Walter Ong

"Writing introduces division and alienation, but a higher unity as well. It intensifies the sense of self and foster more conscious interaction between persons. Writing is consciousness-raising."

This quote by Walter Ong is very interesting to me. I agree with this quote completely because he is not merely saying language, but more specifically writing in this quote. It think that writing naturally has much more of an effect on people than spoken language. This is especially relevant in our society because we value what is written down so much more than what is spoken. Take our government for example, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are the two most important pieces of legislation in our country's history, and they are written down. They are written down so that they are permanent, it is visible and understandable, not just the latter. By having things written down we are putting them unders much subject to scrutiny. This is because it is often made available for everyone to see. It is much harder to deny written work because it is an actual object. Spoken language is much easier to deny if need be.

As for where Ong writes about language having unity, I think that he is completely right. Written work has the power to unite massive amounts of people around a single idea. Written works have often throughout history created bonds between millions of people. Take the bible for example, it is one book that millions of people around the world can unite around. This is how bonds are formed. Also, I think that written work does not divide people as much as people unite around different works which from there causes disagreements and division. It is not the work that can cause division, but the opinions of the people that are the cause.

Handlers? 12th post for Idiot Savant

It is almost as though they were his handlers for the performance.

This was one of the lines that I wrote in my 6th post for this assignment. I already explained what they did during the play and now I just have one more thing to add on pertaining to what they did. As we were leaving the show one of the men with the funny hats walked off stage and almost directed us out of the theater. Now throughout all of this he remained in character and completely still. The point of this was to convey to us how the show was not just a performance but that it was real life. It is almost as though we were at a zoo and we had just seen a performance by the animals and all of the handlers were directing people out. The Idiot Savant was the animal and we were the observers. I only realized this because I found it odd how the man directing us out stayed in character the whole time. Also, by having him come off the stage and remain in character it shows how it was not acting. Everything that we saw was supposed to be real life. This was a way of "landing the plane" for everyone in the audience.

The end of the play, 11th post for Idiot Savant

The end of this performance was a happy time for me, mainly because it meant that this show was finally over. Even though it was only about an hour and a half long, it felt like hours for me. The end of this play though was pretty obvious for me since it finished off most the my thoughts about the play itself. At the end we see only the Idiot Savant left on stage by himself looking around frantically for the duck, aka his sanity. He is left alone on stage at the end to represent how everyone else was a figment of his imagination (except for the people with the hats as I have mentioned in one of my previous posts). The last motion that the Idiot Savant has in this performance is him falling to the ground and landing precisely on the number five. The significance here is to show how that the performance is over and how he is complete. The whole point of this performance was to show us how he was in search of something. From the beginning of the play he was arguing with both himself and his alter egos trying to get information out of himself. At the end he is complete because he has achieved his goal; he has found whatever is was that he was looking for. As I mentioned before the point of the number was to show how close the people were to getting information out of him and by having him fall on the number five was to show how only he was able to get the information. When I write information, I mean understand what it was that was concerning him. By all of this I mean that he achieved his goal.

Watch out! 10th post for Idiot Savant

WATCH OUT!

That was the loud and obnoxious sound that was played over and over throughout the play. When it was first played I actually did "watch out". I thought that something drastic was about to happen on stage. A few days after the play I realized that it had been played, not to anticipate something drastic that was about to happen, but to represent a reoccurring theme. This was all made clear to me one morning when I was waiting to pick up my friend to drive him to school. I had been listening to the radio waiting for him to get in the car when all of a sudden I heard a very familiar tune. I am not sure what exactly the song was called, but it is the one that is constantly played in all of those Sam Adam's commercials. When the song came on I just thought that I was going to hear the advertisement for Sam Adam's beer, but when I realized that what was playing was a real song, I noticed what the producers of that commercial had been trying to do. They played the same song over and over in every commercial to get people to remember what was being advertised. This was so every time that song was played, whether it was for the commercial or not, people would think of their product. They wanted to make their product stick. This is what the producers of Idiot Savant did, they used the same copy of the woman's voice screaming "watch out!" over and over to make a reoccurring theme stick with the audience. This was so every time that the sound was played, we would be able to recognize exactly what was happening on stage. Stickiness happens everywhere, you just have to WATCH OUT!

