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Feb. 26, 2004 To Richard Massey, concerning your Letter to Ralph Nader.
H&H wrote: Some English teachers -- certainly not your wife, but some -- seem to impart a subconscious fear of the goof to their students, so they end up second guessing every sentence, and all trace of the author vanishes from everything they write. Helen wrote some damn fine and true words here ...
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I agree the truth isn't always so eloquent. Sometimes it is full of words that do not exist and it has lots of bad grammar. I'd rather hear the truth than read some well-crafted wordsmithing that looks pretty but says nothing at all.
Shit, my articles are sometimes too long-winded, and the way I say things is hard to grasp, because the ideas themselves are complex and defy the limits of language and because honesty is more important to me than how 'sane' I might appear to someone else. So it looks clumsy.
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Despite that, what I write carries a piece of my heart as it is at that moment, and I know experiences cannot be contained with words. There is emotion in there, images, thoughts experiences that are not said. Things happen to us that the words alone cannot hold. So when you write, the best you can hope for is a half-truth, a half-made presentation of meaning, an artificial experience simulation imagined through interpretations of a limited code.
To me, language SUCKS. On-line word type-imitation talking monologues suck even worse. Reality and the relationships that make up our social reality are at once immensely complex, and immediate. They change every millisecond and at the same time can also be devastatingly simple. Communicating via a bunch of ones and zeros will never be capable of conveying the subtleties that a conversation face to face has. It is said 90 percent of a talk with a person is non-verbal as in body language, facial expressions, eye contact, pheromones, etc. I hate talking on the phone for this reason too.
So you say you were shit-faced drunk when you wrote your Letter to Ralph Nader article.
One thing booze does for some people is remove their inhibitions. For years I was too inhibited to write my thoughts down let alone put them up in public. I was scared of saying my truth. Scared it would not look right. I was scared of looking like a loon and being seen as someone not worth listening to. Than after awhile I said fuck it -- I'm gonna say what I say regardless of how crazy it seems, because someone somewhere WILL understand. And I was right.
I since have stopped the notion of writing for appearances' sake, and I now write to tell what I perceive in all its rawness and clumsiness and long winded un-eloquentness. If people don't like it, can't understand it, can't grasp it, well they will just not read it well, and that is OK with me. Some will understand, some won't. I do not need to force anyone to understand me, by changing what I say for them into a formula or a pigeonhole-able diatribe they "get."
I'm not trying to Convert.
It has begun to dawn on me, some problems people see in my writing might be from their own frustration with the limits in their own thinking style. I can't let other's limits in how they perceive me inhibit me into saying something that I am not trying to say. We are different in the way we see, that's all. And who says we need to see the same way?
Some people are very linear and literalist in their thinking style, some people want writing they read to be presented in a certain way, within certain 'boundaries' they assume you must share ... or they'll assume you are not saying anything useful. It's easy to write someone off because what they say seems more ambiguous, meandering or almost poetic and emotional. Any writer can be discounted by people who can't relate to that writing style. Some people want things said short, concise and simple, in curt soundbites and "facts," because they want to avoid the complexity. They want ideas distilled into simplicity for them by a writer, translated into an experience in shorthand.
Is it because certain kinds of peoples are scared of the emotional and unpredictableness of poetics or emotions? Does it upset them, knowing complexity isn't black or white? Some people crave ideological compartments to sort things they perceive into so they can feel like they are in command of what they think they are perceiving.
And as far as I can tell it is a defense mechanism. People will filter what I write through their own defense mechanisms, personalities, reactions, traumas and mental illnesses. And that is not my problem. It took me awhile to figure that out, though. I was once very sensitive to critics. Now I take most critics with a grain of salt. When 1 in 4 American have mental illness symptoms severe enough to see a shrink over it, you have to take critics with a grain of salt.
You can't please everyone when you write, so why try? Just tell it as you see it, the critics be damned. Critics will always be there to tear your thoughts down especially if it disturbs them or reminds them there is no hope for control or an answer.
If you wrote just to please the audience you would eventually say nothing that stirred emotions, provoked thought, made controversy, or deeper disturbances in the status quo, because our culture isn't about telling the truth or observing what is real. It's about maintaining appearances, deception, domination, hierarchy systems and creating the appearance of mastery when nobody masters anything.
Just read some current vapid school textbooks that all these left and right censor boards approved if you want to write people-pleasing writing. They all got perfect grammar and say NOTHING.
P. R. writing is for making popularity. It ain't genuine. P. R. writing is emotionally blunted pabulum shorthand fakery crowd pleasing propaganda. Don't write to make up an image in a pleasing P. R. style if your real truth what you wish to say.
The truth of the heart isn't neat, tidy, predictable, orderly, polite, crowd pleasing or all that eloquent. Sometimes the truth comes out as a raw-throated hoarse wail at 3:15 AM, or body-shuddering, snot-dripping tears in the arms of your lover, or in that kind of desperate giddy laughter of an emotional free-fall that makes people around you get very nervous.
