Why Words Don't Get Through — Beginning "The Mass of Zero Notes"
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The Mass of Zero Notes #0
Whenever I give an artist talk in English abroad, the same thought crosses my mind: if 40% of what I say gets through, I'm doing well.
I don't think this is only a matter of language skill. Even between native speakers, the moment what lies inside us becomes words, most of it falls away. And yet we keep trying to reach each other, held up by the tone of a voice and the air of a room — by what I call "Tone."
After more than twenty years in the world of noise and improvised performance, I have come to believe that Tone, Ma (the interval) and Error are what truly connect people. I gathered these thoughts in a paper published in 2026, The Mass of Zero. At its core is a simple idea: human communication is an act of co-creating a field through Tone, with the frustration of not quite reaching the other built in from the start.
About These Notes
These notes take ideas that the paper condensed into a few paragraphs and open them up again, in the form they had before they were cut down, one essay at a time. They did not fit within the paper's pages, but many of them sit close to everyday experience.
Why don't words get through? Why do words become blades on social media? What are we missing when we shut out sound with noise cancelling? And what can an improvised "session" teach us about the way we talk to each other? I will take up one of these questions at a time.
Writing in words about the failure of words may be a contradictory undertaking. This text, too, will probably reach you at about 40%. But if you fill the remaining blank with your own reading, I think that, too, becomes a kind of session.
Contents
Links will be added as each note is published. Part 3, "From the Field of Improvisation," is in preparation.
Part 1: Words Carry Only 30%
The More You Explain, the Less Gets Through — The Paradox of the "70% Blank"
Why Broken Words Resonate More — Conversations Abroad and AI
Part 2: A Society That Has Lost Its Tone
Unable to Let Go of the Wheel — Social Media and Runaway Activity
The Cage of Consistency — Sartre and Self-Branding
Firing Signs Through Gaps in the Wall — Righteousness in Blocks
Noise Cancelling as a "Transparent Wall"
Screens Without Resistance and "Tone Pollution"
Replies Too Fast — From Letters to Chat, and the Lost Power to Wait
Bridge: Toward Improvisation
How Reflex Differs from Improvisation — Moon Echo and Passive Improvisation
These notes explore the margins of the paper The Mass of Zero (2026).
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