Footnotes: a study in not having a clear, linear path through conversation

Sometimes, I think I sort of live my life in footnotes.

I use footnotes quite a bit in my writing as I think they work quite well in explaining, and illustrating, my thought processes. My blog posts aim, in the main, to be my voice - to sound like me. I think that I do manage this a lot of the time but, in order to achieve that, I do have to weave together all the competing and complementary thoughts in my head into single statements. Of course, we all do this when talking and anyone that has spoken much with me will know that I make a lot of throwaway comments that seem disconnected from the thrust of a conversation but make perfect sense in my head. Thus, I sometimes laugh and smile at inopportune moments. Politeness means that often people will laugh or join in but I have noticed that a lot of people I speak to also do not know what I am referring to. This has happened a lot at work over the years, and it is here that I wish I could deploy footnotes. 

"You see this thing that I said, it does make sense - you just need to have grown up in exactly my background with the same interests. That is all."

-or-

"There is something to back this line of reasoning up you know."

Also, little comments can have so much of a story behind them or little bits of commentary, at least, that fleshes them out. I am a fan of extraneous information - footnotes allow you to add options to that extraneous information. They are like director's commentary tracks (which, ironically, I never listen to) on DVDs. My links, distributed unevenly through a post, also perform a similar function.

I have recently been thinking about why I do this and I have decided to term it "second-order" - this is where you need to have some knowledge (that is, apparently, not general) in order to get it. I know all conversations are essentially this and communication always needs shared knowledge to start from - whether that is a shared name for a colour or a shared understanding of what the rules of immigration actually are - but it is more about the less general nature of this shared knowledge. Basically, an unshared knowledge that I wished was shared.

I think my favourite joke/stand up [you can see it here] routine by Stewart Lee, who has a book made up of his scripts extensively footnoted, is basically second-order in its execution and the thing I like about things like this is that people obviously have different speeds of connecting two things together. That, I enjoy.

Apart from being an explanation, I also wanted to write this without the use of footnotes. I just about managed it although there were many temptations to stray and I have used a single link.