The boats 9th post for Idiot Savant

Does anybody that very short little scene where the first woman (his good side) and the Idiot Savant appear on stage in boats? They just walked onto stage in little foot powered fake boats? Well that doesn't make any sense at all, unless it has deeper meaning to it...... DUH, obviously this will have deeper meaning behind it.

This particular scene was pretty easy for me to understand. The whole point of the first woman coming out onto stage in a fake boat was to represent how language must be fluid. You cannot just randomly throw around sentences and words without having some sort of connection between them. Since this whole play was about getting to the Idiot Savant, using language that flowed seems to be a fairly simple concept.

I also found it interesting how they only showed the first woman using a boat and not the second woman. This was an effort to show how she was his good side and how she made the effort to connect with him. It is to make an example of her good will and all of her attempts to get through to him. She tried using language that flowed so that he would be able to understand it. Sadly this effort failed. Once she made this attempt, the Idiot Savant came onto the stage in a similar boat, only this one had some sort of a megaphone in the front of it. The Idiot Savant did this to show how he was not going to focus, he merely was mocking the first woman. Again this is another example of how an autistic child might act. They often will copy what others are doing, just as we saw Wilem Defoe's character do in this scene.

As for the megaphone, I feel that it was to make this point stand out. It was to drive home the idea to us that he was not going to listen easily. This also added to the fact that he was copying and mocking her. It merely made the scene louder and more noticeable to everyone else.

Same voice? 8th post for Idiot Savant

Did anyone notice that during the play, the giant duck and the voice over were the exact same voice? This shows how the duck also represented his sanity and thought. At first he was merely arguing with himself, yelling to nowhere and no one, but at the end the duck comes on stage and the Idiot Savant seems to be a little more clear in everything that he does. It is almost as though the duck is his back up; just as when the play is nearing the end and the Idiot Savant is still being toyed with by the girls, the duck comes on stage to provide him with some help. it always did seem that Wilem Defoe's character was more understandable when the duck was on stage. His actions were swifter and his words were more clear. By having the duck on stage is showed to us all that the Idiot Savant was ready to not be tortured by those women any more. This is all becuse the Idiot Savant throughout the entire play was uncomforable and very irritable. He was never allowed to be left alone because he was always under questioning by the women on stage.

Even though the duck was around in the beginning (we know this because they were exactly the same voice), he was not on stage and therefore not much help to the Idiot Savant. This is why the Idiot Savant got so angry. It is because this giant duck was merely talking to him and not giving him much help. By making his presence at the end the duck was able to provide support for Wilem Defoe's character. Even though the duck did not do anything, that was not his purpose, he was only there to represent the coherence of the Idiot Savant and he did indeed do his job. It almost seemed anticlimactic in the sense that just as the play is about to finish, the duck makes big appearance to help out the Idiot Savant, meanwhile throughout the entire performance, much assistance was also needed.

The yellow jacket 7th post for Idiot Savant

Throughout this play I had to think deeply about almost everything and not just take it for what it appeared to be on stage, but out of all of the actions and language used in this performance there was on object which stood out the most to me. This object was the yellow jacket worn by Wilem Defoe's character for only a short scene. This jacket stood out to me because it was random, just as the little boats that were driven on stage which will be in my next post. This jacket represented more than what it obviously was, it represented Wilem Defoe's quest for composure. He was running around the stage for the entire play never with a moment to just be calm. Just as an autistic child or any young child for that matter has a certain object which they tend to cling to which they find to be comforting, the Idiot Savant has his yellow jacket. As I recall it was only put on after he began to yell at his own thought, "the voice". Once he began to scream one of those men with the funny hats brought a yellow jacket out onto stage. For a moment he began to keep calm when it was on, but after a while he became uncomfortable. Once he became uncomfortable he took it off in a frantic way and moved onto the next piece of the performance. He did this just as an autistic child can often not keep their focus and move on from one subject to another. It is hard for them to sit still and they begin to throw tantrums when they do not get their way. These were all the actions of Wilem Defoe's character while in possession of the jacket. He merely had it on for a short amount of time and then moved on to another subject because he has trouble focusing. At first the jacket was comforting to him and then it became more of a bother to him then anything else.

Along with the representation of his lack of ability to focus, this jacket also had one more meaning behind it. Going with the idea that he did not have jacket on for long brought me to think of how he could not be bounded. He was unable to sit still and to collect his thoughts and he barely gave himself time to focus on what was going on. All of this showing to us how he could not be tamed merely by giving him an object to find comfort in.

