I sometimes wonder whether or not I am a good communicator. I do listen and pay attention to people when they are talking, but I wonder to what degree I truly understand them. This comes up because I was delighted yesterday by a statement by Allen Forte yesterday when he was doing his lecture.
I paraphrase, 'Do you like octatonic scales? I usually like to play one first thing in the morning; to clear my head of tonality.'
The statement he made was absolutely delightful and I was immediately moved to get my notepad and write it down. The problem is that in those 10 seconds between his statement and my writing it down, all that remained certain was the idea of the statement.
I am not sure whether he actually said 'usually'; whether he referred to the scale as 'one' or 'them' or 'it'; whether it was 'first thing', or just 'in the morning'; and he may have even thrown a colour word into the last phrase.
For the longest time, I have used active listening. Therapists and counsellors use this in order to validate and verify the things that another person had said:

Jack- "so like, um, when she was there, I was like, ahh!"
Dr. Johnson - "I see, so her presence made you feel uneasy"

I'm not sure whether or not it is a problem, but I think I do this all the time. Most of the time, it works well; I remember things better if they fit logically into the way that I think, but therein lies the problem - when the topic is something that I don't understand easily like politics or philosophy, I don't hold on to the information effectively. Even more scary is the fact that I can easily misunderstand concepts when I am trying to translate them for myself.
I think I am going to hereby add this to my list of things I want to improve about myself. I am going to try to understand concepts in the context in which they are told to me before I try and apply them to my own life and thoughts.

Anyway, that's enough rambling for tonight. Back to work for me! [My piece is coming along, slowly but surely. I have plans tomorrow evening, so I will need to get it finished by tomorrow cause I sure don't want to leave it until late late Sunday night. Basically there are 2 more sections that I need to finish, and then I will probably tidy up how they connect together. I'm aiming to get at least one of those two sections done today.]