A word, a printed word can't scream, can't emote, can't send out pheromones or wave its serifs in gestures.
Sometimes though, in the hand of a skillful writer, which I someday hope to be, some kind of alphabetic synergetic phenomenon happens and a reader can hear the screams and emotion coming through the printed (or electron bytten) words. I know that the printed word, electronically or otherwise, is a set of symbols contrived to give the decrypting reader a kind of sense of reality. One of my favorite writers, Idries Shah, wrote that reading about reality has about the same relationship to true reality as dried onions have to fresh onions. It's there but you have to use your imagination.
I have been attempting to find this combination when I write about anything. Anything except words. This and all the above feel like symbols of symbols of symbols. I have the feeling that whenever someone writes about an "intellectual" subject this is what happens, which is probably why intellectuals seem so foggy most of the time. They probably keep seeing symbols floating in their heads and as long as the symbol has any relativity to their subject they follow it around until another symbol catches their interest.
Trying to attract my brother's attention from a book he was reading I would have to yell, "hey GG, get up and help me with this!" whatever "this" was and he would slowly, slowly try to tear his eyes away from the words on the page to my increasingly insistent tone. He and my sisters did the same thing; they would seem to crawl inside the book until the only thing showing was their feet by which they would have to be dragged out. After I had their attention it was still divided because their emotional fingers still had to be pried loose from whatever book was providing my competition.
This was a mystery to me because I hated to read for at least the first nine years of my life. The only reason I finally took it up was because the family television, yes, we only had one, had a nervous breakdown and my liberal minded beatnik parents decided we didn't need to replace it. Whenever I complained to them about having nothing to do, my father would say read a book; my mother usually gave me some tedious make work task but she might say read a book, which I thought at the time was pretty much the same thing.
I suppose I should say that because of my liberal minded beatnik parents and an older brother and sister who could read, I was taught to read before I entered Kindergarten. I think the first book I read by myself was one of the "Cowboy Sam" series by the late Edna Walker Chandler and I remember those books having the feel of dusty roads, smokey exhaust and the smell of bacon (which I hate). But the only reason I remember them that way was because Ms. Chandler wrote them for boys my age and more importantly to boys my age. Somehow she knew our "language" so the word symbols she used, assisted by simple illustrations, spoke directly to the little cowboy in me.
Much later than "Cowboy Sam" I took a college creative writing course where the teacher told us to use words that "color" our writing. The example she used was very simple; she wrote on the board "money", "coin" and "doubloon". She also said that if we denied ourselves the usage of profanity we would discover new choices. At the beginning of the semester I really thought she was just being dictatorial and taking the vote for everyone, but when the term had come to a close, I thanked her because what she had said was true. If I took away the automatic and the habitual, I had to find another way to express myself, even though I still have the impulse to write in colorful Mamet-esque street terms.
Borrowing words from Shakespeare, the task now seems to be to find some ability to write for and to some undiscovered country.
Sometimes though, in the hand of a skillful writer, which I someday hope to be, some kind of alphabetic synergetic phenomenon happens and a reader can hear the screams and emotion coming through the printed (or electron bytten) words. I know that the printed word, electronically or otherwise, is a set of symbols contrived to give the decrypting reader a kind of sense of reality. One of my favorite writers, Idries Shah, wrote that reading about reality has about the same relationship to true reality as dried onions have to fresh onions. It's there but you have to use your imagination.
I have been attempting to find this combination when I write about anything. Anything except words. This and all the above feel like symbols of symbols of symbols. I have the feeling that whenever someone writes about an "intellectual" subject this is what happens, which is probably why intellectuals seem so foggy most of the time. They probably keep seeing symbols floating in their heads and as long as the symbol has any relativity to their subject they follow it around until another symbol catches their interest.
Trying to attract my brother's attention from a book he was reading I would have to yell, "hey GG, get up and help me with this!" whatever "this" was and he would slowly, slowly try to tear his eyes away from the words on the page to my increasingly insistent tone. He and my sisters did the same thing; they would seem to crawl inside the book until the only thing showing was their feet by which they would have to be dragged out. After I had their attention it was still divided because their emotional fingers still had to be pried loose from whatever book was providing my competition.
This was a mystery to me because I hated to read for at least the first nine years of my life. The only reason I finally took it up was because the family television, yes, we only had one, had a nervous breakdown and my liberal minded beatnik parents decided we didn't need to replace it. Whenever I complained to them about having nothing to do, my father would say read a book; my mother usually gave me some tedious make work task but she might say read a book, which I thought at the time was pretty much the same thing.
I suppose I should say that because of my liberal minded beatnik parents and an older brother and sister who could read, I was taught to read before I entered Kindergarten. I think the first book I read by myself was one of the "Cowboy Sam" series by the late Edna Walker Chandler and I remember those books having the feel of dusty roads, smokey exhaust and the smell of bacon (which I hate). But the only reason I remember them that way was because Ms. Chandler wrote them for boys my age and more importantly to boys my age. Somehow she knew our "language" so the word symbols she used, assisted by simple illustrations, spoke directly to the little cowboy in me.
Much later than "Cowboy Sam" I took a college creative writing course where the teacher told us to use words that "color" our writing. The example she used was very simple; she wrote on the board "money", "coin" and "doubloon". She also said that if we denied ourselves the usage of profanity we would discover new choices. At the beginning of the semester I really thought she was just being dictatorial and taking the vote for everyone, but when the term had come to a close, I thanked her because what she had said was true. If I took away the automatic and the habitual, I had to find another way to express myself, even though I still have the impulse to write in colorful Mamet-esque street terms.
Borrowing words from Shakespeare, the task now seems to be to find some ability to write for and to some undiscovered country.
2 comments:
the ability is there. the question now is the where is the country and who are it's inhabitants.
The exciting thin is that here is is now, almost two years later, and you have grown to such an extraordinarily expressive writer, wih a unique wya of expression - it is just *you*. Congratulations, Diego! ANd thank you for wonderfully arranged words discovered and yet to discover.
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