Process Piece

Hannah Hansen and Tabitha Brower

Process Piece

In Dean Duncan’s Scriptures we watch as a family’s scripture study evolves into a subtle, complex communication. As each child in the Duncan family expresses his/her true feelings about the practice, we come to see how complex a simple process can be. Similarly, in our Process piece we wanted to explore how a simple piece of communication, a text, can be stretched into something more intricate. The process of texting may not seem like a form of complex communication, but consider this: When you receive a text, do you stop to think before responding? Do you call on a friend to discuss what would be the best response? Do you say something you wouldn’t normally say in person?

Our process focused on a scenario ubiquitous among female teenagers and young adults: a college student receives a text from the guy she’s into and calls on her roommate for backup, hoping for help in crafting the perfect response. Staging this process, we crafted a fake a text from a crush named “Tim”. To add audio depth to the piece, the first student left the room only to enter when called by the second. We then stepped aside to see how they played out the potential deconstruction, analysis, and response to the text. Based on past experiences, the text and “Tim” seemed to become reality as the two roommates improvised a process with which they were very familiar.

This particular practice is intriguing in terms of pondering process. We have, many times, been in the middle of said process and become suddenly self-aware; it can seem inane. But it’s sincere, and for all its silliness, has become crucial. Our world has transformed into an arena of social media with a new vernacular, texting, and for the last several years we have learned to communicate in this new language of a hundred characters and emojis.

The concern in both the above-documented microprocess and in the broader process of learning to speak in this abbreviated language lies with the finished product, the perfect text -- at once witty and chill. It’s meant to seem natural, but like “natural makeup”, that which appears effortless is often the reverse. The process takes time, patience, cleverness.

And like in Commoner’s The Smokehouse, while the preoccupation is with the finished product, half the value lies in the process. These are important moments, bonding over things like first love. On the surface, there may appear to be little value in giggling college girls texting their crushes together or in giggling college girls recording the process. But perhaps any process that can invest a text of less than sixty words with the trembling eagerness of interest and infatuation; any process that edges you toward mastery of the right word, the right note, the right emoji; any process that edges you toward one another, laughing over a phone and mugs of tea, is a worthy one.