P.S. If this helps at all, think of Linus from Charlie Brown and his security blank. He always used it when he got nervous or uncomfortable. The Idiot Savant here uses his jacket when he is angry but since he is autistic he loses his focus so easily and moves on from it. The concepts of a security object are the same here though.

The voice over 6th post for Idiot Savant

All throughout the play we kept hearing this loud, deep and authoritative voice coming over the sound system. This voice was supposed to represent his thought. It spoke to everyone on stage at the same time because he was only arguing with himself. Remember that the other two women on stage were merely representing his conscious in a way. They were toying with him throughout the entire play, each acting in their own specific way (good and evil). The voice had continued to tell the characters that they had been fooled, which after a while began to bother the Idiot Savant. At one point he lashed out and yelled at the voice over (his thought) because he could not focus. This is not actually him arguing with someone as much as it is him arguing with himself and getting mad at himself because he is losing focus. All of this constant change is making him uneasy and his mind cannot focus on what is exactly going on.

As a side note, the other people, the ones with the little hats on, are real. As the Idiot Savant is arguing with himself, the other people bring him the objects that are placed on stage. They are only able to do this because he is arguing out loud with himself. He is yelling his thoughts aloud for the others to hear and the objects are brought on to him on stage. It is almost as though they were his handlers for the performance. They walked him onto stage in the beginning, brought him all of the objects that he needed during the show and at the end directed us out of the theater. The two women and the duck are not real at all, they are the figments of his imagination.

The table 5th post for Idiot Savant

The table. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I feel that the table represents something about the second woman on stage. However, I also feel that the table has its own meaning as well. The table in this play is used to represent the strength of language. It is there to show that words must have meaning, they cannot simply be thrown about and scattered amongst a conversation. It is necessary that you know the meaning of the word and that you use it in the right context. Words cannot just be used without having meaning behind it, this is what the Idiot Savant is trying to show us when he does take the table out of the wall. I remember him taking the table and hoisting it over his head. All of this is to make an example of the table, to bring it to our attention, not just in the sense that it means something, but to convey that it represents so much more. Also the fact that it was a strong wooden table made the point come across so much clearer to me. All in all it is showing that language needs a base and must be founded on something strong. Make your words stick by using the right ones, not just anyones. As for the woman, having her come out from behind the table represents how much stronger she really is. To describe the situation, the Wilem Defoe's character took the table out of the wall, and inside of that same wall was that woman crouched inside. By having her come out from there and entering on stage in an odd sort of way shows to us that she is going to be much different than the first woman to appear on stage. It shows us that first of all she is much stronger, and second of all, she is going to be a different from the other people on stage (which in this play is not hard by any means). Having her come out after the table is taken out shows that she is going to follow in the same footsteps of the table. She is going to be strong. The second woman always did seem so much stronger in her tone of voice and her questioning. She was not compassionate at all, she did not get along with the first woman, and she always seemed to be somewhat scary. The whole point of this representation was to show how she was strong. It represents how she was different, she was his other alter ego. She was the bad half of his conscious in a way. the first woman entered stage conventionally and was more sympathetic to the Idiot Savant. The second woman on the other hand was his bad half, showing this through her dark and almost hidden entrance from behind the table. Showing how she is not necessarily wanted but she is making her appearance whether the Idiot Savant knows it or not. The Idiot Savant did seem somewhat angry at the first woman when he took the table out of the wall. All of this representing that he was so fed up with her and he was angry. Because of this he brought out he evil side, when he took the table out. This is how the woman were his "angel and devil". He evoked them, he brought them out of himself because when he was calm in the beginning, he was level headed and trying to think nice and clearly. When the second woman came on stage, he brought her out because he was angry and began to lose focus. This is why he took the table out also. The Idiot Savant was so fed up with meaningless talk that he needed to show the first woman to be strong and have meaning in her words. This is why she was getting now where, because her words were not strong at all.

