“This was the kind of thing the grammarians liked to hear. Together they would see the paper into the grave with its syntax pure.” – Amsterdam, Ian McEwan
When I told the story (well, let’s face it – it wasn’t so much a story as it was the airing of a grievance) of a colleague challenging me (a self-proclaimed grammarian) on adjectival-phrase hyphenation, oddly, it was the first time he had heard the word “grammarian”.
In other observations, I marvel at what must be the direst of circumstances or worst of tales – something, anything – to explain how individuals escape from what I can only describe as hellish drudgery and endless hamster-on-wheel running only to return willingly.
Remind me to furnish you (any of you) with a firearm with which to kill me if I try to do something similar after I escape.
“Words are not life, and therefore they are eternal.
Surely there must have been a serious reason
Why among all the languages of the world
Only the Gypsy language
Has no word for “to have”. I make a note of that. But this is futile. You can’t write on your soul using a pen.”
-Ante Popovski (Macedonia)
“They heard me singing and they told me to stop/Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock…” – Arcade Fire
I was driving along through the chilly November evening pondering the transitory, ephemeral nature of the written word. Now more than ever … perhaps something it is written somewhere, on paper, in the digital ether, but the writer eventually dies. So few will be remembered and so few will really be read. Especially now, there is such a glut of writing – good, bad – overwhelming either way.
However, I am struck by how bits and pieces do stick in the brain, creating an indelible impression. A line of poetry or a lyric from a song weaves its way into almost every moment, circumstance, event – meaning that a poem or a song represent something more than just what they are, carrying my interpreted meaning as well as the original meaning of the writer.
More than ever I am thinking about health, well-being and how my current situation is pushing me further and further from this. I admire people who cannot shut out the creative and artistic passions that force them to pursue such activities. I might be a bit too realistic for that.
