What's the word...

My vocabulary is quite extensive and I am able to utilize it with a level of articulation that betrays the image of me that others perceive.  It's easier to write with diction and acumen when addressing readers than it is to speak with the same level of coherence when addressing people face to face.  On more than one occasion, others who know me have read things I have written and found it hard to believe that I was the one who wrote it.  The main reason for this is because I choose to adapt my language and my lexicon to the audience that I find myself in the presence of in an attempt to make communication less ambiguous and easier to understand.

Two characters for me stand out among many others in works of fiction for an exemplification of the exquisite articulation of complex ruminations with little simplification.  They are Sir Humphrey Appleby from the British sitcom Yes (Prime) Minister played by Nigel Hawthorne, the other is The Architect from the movie franchise The Matrix played by Helmut Bakaitis.  Both characters had an unassailable ability to answer a question with such depth and complexity that those who ask are often unaware that the questions they asked were not actually answered.  Both productions did have characters who were able to recognise this was the case however, though most would fail.

It is often said it is the mark of a true politician to be able to say a lot without saying anything at all, but perhaps it would be fairer to say that there are few jobs where someone with such an ability can put it to good use - depending on your point of view of course.  Nevertheless the ability to speak with such a flow without pause is something I would like to possess however I am a mere mortal.  It is worth pointing out that both actors had to learn their lines before speaking them so it's not realistic to hold their level of diction as aspirational.

The biggest barrier to achieving this goal is something affectionately known as a Brain Fart - a term one of my flatmates at University first introduced me to, in essence it means a momentary lapse in thought or a temporary disruption of one's mental faculties.  When writing, there is no delay that is apparent to you the reader, when the flow is interrupted, the writer pauses, eventually resumes, and the final product is edited and reworked.  Conversation on the other hand does not have this luxury.  You can't go back and edit what you said and you can't make meaningful corrections without the original statements remaining in place.  Nowhere is this more apparent than when you have a word in mind but you cannot recall it.  You know a word exists that you know of which succinctly conveys the meaning you wish to impart but you cannot for the life of you recall what it was.  Your mind then dances around amongst all the concepts and ideas and clusters of thought you would imagine to be connected to the concept in the hope of finding a path to it, sometimes you are successful and at other times you are not.

When you are writing you can simply reword what you were saying so as to use an alternate explanation.  This isn't usually apparent to the reader.  When speaking however you end up in that momentary silence where your mind goes blank and the more you try to recall the further your conscious thought fades to black and you are left in awkward silence.  There's a word for this, and fate, not without a sense of irony has denied me the recollection of it.