Yesterday, I posted something on Facebook. I posted it quickly – dashed it off, actually, as I was settling into my desk for the workday. The whole post was 29 words. It should have been 28.
My buddy Rick Cornish, sharp of eye and even sharper of wit, found the extra word and took me to task – all in good fun. Rick and I both enjoy playing with words, sentences and language and he caught me being grossly inelegant and had to chide me for it.
Using language effectively is becoming a lost of art, or so it seems to some people (including me). I love reading, and a well-crafted sentence, paragraph, essay, or a whole book gives me great satisfaction, just as a great painting or a great song might. It’s all art and music to me.
It’s not hard to write a bad sentence, just as it’s not hard to make bad music or bad art. Generally the bad things take a lot less time, and maybe the bad sentence will be understandable, and the subject in the bad painting recognizable and the melody in the bad music discernable. But those bad renditions are completely against the purpose of the exercise.
Why do we write? A laundry list, or a quick note – that’s just information rendered visually, and it serves a purpose. But the letters you write, or stories you tell – those deserve special treatment. You want to take the listener (or the reader) on a journey. It may be profound, or it may be whimsical, but you want to evoke a response beyond merely understanding the words.
And so it goes with visual art. A mere illustration can show someone what something looks like, and that’s not useless. But a visual work of art doesn’t just depict a thing – it suggests movement, emotion and tension between light and dark. You become involved when you look at it.
We all know this from listening to music too, don’t we? You can hear a tune rendered carefully and exactly – say “Soldier’s Joy” – and the main effect is to know how the tune goes. If it’s played with verve and energy, you get swept up – truly moved – by the music. It’s intensely pleasurable and inherently interesting.
All of these art forms (prose, poetry, visual arts and music) evoke reactions in us – we invest emotions into it and take something away from it. We’re affected by it, and think about out it even after the book is closed, or you left the art gallery or the sounds have died out. That’s powerful stuff!
When my kids were growing up, they all went through a phase when they’re not really sure what to do. I told them, “Learn to be excellent at something – anything. You’ll have fun, you’ll feel good about yourself and learn to believe in the benefits of real effort.” What I didn’t tell them is, it’ll become habit-forming and you’ll spend your whole life seeking that sensation.
