Tip of the Old-Hat to McLuhan

the medium is the message (massage); what a malleable phrase.
we can push it, pull it, shape it in innumerable ways.
it frees us up from listening and empowers us to speak;
to draw back the stage curtains and dispel its evident mystique.
but if we really heard it, perhaps we'd apprehend,
that so much of our elocution tends instead to condescend,
for it seems to me that clearly most simply it says think......

 It is difficult, perhaps impossible, in a Western context anyhow, to engage in the area of media (i.e. plural of medium) without coming across this, I would dare say, most famous aphorism of McLuhan.  But so often, it is followed by: "what McLuhan means is", or something of that ilk.  (The astute reader will notice how even I have done this in the poem above!).

In my experience however, those "what McLuhan means is" type definitions, despite their good intentions to make McLuhan accessible, take away so much of what McLuhan does in his writing/speaking.  The point (for me anyhow) isn't to have a phrase that can be neatly explained and tucked away.  The point is to leave you scratching your head and with a pebble in your shoe.  Asking that precise question: "What is he talking about?" and on top of that so many other questions as well, over and over again.

Take for example my favourite McLuhan quote at the top of my blog.  I see this phrase and I can't help but raise questions.  So, if Jesus was the only time the message and the medium were perfectly aligned, how is it that so many never got the message (when he was here), and so many still don't get the message?  What then, does a perfect alignment of medium and message account for anyhow?  Does this mean our focus - medium and message - in terms of communication is completely out of whack and we should start over? And on, and on.

I guess, as I tip my old-hat to McLuhan, I just wanted to say, if you are at all interested in this area, take the time to let McLuhan frustrate you.  I have no doubt that he will.  Read his work directly and wrestle with what it might be that he is trying to say.  Sure, read what others want to tell you he means, but don't use this as an excuse not to travel in the maelstrom yourself.