Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Enslaved by Words and Liberated through them


As social and "civilized" creatures we have one permanent addiction: words.
We use words to meet our match, measure our opponent, evaluate our environment, we feel we have control over them, use them to send out a message or an opinion.But what we fail to realize is that we are slaves to our words.
The more we let them out the more they lock us in, and instead of allowing us to socialize and get human contact; words eventually shut us in and create barriers.
Words are our most powerful weapon but like all great powers, put in the wrong hand or in this case mouth, words can cause irreparable damage.
And even though we take words for granted and forget their value we desperately need them to stay sane and release the thoughts threatening an overheating brain.
Words are so crucial that even the deaf mute have their own sign Language that enables them to go through their silence into blissful noise, because even if we don't like to admit it we cannot stand the silence,we cannot stand the loneliness it implies, which is why we fill our lives with words and sounds; and instead of going back to the essential form and value of words they're now tools to keep the silence away and keep us from staying alone with our thoughts.
This is what leads up to formalism.
Pushing all sorts of artist to seek the "return to the source", even artists like Enki Bilal , know for his use of colours and imagery who is "back to black" in his comic drawings, a real rupture announcing that change is finally coming in all the art's forms.
People fed up with the mockery made of words and their use: feeding people great ideas and messages to fill up voids and distract them from the importance of the status of the word itself.
In texts like "Love In the Asylum" by Dylan Thomas, it's clear that there is an attempt to centralize on the essence of words instead of searching "deeper" -which evidentially leads to overlapping the text- and getting lost in futile effort of trying to find the bigger meaning , thus forgetting the pleasure of Literature as it is: unapologetic and unjustified.
Formalism gave us Literature students a power that we might not realize yet, the power to be unique , independent and legitimate owners of a profession that is not within everyone's reach or range, and this gives back to Literature what was taken ,
the Legitimate right to just be.

2 comments:

  1. Alright! I didn't know you were an Enki Bilal fan, great! There are huge resources on comics on the internet, by the way.

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  2. hey nice post, there is an essay on words i think in our women writers class bas till the end of the semester hehe
    i really liked your view, check out my second post it has a similar topic
    enjoy :D

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