Do books talk? Can they? If a book had a mouth to speak…where would the lips be? Would they be puffy, pouty, thin or just there? If a book could would you find interest in talking back? With so many thoughts locked inside there’s got to be a way for a book to speak its mind!
Books do have personality, warmth, leadership and companionship.
The cover can be bright, business like; bold and determined with a twist of romance…or a book can take the route of The Beatles White Album and basically say nothing. What is it you hear, see, feel touch or smell when walking through a bookstore, surf through Amazon or other dot com’s that invites you to say, “I want this one…”
Do you still find joy in holding the torn pages of chapters that have swiped the wind from your breath or have you gone the digital age way? With Kendal, Nook, IPad and other’s who’ve followed everything seems to be E-viting, tree friendly and instantly available to late-nighter’s that jumped into radio and television talk shows featuring unheard of authors that you’d otherwise forget about the moment the DJ slid into a commercial.
For writers, poets and word designers Oprah and Ellen are perfectly ripened engines to ignite the need for readers to reach. Why someone hasn’t called this current generation the most addicted readers in history completely baffles the invisible artists in my head that paints the landscapes authors have taken the time to display.
Texting, blogging, diary making mixed with the occasional dream of penning out lyrics to the melodic ear bending tune the Bose sound system in your skull keeps playing over and over have made most word junkies into chance takers, “I can do this!”
This almost sounds like a scene from a Freddie Kruger movie but I’m a thought collector. Twitter gets all the credit for keeping people opinions and verses to a strict schedule of 144 characters; earth rattling heart provoking views that have always been part of our race toward the horizon.
President Ronald Regan banked on single thoughts forcing news hounds to officially dub the new shape to communicate, “Sound bites.”
Now every politician, doctor, boss, lawyer, husband and wife stand up and blurt out what could’ve been a burp but inside the presence of pitch volume and tone there were physical words that said, “I’ve just made a statement…”
Is it healthy to have so many words around us? From the Duwamish-Suquamish nation Chief Seattle said, “There is no quiet place in cities, no place to hear the leaves of spring or the rustle of insect wings…the clatter.”
My stepfather Joe constantly interrupted my teenage years with, “Do you even know what you’re saying?” Making his sound bites powerful are the tiny re-adventures into the boxes that promise to preserve the 35 year old handwriting of a kid gone crazy with storytelling. Staring at it once, twice and two hundred times more…just like Face Book, I have no clue what I meant to do.
Today my wife believes through self reminder only I write, talk and scribble down what appears to be letters connected to a very long run on sentence that eventually becomes a paragraph. If it wasn’t for thought collecting I’d instantly forget where I put my last step.
What’s this have to do with talking books? They do have lips right? If not…whose voice do we hear with each page turned? Is it yours? Is your father or mother’s? Wouldn’t it be cool if it was James Earl Jones or Casey Kasum?
Books do talk when you put your thoughts out there to be caught. What would it take to get you to stop waiting for other people's efforts to move your world forward? It's more fun when you do it yourself...
I will always believe in you first…
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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