Full Words, Empty Words, and Writing to Scab the World
From Chapter One of Rudolph Flesch's How to Write, Speak, and Think More Effectively:
He goes on to make the point that the Chinese do not think in terms of verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc. but rather classify all words as either "empty" or "full", that is, words which carry meaning, and words which connect meanings but haven't much of their own. Example: in English we'd say something like "the man felt depressed about the untimely demise of his doberman", while the Chinese might say (in translation) "man sad dead dog".
Looking at my previous post, it's obvious I pack my writing with plenty of "empty" words, which might heighten the appearance of complexity or profundity, but robs the Word of its snap, crackles, and/or pop. Tragically, it's when I'm trying to offer my best insights that my language starts growing extra limbs and layers on the useless verbal clothing and decoration. I need to get to the point.
And getting to the point is crucial, if I ever hope to do something more useful with my writing, such as "save the world". Regardless of what you think of such a trad sentiment, it goes without saying that the world (as always) is in trouble, and the best and the brightest need to be foregoing their animal urges to do their Best and Brightest. Or, as French theorist Badiou says regarding Evil: "To give up is always Evil. To renounce liberation politics, renounce a passionate love, renounce an artistic creation.... Evil is the moment when I lack the strength to be true to the Good that compels me."
Evil is the moment when I let my writing grow lazy and bland.
Regardless, every artistic act, though it may die on the vine, though its author my go unrecognized in his/her lifetime, is like a white blood cell pumped to the surface of a lacerated Earth. By itself it does little to quell the bloodflow, but as it dies and knits with other dead blood cells, a scab forms, the bleeding stops, the wound heels, and the organism regains its health.
Or, in Chinese: "artist dead humans live".
For, thanks to research, we know now that thousands of years ago the Chinese language had case endings, verb forms, and a whole arsenal of unpleasant grammar. It was a cumbersome, irregular, complicated mess, like most other languages. But the Chinese people, generation after generation, change it into a streamlined, smooth-running machine for expressing ideas. This isn’t just a figure of speech: the main principle of modern Chinese is exactly the same as that of modern machinery. It consists of standardized, prefabricated, functionally designed parts.
He goes on to make the point that the Chinese do not think in terms of verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc. but rather classify all words as either "empty" or "full", that is, words which carry meaning, and words which connect meanings but haven't much of their own. Example: in English we'd say something like "the man felt depressed about the untimely demise of his doberman", while the Chinese might say (in translation) "man sad dead dog".
Looking at my previous post, it's obvious I pack my writing with plenty of "empty" words, which might heighten the appearance of complexity or profundity, but robs the Word of its snap, crackles, and/or pop. Tragically, it's when I'm trying to offer my best insights that my language starts growing extra limbs and layers on the useless verbal clothing and decoration. I need to get to the point.
And getting to the point is crucial, if I ever hope to do something more useful with my writing, such as "save the world". Regardless of what you think of such a trad sentiment, it goes without saying that the world (as always) is in trouble, and the best and the brightest need to be foregoing their animal urges to do their Best and Brightest. Or, as French theorist Badiou says regarding Evil: "To give up is always Evil. To renounce liberation politics, renounce a passionate love, renounce an artistic creation.... Evil is the moment when I lack the strength to be true to the Good that compels me."
Evil is the moment when I let my writing grow lazy and bland.
Regardless, every artistic act, though it may die on the vine, though its author my go unrecognized in his/her lifetime, is like a white blood cell pumped to the surface of a lacerated Earth. By itself it does little to quell the bloodflow, but as it dies and knits with other dead blood cells, a scab forms, the bleeding stops, the wound heels, and the organism regains its health.
Or, in Chinese: "artist dead humans live".
posted by Paul S. at
11:19 AM
9 Comments:
Damn!
some good writing. Both last two posts, though they both had a different feel, theres an element of something like hope, that I haven't seen in your writing in a while.
cool, thanks for the comment bro. i'm not really sure what got into me, other than the need to contradict what i've said before. thesis, antithesis....
There's only a few things I can't live without. Your blog is one of them.
word.
Sweet! Right... er, write-on Paul!
By the way, don't you think there is a time for everything: that every form/style of langauge, writing, speaking, playing has its season. In music, take, for instance, a Guided By Voices pithy-little framework for songwriting: has its place--time and season. Short and sweet! Then there are frameworks such as those put forth by Queen, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and Queensryche: the epics, the musical tomes. Perhaps concept albums and meaty hooks are the musical equivalents of 'getting to the point' vs. 'poetic allusions' that beat around the bush, that approach a Thing from multiple angles, exploring its many facets, like musical motifs that are but the endless variations upon a theme.
Me? I prefer Zep to the Ramones. Or Floyd to the Strokes. The panopoly of human experience explored in a song or album vs. the whole car-crash (bang and its over) approach some foster and seem smitten with. Just a sucker for some foreplay in music and literature I guess! ; o )
Genuinely,
David Jon
By the way,
Ol Brandy has the gift too. Talk about fluency and vocabulary! Yowza! Me just hopin' it don't all get swallowed up and co-opted by the Organization... if ya know what I mean. Which is always a threat isn't it. We get a job using our 'passion' and then it is easy for that 'passion' to be co-opted for purposes other than maybe we had... uhm... imagined.
Just hoping here that people's gifts are allowed to flower and unfold organically. They are too exquisite and rare to be form-fitted into someone else's mold, designs, and/or intentions.
In other words, word to the wise, pay the Muse Her dues or She'll kick yer ass!! ; o )
Really,
David Jon
Got me riffin' here Paul.
I think it is easy to be concise and to the point--to have our communications be 'full' when the concrete and particular is involved. For instance... 'car crash, people hurt, help, hurry.'
There is a sense of urgency also involved in concise communications. Perhaps that is the result of needing to communicate quickly the 'essentials' so that effective action can be taken.
But there is more to communicating something vague and unformed/still-forming, like... 'What will spirituality look like in the 21st Century?'
This is where a Ken Wilber steps to the mike, rapping loquacious, trying to hold an audience's attention through a discourse that spans a century or more. In other words, lots of 'empty' words (or at least half-empty, half-full ones!). ; o )
It makes me consider how hard it can be to be 'short, snappy' and concise' when we are dealing with increasing levels of abstraction and generalization. I can tell you that right now I am sitting in a wooden chair looking out of a window, out onto a forest. That is a very general and uninformative statement; it only gives part of the picture. Now, if I were to paint you a more detailed and honest picture--a word picture that does justice to what is being disclosed to me outside this 'room with a view'---well, it would cost me at least a thousand words!
So, to be true to the world around us, maybe we have to use more care in respecting that world by how we choose to describe it. Too much glossing leads to homogenization. The particular flavour of a locale--of the region that courses through our veins and pours out our pecking fingers, our strumming hands, our stomping foot, and booming voices. That needs to be honoured: the dinstinct, the peculiar, that not easily summarized into a single-word or metaphor. Without that we have nothing, we become too general--i.e., all our words become empty.
Genuinely,
David Jon
david,
i know this sounds weird, but actually think ken is pretty good when it comes to using an economy of language, which is shocking given how many books he's written. but then again, he does tend to repeat his many conscise sentences ad nauseam, so....
kudos on the GBV reference by the way, Alien Lanes is one of my all-time favorite albums!
Hi Paul,
Perhaps the verbosity comes from trying to give a thorough summation of the unfolding of the Cosmos in written form. Surely no small task, to say the least! ; o )
Cheers,
David Jon
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