Going into class today- I realized how completely screwed I was. Not completely screwed, as much as completely as I would have been originally. Let me explain further.
At the beginning of the semester, I was under the impression that I was learning a foreign language with nothing really to anchor myself to. The language I was learning, however, was English. Yet, it wasn’t, as the English I had previously understood, filled with the limitless possibilities and colors that had painted so clear a picture in many of the novels and short stories that I read over the years. It was a structured look at what English could do, did do, and may eventually do as language and the rules that govern it, changes. Linguistics in the English language is wrought with terms and functions for words that I had a very basic understanding in. Yet, I feel my growth as a writer needs some of this, and this is probably a beating of my brain that is long overdue.
I approached literature as a painter. As probably most of the classic writers did- taking their time to think of words, how they stack up together to tell a complete story, to give the reader a clearer image of what they want in their minds. It covered not only sight, but smell and taste and touch and sound. The steady beat that reverberated against an otherwise hollow space, the waves that brushed the grass to and fro, the wisp of the green air wafting under the nostrils of the ruby dragon, and the scatter of a scorched earth and ashen trees at the bellows of his breath. You might not get a complete picture of what I was just saying there, but you let your imagination take you further into it. That’s why we have so many images of Tolkein’s characters from his Lord of the Rings trilogy books before the movies came out- and even then those are just one interpretation of how they saw the characters. There are many ways, before the movies came out, that people saw Gandalf the Grey, and Bilbo and the subsequent Frodo Baggins. There were also differing images of how people saw the Shire, the halls of Kazad Dum, and the tower of the Lidless Eye. The concept was there, it’s just that each had a different point of impact in their picture, and it was determined also by their individual personalities. Some had darker images of each, while others were more cartoonish in their style.
So was my approach to literature, and more particularly writing. It wasn’t about structure to me, as math is structure for numbers and how things work. I worked organically- seeing the aesthetics of words and how they created something wonderful in the minds of the audience perusing the pages. I wanted a frustrated man, hanging his head in his hands with a smushed cigarette loosely clinging to his lips, barely smoldering as it was more a dull light than it’s prevalent glow when he first lit it. He sits upon the wooden chair, stained with years of worry and second hand smoke, almost as if it had aged along with him for all the cares carried on his shoulders, and thus thrust upon it as well. It became his relief, his rest, as this chair also bore the pain of his existence. It was damn near his closest friend. It had smoked as much as he did. It put up with his ass and the foul smells of it, without complaint for such a long time. It had felt the rough of an ill-fitting pant, or a naked buttock in a night of drinking and little care for clothing. It had tasted the spills of numerous food and drink, and did not put so much as a word against it. The reward was non-existent, and the privilege was to see another day to serve again.
A friend indeed. This chair. “Fuck this uncomfortable chair. I’m going to bed.” He said.
So, I’m screwed. Yet, not as much as I once had thought. I can grab determiners and prepositional phrases from a sentence. I can see the transitive verbs and linking verbs. I see noun phrases as well as phrasal verbs. I know there are some descriptive versus prescriptive styles when it comes to how linguistics works- much to the woe of the community that gets involved with those extremes on one end or the other. Yet, when it comes to drawing out the trees, or doing some of the other things that try to name some of the other terms that come along with structure and function and having a phrase versus having a phrasal- I’m lost. I’m completely and utterly lost in all of it. Not that I want to be, mind you. I’m just at a loss when it comes to committing those things to memory- because- what purpose will it serve for me to know what the difference is between one part of the sentence and the other when I decide to parse it? Will it make me a better speaker, writer, etc.? Or does it constrict me to a certain pattern or way of speech that makes me question every fucking thing I want to say or plan to say? These are often the questions that come to mind when I’m looking at it and sweating over the fact that I haven’t gotten as much out of it as I would’ve hoped.
Still, I have my health. I have my sanity. I have a roof over my head. I have an education, transportation, a job, friends, opportunities, etc. I have a number of things at my disposal that people in countries less fortunate would kill for. Legit. Yet, I see these things as problems in the short-sight of things, because I live in the first world country where such things are such blinding problems that we have trouble seeing far off or even anything outside of the scope of our own bullshit that we have no idea that the real shit is happening just outside of our field of view. A little too much of our truth, and we forget the real truth is what’s going on. Tunnel vision is a bitch, and if we lose perspective, It all starts to look impossible.
I didn’t intend to write this much tonight. Hopefully we can tone it down a bit for the next entry.
In the meantime, back to the Linguistics books.
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