I love words. I’m not picky. Don’t mind if they come with two letters or twenty two. I love the sight, sound, smell and feel of words and the way they're heard inside our heads, hearts and other body parts that become part of the participation race to be entertained, loved and healed and or whatever words do to you and those who make up your circle.
Shakespeare was given permission to make up his own words. One of the best books I’ve read is his dictionary. It teaches a wandering mind how to take a word like butt and give it more than a crack down the middle.
People tend to laugh at me after finish reading, calling my works too far out there. My most recent book Another 1021 Thoughts was edited by Lisa Alessandra who writes: Your writing expresses complex thoughts and at times a stream of consciousness style that can be difficult for the reader to follow. It was a challenge to maintain the delicate balance between touch and don’t touch and when in doubt I left it alone.
Those are the words that tend to silence the art right out of a persons frame of mind. Shrugging the shoulders, I picked up her point of view and stayed true to the style that was given to me while walking through an empty field connecting Ponderosa Elementary School in Billings, Montana to the back roads of a child’s vigorous imagination.
Sitting across from Maggie two weeks ago I expressed, “If Shakespeare and Twain were given permission to write with words any way they so chose…I too want to play by the same rules.”
To which she replied and I do respect her openness and always dependable honesty, “You aren’t Shakespeare.”
Julia Cameron constantly reminds each of us to gain the confidence to display your art so that we can learn to ignore criticism. Although I’m still horribly injured by the treatment of an art gallery in New Orleans…the lesson learned is that life isn’t a Disney movie. Rather than wishing we should be moving toward the areas that dreams tend to build in the middle of a sleepless night.
Two years ago I was asked to be Samuel Langhorne Clemens…one of seven children from a Missouri raised family whose life and style depended on the presentation and flow of the mighty Mississippi river. Those experiences put ink in the pen and life in the pages of books that continue to be masterpieces in American history. The museum was in need of a crisp clear Southern accent that could be understood by travelers not familiar with the elongated bent notes that have become the shapes of our communication in the over heated shadows of a southern trail. Becoming Mark Twain was an experience I hold dearly because everything he was then came through to these modern times. When he wrote about the river I not only saw it but could smell the dead fish mixed in with the chopped up grasses and nasty brown and black mud swirled together like soup by the giant paddle ships that made transportation the only way to move during his time.
The problem with today’s paperback books is simple; they read like an Aerosmith song…they all look and sound the same. Originality is dead in the world of writing.
I can drive from Charleston to Gastonia and hear six different styles of the southern accent. I was shocked to return home to Montana and hear a Wisconsin influence. If Sarah Palin is from Alaska why does she carry a North Dakota sound? Because she’s from the home of the great potato Idaho. The Pacific Northwest does have an accent which was proudly displayed in the Oscar award winning flick Fargo.
My good friend Nate constantly tells me, “How you write is how others will perceive you. You want people to follow you through social networking and it begins with being able to put the right words in the correct formation.”
It reminds me of the day that radio program director Rob once sternly shoved into my on-air presentation, “You can’t win in the ratings race until you stop being a boy from Montana and start picking up the way we talk in the Carolinas.”
I love words. I’m not picky. Don’t mind if they come with two letters or twenty two. I am deeply bothered though when bosses say, “Can I have a word with you?” Its at that moment I want to grab an old fashioned Websters Dictionary and point to the only word they can use during our moment of togetherness.
Words…we can’t live with them or without them. One of the most heart wrenching words of all time is hypocrite. We all know what a hypocrite is but do we know where the physical word arrives from? Super J uses it in the big book. But it was through his younger year working environment that he was introduced to it…the Hypocrites were a group of actors who’d perform until the sweat was no more…after which they’d stand in front of the audience and remove their masks asking for money or they wouldn’t leave the stage. Two faces…performer versus beggar and or business person. Admitting you live one way only to learn you are a much different person in the chapters of a different book.
Words take people to far away places without having to go through irritating security at overcrowded airports.
Nineteen people from Singapore pulled into my blog yesterday, 11 from Indonesia, 9 from Egypt, 3 from South Korea and 1 from Germany. My mother has never read my writing. If my daily goal was to find the words that inspire only my mother the universe would never get to meet the Shakespeare and Twain inside of me.
I will not write the next great novel but that single person in Germany might be inspired try today.
I fricken love words!
I will always believe in you first…
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
No comments:
Post a Comment