Written/Spoken Word

Written/Spoken Word


Writing the word down, or speaking it, it becomes enormous. Suddenly you can see, on the page, all its connotations, and you feel your own assumptions about whatever that word is, or the group of words you've written. And you begin to question your assumptions, and then the word. You begin to question the world that invented the word, the universe in which the word exists. You want it to exist in a way that you designate. It has to be exact. It has to translate into the meaning you intend. It's a sickness, this. Absorbs you, or tries. But it is not the kind of sickness that kills you. Not one that seeps from your pores and dampens your sheets and head with its fever. No, you are soaked in this sickness like Rilke was soaked in his sickness. Like Poe. Dickinson. Rich. You breathe under the water that writing is. You do not drown, you swim through. You breathe better under writing. You breathe deep and enormous and you expand.