Images and Words

Dearest Paul, flattery will get you a link.  *blush*

Dana, Chauncey, and Dale strike me as three bloggers who each in his or her own way is stretching the medium, and pioneering what can be done with it.

I seriously doubt they see themselves as in any way special, but I think if you were to read much more of their blogs than I can republish here, you yourself might see them as exceptional writers by any standards.

I completely agree - I don't see myself as special, much less "stretching the medium."  I've seen myself as a camp follower. Other bloggers blazed the trail.  So what if I occasionally manage to turn a phrase like a Biellmann spin?  That's a rare occasion.  Most of the time, I'm just stuttering around on the ice like any other wanna-be Elvis Stojko at the local rink.

This isn't the medium I intend to master anyway.  But I love it, because I can come here and write without (much) pressure.  I don't have to sweat blood, rewrite, edit, delete all and start over.  Just babble and hit "publish."  Sometimes, I give it a quick once-over in an attempt to catch any typos in the act.  This is why it amazes me anybody actually reads this stuff, much less enjoys it.  I give it some thought, some effort, but it doesn't demand my all.  Sometimes, I wonder if it would be better if I showed it the same devotion I show the novel.

Then again, if I did that, you lot wouldn't see another post from me until roughly 2057, so perhaps we should continue as we started.

But this is what Paul said that really got me thinking:

I’m not sure, but I think really good writers like Dana usually feel words much more deeply than the rest of us.  And it probably has something to do with why they are such good writers.

The problem with this statement is that Paul is also a really good writer, so I'm not sure I feel words any more deeply than he does.  In fact, at times, I suspect it's rather the opposite - he's always seemed to experience more than I do.  But then he says he's never been moved by the written word the way I have, and says he needs perky nekkid boobies as an assist.  Fair enough.  If it makes him feel any better, I hated Lord of the Rings until the movies came out.  I needed the images to make me appreciate the words.  Then Tolkien made me fall deeper in love with language.  And here we are.

I think we all need images and words.  Some of us are better than others at getting images out of words.  Sometimes, some of us are too good at it - I not only saw all of Old Yeller in my mind's eye, but ended up damned near paralyzed at the end.  My legs literally went numb, not because I was sitting on them, but because I'd identified so much with the characters.  And don't talk to me about all the weeping I did over that fucking dog.  Only thing that was worse was Summer of the Monkeys.

But would The Doors have affected me so much in book form?  No.  I doubt the intensity of it, the bizarreness of it, could have worked without the sight and sound.

What I'm saying is, no one should feel any less of a writer or a reader if they need some bare nekkid boobie pictures to help them along.  Images and words belong together.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to try executing a death spiral all by my lonesome.  The time has come.

It's time to write.