| | But I'm entering some writing contests this summer, and I'm wondering two things: One, does anybody know anything about what kinds of work win writing contests? And two, does anyone think something like this might fare well (it's unfinished, by the way, and very much open to suggestions about its development)??
The Old Gray Mare Ain’t What She Wishes She Were
by Bethany G. Blanchard
Who doesn’t love the student life? I have written so many papers over the last couple of weeks, I was almost afraid my brain would start melting and dribbling out of various cranial passages. Fellow students, can I get a what what? It was really exciting, though (*nerd alert!*), getting all my thoughts out and honing them and trying not to mix metaphors (perhaps my greatest intellectual weakness).
I've been realizing of late just how inefficient I am with language most of the time—especially with that mixing metaphors business. I tend to ignore what words are actually saying and just think about my concept of what they mean. One example: a horrible line I wrote about an author who "recounts her childhood through the lens of learning Hebrew." What the heck does that mean?? How can you recount through a lens? I knew what I meant, and I was late for class and needed to print the paper out, and I knew my professor would know what I meant even though I hadn't actually said what I meant, so I didn't bother changing it. Lazy. But so often I write stuff like that without even realizing that I'm talking gibberish, as if the actual words I use are insignificant, like I was raised that way. I grew up in the age of the image, of TV and recorded music—where pictures and sounds are used to quickly reference something else and switch to the next picture or sound without any term for pondering meaning, where visual and aural productions are removed from their original context and presented in textbooks or online or on my TV in my living room. Think about the difference between listening to a gospel CD in your car on your way to a dentist's appointment, and going to a gospel concert where everyone is clapping and swaying and singing along, and someone grabs a trumpet and starts riffing on the piano theme, and someone else starts dancing in the aisle and the choir director pulls him up on stage and he dances in the midst of all the singers and musicians. Context provides meaning.
Most people call the easy removal of original context "decontextualization" which is very apt, and I love words that are apt. But that particular word emphasizes the removal of one context and doesn't give much attention to the new context. Now, obviously, textbooks and cars and living rooms don't have the contextual meanings that concert halls do—meanings rather consistent, even when considering those pesky inescapable perspectives one brings to the concert hall. Cars present aspects completely foreign to the gospel choir performance specifically, to pick up the previous example: trying to turn left onto Shore Acres Road when there's a lot of traffic, a cell phone call from Ashley about her day at work, wondering whether a trip to the grocery store is necessary after the appointment, the lingering flavor of the fluoride gel on the way home. Being so varied, it's hard to discuss their meaning on a general level. But still, those random, unrelated circumstances do provide a context which sheds a very different light on the gospel performance than the concert hall provides. I personally find the concert hall a much more meaningful context for a gospel choir than my car; sometimes the distractions suck the meaning right out. But sometimes all the unrelated experiences provide new meaning or spur new thoughts, like when the gospel choir is hollering "I've got the victory" when Ashley is telling me about the customer who cussed her out and intentionally spilled his drink onto the register counter. Makes one ponder, what does that victory actually mean in everyday life, when people are jerks and you want to punch them? And all this because that one gospel choir performance was recorded and burned into thousands of CDs, one of which I happened to buy one day when I was feeling like a soul sista and had a rare $20 bill in my wallet.
And there's also that whole issue of how poor people who can't afford the concert tickets can now hear the music in the context of their own lives. Not even gonna touch that right now.
A wiser man than I once said: "The technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced....[Film's] social significance, particularly in its most positive form, is inconceivable without its destructive, cathartic aspect, that is, the liquidation of the traditional value of the cultural heritage." (The wiser man is Walter Benjamin, in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”) Now, Benjamin was a Marxist living an increasingly horrified existence in 1930s Nazi Germany, so he had lots of reasons to be pro-the liquidation of the traditional value of the cultural heritage. You know, the masses and all. But he makes no bones about it also being destructive to certain meanings.
It's that whole idea of certain contexts being removed and in some cases liquidated that has now pervaded our culture, and for better or worse has also filtered into our concept of how the world functions and thus into how we use language. Once decontextualized, some concepts are not recontextualized but merely personalized. I find myself doing this with words: I ignore the context or specifics, the wrapping and presentation, and head straight for my interpretation of its significance—what it means to me in my life, or even at that moment. And that ultra-personalization of definition has been resoundingly ineffective. To disregard what a word has meant to the generations that came before me results so often in my words saying what I do not wish them to say. That, or they say almost nothing; often when I appropriate a word, it has been so stripped of meaning that even my personalization cannot give it deep significance. (Or perhaps they’re really revealing that I am saying nothing, though the words are trying their darndest. “Deep significance” for example. I could have used words like astute or penetrating, like purport or gravity or consequence. All of them allude to a general concept; only one of them accurately communicates my specific intention.) It's pretty ridiculous: I'm a writer who ignores words. Or maybe I’m just lazy. Either way, it's a great hindrance to my becoming a genius academic with a Ph.D. from Cambridge.
Having been so consistently exposed to writing that means almost nothing (whether I’m reading it or producing it), I find some redemption in my explorations in Jewish literature. The Jewish concept of scripture is that every word, every letter is there for a reason and means something. I’ve read pages, for example, on why it’s important that the book of Genesis begins with the Hebrew letter bet instead of the letter aleph. No minute detail goes unconsidered in the quest for meaning. It's fantastic. (That's one thing so great about a liberal arts education in general, if you take it seriously—it forces you not to be lazy with language. GOOooooOOO humanities majors!) Language cannot survive decontexualization like other artistic productions, and Jewish literature, born out of a culture obsessed with the meaning in words and in actions, never asks it to. Oh, that I would take a page from their book, goy that I am.
This befuddlement over verbal meaning, a source of much anxiety and insecurity in my quest for a well-lived life, for writing abilities, and most importantly for acceptance into grad school, is, I guess, the proverbial Man keeping me down. I thought I‘d escaped him, being middle-class and white and largely non-ethnic. But everybody has a cross to bear. Mine is obtaining a dictionary. And a reading list.
So there 'tis. Comments, suggestions, mute expressions of digust and pity? Please do not hold back.
Also, largely unrelated to this post, the following is a word of genius:
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| | Posted 5/13/2007 5:08 PM - 3 Views - 6 eProps - 3 comments
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