Let’s face it, I’m at war with words. Every battle is important. Some people crack under the strain, like soldiers at the front. Fine print, Orwellian transpositions, heroic hyperbole of all sorts; these are a few of the tactics words use against us.
I have no respect for words, they’re spineless; they lie to us all the time. Like prostitutes, they don’t care who uses them. They’re duplicitous, and they work against our happiness—but what else do we have? What can we do? We’re besieged by words, assaulted, that’s why a writer’s task is to defend us, to hold words at bay.
I collect words, I take them hostage, it’s a way of controlling them. Cumbrous...Fulminate...Hegemony...Peculation, are all safe in my “Words” folder. When lined up properly on the page, they’re devastating. I keep them in reserve, for special sentences.
To be a writer today you have to roll up your sleeves and grab each word by the scruff of the neck. You have to slam them into place, knock them around, teach them who’s boss. Show no mercy. Find the most willing ones, the words that will work for you, and eliminate or retire the others. Banish them, in certain cases, to the Gulag of sly words, or the dungeon of errant and misunderstood words. As for the old and the weak ones—they’re never heard from again.
At times I feel like a working word-hand, herding and whipping and lassoing words in an attempt to round them up, head them off, ride them to market. It’s hot and dusty work, chasing through the prickly chaparral of lexicon valley.
Don’t get me wrong, this is not a panegyric to words, it’s a cautionary: Don’t trust words. When I was in school I told my teachers there was nothing to look forward to, and they told me not to end my sentences with a preposition.
From the beginning words betrayed me. Being a writer is my revenge. I look into words, see what they’re made of, where they came from, who their ancestors were. No Latin or Sanskrit family tree is too arcane, I want to uncover their roots, get them on record; interrogate them. That way they can never surprise me or make me look foolish. I’ll always know who they are. That way they cannot pretend to pass themselves off as something false.
As for the other words, the truly incendiary ones, I’ll remind you of what The Bard said:
“...I have words that would be howled out in the desert air,
where hearing should not latch them.”
(Photo credits: Typewriter by Maria Teresa Ambrosi; flames by palo.)
April 17, 2014