Let's start from the beginning 4th post for Idiot Savant

Where do I begin? Let's just start out by saying that this play was weird and eccentric. Ever since the opening scene when we saw Wilem Defoe's character walking across stage, I was just in shock of how odd the play had opened up and everything from that point on still continued to amaze me. The play opened with the Idiot Savant walking with a fake bird in a cage and what seemed to be a stick in his mouth. The play continued on and we saw the first lady appear on stage and begin to ask the Idiot Savant questions. I do not remember what these questions were, but I do remember what her motions were when she asked them. She also kept attempting to move from number to number around the room. I was completely in shock for the first few minutes until it all started to finally click for me. What helped me greatly was the fact that Wilem Defoe's microphone broke on stage. This gave me a minute to collect my thoughts and to see if they actually made sense.

My ideas about this play all keep the idea in mind that this entire play is about language. That is the main point that they all connect back to. Also, since we had done previous assignments in class about being specific when using language, those exercises, I felt, helped me out greatly. It allowed me to understand what is important in what is being said and to be able to filter out all the language that was unnecessary. So here it is, my take on the play Idiot Savant.

First of as a side note which I will get to later on, the two women on stage were his alter egos. The first lady was nice and the second lady was more stern and mean. Almost as though they were playing the role of the angel and devil on his shoulders, telling him what to do and constantly toying with him, leaving him unable to make a decision. As the play opened up, I believe the first lady was either on stage when the play began or she entered onto the stage not too long after the play had begun. Either way, from the very beginning she seemed to be trying to draw stuff out of him, asking questions and trying to get information from him. She was the clear thinking level headed side of his conscious, while the other lady was more demanding and was always in a bad mood. The point here is that when the first lady was on stage she seemed to be asking a lot of questions and through these questions she was hoping that he would open up to her and allow her to get some answers. The stick that was in his mouth in the opening of the play, which prevented him from talking, represented the answer that she was indeed looking for. This is because we witnessed her quite a few times, trying to make a grab at it and to get it away from him. The fact that it was tied to a string around his neck conveyed to us that it was important to him (his thoughts) and that he was not going to let it get away from him easily. This is why the lady had to work so hard and ask so many questions in order to try and get it away from him. The number on the walls to the both sides of the stage represented her progress in getting the answers and knowledge out of him. The higher the numbers were that she was at, the closer it she was to getting the knowledge that she desired. I realized all of this when she began to move around in sequential order. she began at number one and only reached number two. This was to show how her being soft with him was going to get her nowhere. She was asking the wrong questions, just like in the clip from the Pink Panther, when the inspector asked if the man's dog bit. The man replied no and when the dog bit the inspector the man simply told him that it was not his dog. I will post the link to the video clip at the end of this blog post so it will be more clear. From all of this I am hinting at the fact that the numbers represented how close she was getting to him. The first lady never did get very far and seemed to always gravitate more to the right side of the stage and towards the lower numbers. The second lady on the other hand, appeared from behind the table and next to the number four. This, as Jordan pointed out after the show, represented that she was going to get no farther than number four. While I agree with this, I also think that it was meant to show how much stronger she was than the first lady who appeared on stage. Both because of the table, which I will explain in my next blog post, and because she was more demanding of the Idiot Savant. Because of her being so much stronger, she was able to get closer to him and farther in her questioning. This was all in the same hopes that Wilem Defoe's character would open up to her and reveal the answer. When I write about the Idiot Savant opening up to the women, I do not mean discussing it with them, I mean that he will be able to come to reason over a decision because these women are not real, they are merely his alter egos being portrayed on the stage. Also, he will not be revealing thins to them, by this I mean that he will discover the answer that he is searching for. The Idiot Savant is merely arguing with himself and searching within himself to find what he is indeed looking for.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXn2QVipK2o

Forgetfulness 3rd post for Idiot Savant

"It has floated down a dark mythological river, whose name begins with an L as far as you can remember."

These are two lines from Billy Collins' poem entitled "Forgetfulness".

