Friday 7 November 2008

Lost Art

So I have a problem:
William Gass.

William Gass' book The Tests of time has forced me, beyond my expectations, to re-evaluate the way I look at the practice of writing. Indeed, as a former Waldorf child, I do value the art of writing: the sound of fountain pen against paper, the liner under my blank white sheet so that I write straight, the constant smell of white-out, and the feeling of satisfaction after completing an entire dictation without messing up once...and thus I feel bizarre writing my thoughts on a keyboard. I read the beautiful sentences that Gass has composed, and I cannot help but obey his pleas. Where did the personality of our sentences go? Times New Roman eats the flavor of our words, spitting them back at us like pre-chewed food for the masses (His image). Suddenly I am torn--I love my blog and the instant beauty I can achieve with the sameness of the type and I also hate this sameness, the polished and mediocrity of my pre-made template picked from 8 or so others when I signed up.

And what am I to do? Write my thoughts and scan them, somehow, in order to keep my small chunk of cyberspace? Let it go? Or delete everything and pretend Amaranthine never existed (and a part of me loves the irony of that).

I do realize that Gass' book is exactly what he was preaching against in that particular essay. And I do realize that this is the age of internet communication and I am simply doing what others are doing. But I crave subversion! This feels like dead air and broken windows. How can I make my empty house occupied? Or at least haunted...

4 comments:

(Ken) said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
(Ken) said...

You ended with... "How can I make my empty house occupied? Or at least haunted... "

While you plot, you should take some comfort in knowing that your words are subversive. Your fonts have managed to haunt other moods and cyberspaces far from the Green Mountains....

If you should trade your blog for the personality of words forged by nibs, inkwells, and parchment, I only ask that you find a means to create a broader audience, a host of creatures to haunt with your prose.

You could always scan your scribbles. You could even read them aloud (by posting a voice file.) A blog with poetry-reading posts....

Hmmmm...

Willow said...

That'd be cool! I'm way too shy to put my voice on the internet...but there may be a way to scan in my written thoughts...

thanks for reading!

(Ken) said...

Your funny! You could, if you are too shy broadcast your voice, enlist the services of a friend, and have a poet-reader proxy of sorts..."guest poetry readers and readings...once in a while you could have a Poetry Café Reading (wave file...not a video, just a voice post.) What is really cool is that you can try and record the sound of a fountain pen on parchment...that wonderful cellulose scraping...that could be the intro sound! Hmmm.