Taipa or Tarrying?

Two different forms of reading, two different forms of soul. Plus, some loafing with John 1.

Taipa or Tarrying?

I learned of this from Alan Jacobs’ blog (which is excellent!): a Japanese word chosen as one of their words of the year. From the piece:

 Taipa [“time performance,” abbreviated to one word] is used for talking about efficient use of time, and is particularly associated with the members of Generation Z, born roughly between 1995 and 2010. In search of optimum “time performance,” they might watch films and drama at double speed or via recut versions that only show major plot points, and skip to the catchy parts of songs.

For these zoomers, learning to make the best use of their time is the only way to save themselves from drowning in an ocean of online content and to keep up with friends’ conversations.

Taipa basically means “amount of joy by amount of time.”

Per the spirit of the word, if I can get the same amount of enjoyment of a movie while watching it at double speed, that has a higher taipa value. And if my phone is messed up so I can’t scroll to the best part of a song right away, that’s a lower taipa value.

As Jacobs notes in as non-grumpy a way as possible, the popularity of taipa may be a commentary on the value of the “content” people are exposed to; anyone who’s agonized through a boring YouTube video their friend is showing them knows it’s real.

But if taipa is the only value we use to weigh what we take in, then increasingly we’ll only try to read efficiently – to switch metaphors, if a text is an apple tree, taipa sprints under the canopy and grabs the lowest-hanging ones, because the rest isn’t worth the effort of stopping to climb.

And taipa reading has two hidden assumptions that humanistic readers – readers who value human life over machine life – know are bunkum.

Assumption 1: The low-hanging apples are the best.

In other words, the best stuff is the most obvious. The leadership book with the nugget in bold at the top of the chapter. (why write the chapter?) The single of the album. The chorus of the single.

But that’s just not true. Gene Wolfe defined “literature” as “a work that rewards re-reading.” To use a musical example, listen to this cover of “The Maker” by Daniel Lanois:

Matthews covers the song well on the piano and sings with pathos, so you could enjoy the “surface” of the song and maybe register something about a river. But when you listen, you hear that the song is full of imagery from the Bible – John the Baptist; Jesus’ warning against putting our hand to the plow and turning away; the Garden of Eden. And you realize that the singer is reflecting on the prospect of his own death, and what may come after. If we were omniscient, we could take it all in at once, but repeated listens give us not just new awareness of what’s in the song, but new experiences of longing, sadness, pain, and hope, that aren’t immediately obvious right away.

Assumption 2: Climbing isn’t worth it.

The other assumption under taipa reading is that “climbing” – getting up into this tree, shaking the branches, pushing aside the leaves for beauties yet unfound – isn’t worth the effort. There’s more joy to be found by sprinting to the next text for the nuggets and choruses there.

And again, for many things, that’s certainly true. But if that’s the only way we ever “read” anything, then we’re cutting ourselves off from any joys that might come from a deeper form of reading. And if there are any benefits that require that kind of close reading, we won’t get them at all. (Spoiler alert: there are benefits that require close reading)

Tarrying with the Text

Is there an opposite of taipa reading?

Alastair Roberts, another of my favorite bloggers/scholars/podcasters (he and his wife

Susannah Black Roberts

are at The Anchored Argosy stack), uses the phrase “tarrying with the text” to describe the slow, attentive style of reading associated with meditating on Scripture. I like Roberts’ phrase, first, because it’s relational – it’s not just time, but time with a voice that can become part of us. I’ve read so many of GK Chesterton’s books and essays (thanks to this site) that I can imagine him commenting on things I read now, nearly a century after his death.

“Tarrying” is also a much more pleasant word than, say, “studying.” It’s a leisurely activity – a long conversation in a living room with a fire rather than a library carrel haunted by the specter of an exam. Or even a student typing frantically to transcribe an oracular professor’s unrecorded lecture; tarrying has time to ask a text to say that again.

Taipa reading skims, crams, stuffs, and constipates the soul; tarrying sits down to a feast that’s going nowhere but our bellies. It has time to let the butter soften on the roll.

To sum:

Tarrying sits, it doesn’t sprint.

Tarrying makes chronological room for a text (which itself is a minor rebellion against the digital order). It’s hospitable, not rushing a text through the agenda. It knows that time is the seedbed of serendipity, and the best moments come when we have space to pay attention.

Tarrying listens, it doesn’t interrogate.

“Mary … sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving” (Luke 10:39-40) is the tarrying spirit of reading. Instead of treating a text as an object to dissect, “use,” and move on, it treats it as a friend (or in this case a master) to learn from.

Tarrying savors, it doesn’t cram.

Tarrying enjoys itself at the barbecue. It’s not utilitarian, consuming tasteless nutrition bars. It reads for pleasure and mops up the details, trusting that there are delights in the subtleties as well as the headings.

Tarrying with John 1:14-18

If we had more time, we’d feast on the whole of John 1 together (Roberts has a good reading and reflection here), but we’ll just take one plate for now. What might it look like to tarry with the text?

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) 16 For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.

Tarrying starts with listening. Read it as many times through as you can, saying it out loud if you don’t mind looking like someone who does that kind of thing. What do you see?

Here are some that I see.

“And the Word became flesh.” “Word” and “flesh” were opposites, nearly enemies, in the Greek-minded world that John was writing into. Word was mind, spirit, rationality, eternity – pristine, a perfect diamond on a perfect black velvet background. Flesh was changeable, saggy, sweaty, prone to blisters. It was borderline offensive to set them as neighbors.

But they’re more than neighbors. The Word became flesh. Not “slummed with.” Not “pretended to be.” It didn’t volunteer at the homeless shelter with double gloves on its hands. It became that wrinkled, weak, dirty condition the respectable Romans longed to escape.

How do you think of God? Distant, vaguely disgusted with the world, like Lucius Malfoy? Pristinely untouchable up “there,” wherever there is?

Because this phrase tells us that however you think of the earthiest earthiness of this life – a hospital, a carnival, a prison – the Word joined it.

“… and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory.” Word didn’t come down as a hermit on a pillar or a king on a mountain; he came to us. We have seen the glory, earth-tied as it was. The Gospel writers were men who camped out with the Almighty-made-flesh, the glory-made-man.

Full of grace and truth. Full of grace: the unmerited pleasure of God in his rebellious creations. The father of the Prodigal Son, straining his eyes daily for the child who scorned him and ripped him off to come to his senses and come home. The physician who came to cure those addicts, prostitutes, and greedy agents of empire of the sins they were finally wearied of.

And full of truth: full of reality itself. Not the postmodern shrug or the inscrutable snarl of nature, but the light that illumines the darkness we stumble in. The rock we can build a life on. Coming to Jesus is coming to the way things truly are, in heaven and on earth. His life carries the exile home.

And tarrying ends with digesting, especially when the text is coauthored by God. One writer said God’s words are “living and active,” because their author is living, active, and omnipresent to boot. If these truths became part of the DNA of your soul, how would you be rearranged? What hatreds and lies would be displaced? What darkness could you walk out of? How would you make room for his glory?

Taipa reading misses all of that. There’s no time. The machine is on the move. See if you can sit down and tarry with the text.