After reading this poem it first seemed to me that this poem was about just thought and random little things that we learn throughout our lives, but after thinking about it for a few minutes I realized how much more there actually is to this. The entire poem is not simply talking about facts, but about our thoughts and language in general. The poem is talking about the constant fluidity and changing of thought and our language. Langauge is constantly in motion it is ever changing and evolving, new authors appear everyday and they all contain new works waiting to be read by others, but what happens to our previous thoughts, everything that we thought we once knew? Just as in one of his lines Collins writes that "even now as you memorize the order of the planets, something else is slipping away", he is referring to the quite recent change of pluto no longer being considered a planet. The idea of pluto being the last planet in our solar system has been around for quite sometime, ever since I was a little child and way before that Pluto was always considered to be a planet. Now there has been a sudden change, not that pluto is no longer there, but the fact that we do not consider it a planet anymore. This is what Billy Collins is referring to, the idea of all of our previous knowledge being obsolete to what is happening at this very moment. All of our thoughts are in constant jeopardy and what do we do when they are no longer serve their purpose? We throw them away and they float right on down that "mythological river, whose name begins with an L as far as you can remember." This is what those two lines from his poem are referring to, not that we have actually lost our thoughts, but we have disregarded them as being useful and worthwhile so we no longer need to remember them. They are still there, they are merely in "a little fishing village where there are no phones", out there somewhere, unable to contact us, therefore being out of commission in our minds. This shows the constant changing our language as a whole and more specifically our very society. It shows how we are forever changing and are always in motion, trying to keep up with ourselves and to be ready for the next thought to come along and destroy everything which once stood in it's way.

This is all able to connect back to the play "Idiot Savant". In this play we heard many times throughout the show a narrator's voice over the sound system that would tell us to "rejoice" when something was supposedly made obvious to us and also that we had been fooled by the characters. This shows the constant changing of ideas throughout the play. The voice is telling us what is made clear and how we have been tricked all of the time. I personally did not see what exactly this voice was making clear to us, but I did have some ideas about it and every time it would tell us that we had been tricked, I would lose those ideas and think that they were useless. It shows to us how ideas are never solid. There is always room to grow with ideas and even pieces of art. Think of the text that we read about Lehtem in the beginning of the semester and how his whole argument was based around the idea that ideas are continually thought upon and redeveloped into an often completely new form. Because of all of this we are forced to lose our old ideas in order to stay current and to not lose track of what is indeed happening in society. All of these changing ideas only contribute to and exemplify the fast paced and every changing world which we now live in.

Also, one last note, the link that we used in class and also the one that I referred to tonight to consult the Billy Collins poem again was a hypertext. It had links on it to connect you to other websites containing information which had to do with what was mentioned in the poem. Now think about that and isn't that a new thought than the one that you had before. Are you going to go back and look at Collin's poem differently now because of what I have just mentioned? There's your example for a new thought. Thanks Billy Collins.

"if I must, I must" 2nd post for Idiot Savant

In this one simple line from the movie “Mary Poppins”, Mary Poopins herself conveys both her frustration and self-realization of what she must do. Though she does convey frustration, there is not anger hidden inside of her. It is merely that the children that she is watching over and the other adults in the room are not listening to her at all. Since they are not paying attention to her she knows that she must join them, as they float above the room about to have tea. While she is not thrilled over the idea of giving in and going up into the air with everyone else, she realizes that is it what she “must “ do.

The point here of conveying two emotions through only three different words is to show the complexity of language in itself. While it may seem like just a simple example of Mary Poppins making a choice of what to do, it is really so much more than that. In this line Mary Poppins shows us how she has eliminated all other options of trying to the get everyone else to listen, and now knows what she must do. It is not what she particularly wanted to do, but she has no other option and going up there with everyone else “must” be done.

This all is able to connect back to the play which our class saw about two weeks ago in the village. “Idiot Savant” can be compared to the complexity that the one line from “Mary Poppins” shows to the audience. The entire play was based around the idea of language. It was to show us how important it was, how it should be used and the meanings that can be hidden behind it all. However, while both of these pieces of art convey complexity in language, “Idiot Savant is on a much greater level than that one line from “Mary Poppins can even try and compare too. Everything in and about “Idiot Savant” was complex, there was nothing straight forward in the play at all. In “Mary Poppins” her intentions, in the line that we are examining, were very clear yet there was still more behind it. In “Idiot Savant”, however, the intentions of everyone in that performance were unclear and the language that was used held an even deeper meaning. I feel that the movement in the play acted almost as a helping verb to the language being used. I do not mean that the movements helped me to understand the dialogue any better, as much as the movements added to the complexity of the language. Yet as much as I feel they made the play more confusing, I also think that they brought more things into the light for me. Think of it this way, if they had shown two people sitting down at a table and reading the script, how much more confused would we be? I think that the movements were there to both tone down and add more complexity to the performance. All of the movements can somewhat help us to understand what is going on, but at the same time most of these motions were so abstract that they could have added even more confusion to the audience. I think that the motions implied deep meaning along with the language being used itself. Honestly throughout most of the play, I forgot what the dialogue was during the different scenes, yet I remember the motions of the actors very vividly. They stood out to me more than the language because they were just so odd. It’s a visual experience which is hard to forget.

