how we grow. But it’s also true that this is not the only way we grow. We adapt when we need to, and adaptation can also teach us things.

I’m thinking of transitioning my blog to an author newsletter. One of my favorite parts of the newsletters I receive is this part: goodies for the reader!

Best Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp I’ve ever made

This woman’s mediations have helped me tremendously in my morning practice

I just finished knitting this sweater and I never want to take it off

Read Recently and loved:

Normal People, Sally Rooney

Goodnight Stranger, Miciah Bay Gault

The Accidental, Ali Smith

Currently reading and loving:

The Thin Place, Kathryn Davis