The Wise Ry Guy

Ah language, thou dost confuse thy humble servant!

I’m confused by language

thats what I was saying there..

for many reasons

I am confused

tho perhaps

this is less about confusion and more about my constant grappling with the poignancy of my own dissatisfactory vocabulary

I also dislike modifying a participle with a possessive

especially in the middle of a sentence

but I haven’t figured out how to solve that problem..

lmk if you do!

ok

Writing better is like my mantra

but it seems like poetry and even elaborate prose – especially stylistic

wow i just realized im a bad writer

wow

I should read more

Turns out writers have to make their own niche stylistic choices in lieu of, well, actually being good at what they do

Being skilled

Seems like it’s a version of this old truth: “know the rules before you break them”

I was talking to a friend the other day who was telling me he was teaching himself piano

as opposed to leaping directly into a piece and memorizing it

he was just doing all of the major & minor scales

over and over

becoming one with the fundamentals

I told him that’s the same sort of thing I had done as I taught myself the drums

I learned the most basic, fundamental movements

and I was a little percussion robot, cruising down highway tunes that went predictably straight for miles and miles

One day a guy who knew what he was doing shook his beer bottle at me and urged me to abandon my formulas

He was bored

I had no passion – no originality

I wasn’t loving my cymbals; I was glued to my hi hat

I was a young teen boy who didn’t understand rock n roll

so I let go of the formula

I let go of what I was used to – where i was comfortable

and i gave my cymbals some love

then I gave my toms some love

and that single session on that one day a few years ago

completely transformed my relationship with the drumset

And that transformation has been developing and taking root and becoming itself this whole time

Hence why I’m writing about it today and not 3-4 years ago

Drums and rhythm are a deep deep integral part of my soul

And that transformation has changed my relationship with myself (disposition) & my relationship with the world (demeanor)

It helped transform who I was at my core

I stopped living so doggone rigidly

And I started giving the cymbals and the toms some love

And that’s the only time I ever interacted with that guy

because he died

not even kidding!

like for real

He passed away

I don’t even remember his name

but he was a musical genius

I realized, – when I was telling my friend that to play an instrument is to forget about the rules and the sheet music and simply to make love with it and flow with it

I realized I wouldn’t’ve understood what that guy was telling me if I hadn’t been a scared little percussion robot for all those years

The straight highway gets you somewhere man

There’s only one exit off to love town, to free town

It’s pretty far along the highway

The rules come first

Transcendence requires skill.

When I play drums now I’m always searching for something new & fresh

It’s infuriating and technically impossible

But it’s also always better in every way

I bled on my drumset for the first time a few months ago

That was a milestone.

AND

When writing, skill must precede style.

Ok, I’m trying to bring it home

..by moving on and talking about what I thought I’d be talking about when I started this article..

Language and common nomenclature

English has a lot of idioms

So many idioms

So many cliches

I can’t even think in more precise language – thoughts manifest themselves via idioms and cliches in my own brain!

Language conglomerates human experience and synthesizes these terms and phrases out of the same 3 4 5 – letter words (a few stock verbs mostly that mean so many different things in so many different contexts – like ago in latin)

And I know what they mean but I don’t

My point is this:

Efficient communication seems like the enemy of good writing

Art is not efficient at all

I wonder if there exists in potential form a more optimal (or optimal) mode of communication that eliminates cliches/idioms and emphasizes originality

But that’s literally antithetical

cliches/idioms are common verbage (language) taken to an efficiency extreme

Perhaps not originality being emphasized but precision

Is that what the Giver is about? Thatd be weird I havent read that book in forever

So how to solve this problem?

The discrepancy between art and communication

Rather, art and language

Though not simply language

Art and basic/common verbage (two different & perhaps contrary in nature forms of communication having in common the same general goal – hence the common category of communication #alliteration – but maybe having distinct concerns, purposes, modes and motivations)

Ok

That seems right

Do with that what you will I guess

Art invents and restructures, teaches and pleases

as for the art of tool/task-oriented communicative speech (speech not verbage, which is apparently spelled verbiage and means something almost contradictory to the meaning with which I’ve been employing it in this article.. ha, awkward)

it is less concerned with the juxtaposition of ideas and more concerned with, I don’t know, accomplishing tasks with tools I guess

Perhaps verbose employment of idioms also fails to satisfy the requirements of efficient communication,

and the narrow moral road lies between idiom, precision and elaboration.

It probably depends.

It is for me as a writer to toil and acquire the skill to pinpoint that conceptual line and articulate what I think and what I wish to communicate and/or release from my heart

and from there

To accept that the winds shall classify the beast engendered of inspiration or necessity

the behometh which cometh to exist from inside