“Hubris at Zunzal”

This poem for the most part confused me greatly, as have most poems that I have read in my life. I do not know why but poetry has never really been the strongest part of any of my English/composition classes. Poems always seemed to annoy me a lot, like a child who thinks that he is better than everyone just because he is rich and fancy. That is exactly what poems are to me, rich and fancy kids who think that they are better than everyone else. Honestly that is why I enjoyed Billy Collin’s poem in which he mocked all love poems in one single shot. I loved it because it just called out everything which I have hated the most of poetry, symbolism. Symbolism to me was always the most annoying part to have to get passed and understand, but Billy Collins ripped love poems apart and for that I congratulate him. This poem entitled “Hubris at Zunzal” was not overall that bad for me once we started to analyze it in class together, yet I still do not like it. Even though there is not that much symbolism in this poem, to me it is still a snobbish rich kid. Why do they always think that they are better than everyone just because they are fancy? Poems and simple language can all have the same meaning in the end, so why don’t they just save everyone the trouble and stop being so complex. Take these two lines for example “And dumped it white into the waves, when it came upon me again me how sweet it had been”. Now in class I believe that we began to say how what the main character in the poem dumped into the ocean (his coconut milk and 150 proof rum) represented bought language and his thoughts and how he lost them by mixing them into the ocean. As a result of this he lost them (his thoughts) because as we all know that if you dump a drink into the ocean, well…good luck at getting it back because its mixed in their. Then he goes on to say about how it is so sweet when the drink washed back up onto him. How hard is it to say that you forgot a thought and it came back to you. I could have saved myself about 10 lines of writing and so much time trying to figure this out if the author had been straight forward with his thoughts in the first place.

Even though I do not appreciate the poem at all I can still understand how this is able to connect to the play “Idiot Savant”. The whole point of the play was to convey the idea of how important language is. The idea of this poem was the same thing I feel. It is to show how language is a gift and should not be wasted. The person in this poem wasted his thoughts and then luckily, they splashed back over him, but most of the time when you dump a drink into the ocean it is lost. There is no way to get it back, that is why you must hold on to it and keep all of your ideas together. I have about a page full of notes in my notebook and another ten or so ideas for blog posts about the play “Idiot Savant” saved onto my iPhone. This is because when I get a good idea or even a simple one I want to remember it, I do not want to have to rack my brain later on to try and remember what it was. The whole point that I am trying to make here is that you should not waste good thoughts. Keep them sacred because you never know what they might turn in to. Just as in one of the scenes from “Idiot Savant” we see Wilem Defoe’s character faced with the availability of taking a gift from one of the women on stage. He attempts to take the present but is unable to and after a while he loses his chance to get the box. After this we find out that the present inside of the box was a fancy watch. All of this is meant to convey to us that TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE. I find it quite ironic that after all of the time that he had wasted trying to get the box from the woman and deciding if he really wanted it, that the gift inside was a watch. He wasted all of the language used in that two minute scene trying to get a gift which just conveys to him that he is wasting time. Since time is of the essence, it is a gift, just like language and he should never waste it. He is frustrated and angry at the end of this dilemma because he has missed the opportunity. (This is a part of the play which is an example of what I wrote about before, when I mentioned how the movements in this play brought things into the light from me. The actions in this scene, the attempting to obtain the gift and the constant failure of that very action, all made my ideas more clear to me. If there was no action and only dialogue for this scene, would you honestly be able to understand it? I would not.) In essence Wilem Defoe’s character has just dumped his drink into the ocean. He has wasted his thoughts through wasting time and now is unable to get them back. The fact that the gift inside of the box was a watch show that time is a precious gift and do not let it get away from you that easily. Granted the poem did not seem to concern how long he took to finally dump his drink into the ocean but the fact is still that he did. The connection between the two here is that they both wasted their precious thoughts and were unable to keep control of language, one through carelessness and the other through wasting time.