Some
words like types of food shouldn't go together but somehow do. Some
people you wouldn't think to put together but they somehow work.
Some
words share the same letters, yet have different meanings. Some
people carry the same genes, yet express these differently.
Some
words get mixed up, confused for or with another, so that what they
impart is different to what was meant. Some people are confused and
don't know how best to convey their emotional state.
Some
words are interchangeable, are dissimilar in sound and look, yet
defined similarly. Some people are replaceable, are distinct in
appearance and demeanour, yet possess the same desirable skills.
Some
words shout, some are quiet, some are neither one or the other, some
can be both. Some people are aggressive, some are passive, most are a
combination of both.
But
whilst words can be classified into neutral, positive, or negative,
people are not so easily categorised under headings.
The
bounds, as laid down in speech, thought or writing, are mitigated
when divisions are crossed which nobody thought could or should be
crossed to broker new territory. And then there's human error where
those unnaturally brought together have a strange allure, almost as
if appointed yet were waiting for someone to stumble upon them, and
if they hadn't they would never have been discovered.
Although
materialised, a few go unnoticed by unsharpened eyes and it takes
another sharpened pair to notice. Some eyes see but don't realize the
beauty and only want to correct the error; some eyes see and realise
the error is an improvement because it alters their thinking. Other
eyes see what others have seen but failed to mention, and for them
it's a revelation as if these faults were put there to tell them
something, which others that came before also thought but which
leaves both feeling pleased as if they've realised something that
others haven't: they're in ownership of some knowledge that others
are ignorant of.
Humans
delight in one-upmanship and recognising themselves in another, even
fictional beings who demonstrate how they do and how they could live
in the world. And as they identify with them they identify with the
writer that created this fictionalised person and bombard him or her
with crazed letters, become ardent fans of that one novel, and with
time possibly extend this to further works. Still, that life-changing
novel will be vividly remembered and revisited because of the
protagonist and the way in which the writer animated him or her;
readers choosing to forget the fact that the character may have been
drawn from real life, manipulated but not strictly speaking imagined,
because to do that would dismiss the notion that the author speaks
for them and has somehow entered their soul.
Through
the novel, the writer has stretched out his hands and voiced what is
never expressed. The language used and the voice in which it's said
achingly familiar, so that what the character does could be true of
us if the same situations arose. And that over-identification is a
frontier the writer has no control over, though some writers might
claim this also occurs with the persons they bring into being.
It's a
fine line, like one drawn with a stick in the sand. Because writing
is for many a form of therapy. Experimental as in taking an idea or
theory and testing it on paper to see what happens; exploratory as in
foraging thoughts and memories of different selves and expressing
them in a style that's natural or foreign. Things are worked out,
absolved. The unknown quantity is in fact the faceless readers and
their reactions because in publishing your own, often disguised,
psychoanalysing you unleash a brand of pain on the world, to which
there are no guarantees others will pick a safe route through the
mire which once held you down but now holds them in its sway.
Therapy
has no answers, just realisations.
Picture credit: Corbusier Chair and Rug, 1969, David Hockney