How do you capture that in perfect grammar? Can you ever hope to spellcheck it?
What are your true feelings, fears and thoughts about Nader interfering with the fate of this country and by proxy the quality of your life and the lives of everyone you know or don't? Does what you really feel, just under that veneer that booze temporarily peels back, elicit far more raw emotions inside you than what you banged out under the influence here on Unknown News? If you honestly got down to looking at how you really feel about the whole election, politics, about people, the human condition, bystanding, apathy, cultural/historical blindness, and plain old human sheepishness and wrote out on paper what exactly you are dreading in your darkest parts -- it might not look nice on paper. It might be shocking, scary, insulting, ugly, despairing and threatening. But it might beautifully resonate with a lot of people out there who are not saying but are feeling it, too in those moments late at night, alone, but for some reason they can't find their voices ... yet.
It seems for a lot of folks these raw feelings seem to find a voice when the cultural verbal restraints we force ourselves to wear are loosened with a little chemical help to alter the consciousness into a more real-time. Reality might not look so appropriate.
So write with no regrets. Encourage people to find their truth by writing out your own. Write because your truth is yours to share and only you can say what your own truth is and only you can ever hope to convey what it means to you. You are unique. You choose the words you say for a reason only you know and that shapes the meaning in your message. And because of this every voice is precious.
I have this "problem" called synchronistic perception. It basically means some of the unconscious processes all people have are made conscious to me. It can be a pain in the ass sometimes especially when you try to talk to someone else. Carl sometimes has to "translate" what I am saying in conversations sometimes so people can understand what I mean. Because my perceptions and use of language is different sometimes what I say is hard to "get" or it looks "scattershot." Some of the funny looks I get from people who are confused are priceless, however. I need a digital camera.
For me for a millisecond all writing looks like chicken scratches. Then it changes shape without moving into letters. Then I read the words. As I read the words I can see words inside parts of words and the relationships in words. I can observe my own brain doing the processing of these scratches into words and the words into meanings, and those meanings are multiple and one at the same time, and they make endless meanings, connections, images, etc.
When I reply to a person I am always guessing at what processing "level" the speaker wants their reply given back in. So sometimes I guess wrong so I am not understood and what I am saying appears unclear or unrelated to a conversation because it is at a different processing level than what they expected to get back. It's awkward as hell sometimes.
When I read writing, I see the lines in letters the words in the words the meanings in meanings, it's like looking at a bunch of transparent nesting dolls or diving through layers of colored waters, while watching the colors commingle standing at the edge of the pool at the same time.
I do know this, we are all prisoners in our own hearts and heads, a crowd of mirrors and soliloquies, singing stories all alone. And to connect to something, someone "out there" we bang out our hearts in these communication codes to see if anyone hears us and can understand our perceptions. We cry our hearts out inside our skulls as we desperately try to translate and distill what we experience that is unspeakable into language. Gift packages of self, sent as memetic codes of words to be sensed by the eyes, to get into a mind that is not our own. We write to infect one another with who we are. We send a piece of ourselves off into the air, a little gift of difference to touch a moment in a mind, a message of your own truth wrapped up in a bottle made of words. They're codes of perceptions for a spirit thirsty for knowing, to drink you up.
When I read someone else's writings I realize, no matter what the subject is, that they are telling me about a part of themselves too. This part of their writing is sacred. The rest, well, that I must judge for myself.,, So when I pop the cork off of a bottle and read someone else's thoughts transcribed into the glass, I am aware I am entering another's realm, seeing myself into another's kingdom, looking through another's mind's eyes through my own mind and this can color what I see. As I scan the glass bottle full of words I begin to see through points of transparency and clarity because they connect with my own thoughts or experiences. I see these familiar points I know the clearest, I notice as I read on, I begin to see a perspective very much like my own appear to me through observing these inter-relationships of my thought clarities with your affirmations of your thought clarity. As my clarity expands into encompassing yours I begin to see a point of view that was a moment before not my own, by simply looking through the parts of your words that look like what I think I understand. Then through experiential connections, knowledge and empathy I can relate to the parts of what you say that I haven't understood personally yet and they become clear to me too, almost as if I lived them myself. I see my point of view shift subtly in alignment with yours.
And for a moment I can see the spirit in the bottle and hear the unsaid familiar cry it elicits from me, and I understand what you mean despite what you are saying.
When I see this happening, I notice I have co-opted or internalized the meaning of your message. I can relate to what you are describing to me and it resonates with my own perspective and it expands my view with clarity through familiarity. Whether your message will stay inside me as if it is a part of me, as something other than memory of someone I read before that is where my choice to believe or to trust is made. and if your perspective is useful to me, my world view is altered to accommodate your gift of new knowledge into my personal perspective. And I will spread your words because they resonate with me.
And what does this goal of having perfect grammar and spelling really have to do with helping facilitate the deep processes of understanding between people's hearts ??? I dunno? Maybe your wife can tell me? Inquiring kitties wanna know why.
Take care,
=Underground Panther in the Sky= |
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