God you are my father, my dad. Where would I be without you? Lost. A man without purpose. Dissolving slowly into my mental illness like quicksand. A victim of my own hypocrisy like a snake that eats itself, a child without hope. A future with only doom.
God You train my fingers for battle. So unbelievably dexterous have they become, they clutch the sword like it was one of my body’s own appendages.
God you are the king of kings.
You don’t understand how much power I have. I’m an author. I can create whatever I want at whatever time. I can craft a story, and neatly embed it in a world built by my own hands. My ideas form the fabric of the reality I create. and I do it with finesse.
Such finesse.
I merge beauty with depravity and the appealing with repulsiveness. You don’t realize it but your interested in the contrast. As am I. You can’t be invested in a story solely about beauty. Each word is chosen, each sentence wrought with elegance so that you can see it with your mind’s eye and feel it with your morality.
My stories are real. They are. They may look like nothing more than words on a page, pixels on a screen, maybe something you heard. But I swear they are. Every character is a person, every plot point is an actual event and every story is a life lived. Every tragedy is real because its conceivable.
My characters are real. I have to create characters. I’m a writer. Thats what I do. I bleed my savagery into them. My savantism. My ethical imperfection. They carry the burden so that I don’t have to.
EAST
You speak with authority fit for a king.
Fit for a wearer of the ring.
Lord of the same, bringer of the pain,
wear it with the air of the era-borne name.
The might and the power is yours to hold.
The plight of the powerful and bold,
the fire of the empire soul.
For now, until your fire grows cold.
Your eyes lie, yet to see, your majesty die,
by the tears of those with eyes to see (lies),
as the dynasty dies.
Ignorance is bliss. Ignorance is king.
Up until the kiss of defeat that your ignorance brings.
ROME
My power is unending, testing the bounds of time.
Vested in my eternal climb. Resting on the sands of time.
My enemies are torn, limb from limb,
fibula to femur, again and again.
Destroy the blasphemer, eradicate the sin.
EAST
You speak of the wars on my shores.
this is your power,
to plunder and devour,
tear all asunder, under torrential blood shower.
ROME
I never took that which didn’t belong.
Whats owned is determined by the strong.
Along with right and wrong.
Futility is trying to fight the song.
EAST
Demise is the tangent that your life is on.
You grope in the dark because the light is gone.
You roar and you bark but the fight is gone.
ROME
Silence!
The mob that is I craves violence,
craves the land and the waters and the islands,
the gold and the oil and the diamonds.
All the earth is mine, I’m leviathan.
I am Conquest of lands untold, continents not shown,
yet all is known to the gods of Rome.
I am the son of the earth. Keeper of its corners.
Its worth is known only within my borders.
The empire knows that the empire soul, grows, with what the empire owns
And the empire knows what the empire knows,
because all is known to the gods of Rome.
Words are like scalars. Ideas are like vectors.
Now, if you never took advanced math or Physics, that might mean nothing to you. But before I can explain it, I must ask a fundamental question.
Why does one write?
I’ve heard it said that some people write just to get something off their chest. Writing journals and keeping diaries. I’ve even seen people write “letters to God”. These kinds of writers don’t necessarily do it because they want anyone to read what they’ve written. Its a personal thing. Apparently there is something therapeutic about putting feelings down on paper (or coding them into little bits of binary information to be stored in the depths of cyber space).
If i were to guess why, I would say its because writing down your problems gives them specificity and makes them quantifiable. Something that can be understood and worked through as opposed to the amorphous looming weight that you had before which only elicited irrational panic. It also lends some strategy to the situation because to write it, you have to think about it with some kind of logical progression in order to give it coherence. Such that by writing it out you’re theoretically laying out the foundation for its solution. I don’t know, I’m not a psychologist. I’m just saying that if I were to guess that’s what I would say.
For now I’ll avoid talking about these kind of writers because they are an anomaly that do not quite share the intentions of the common writer. Thus the rest of this should be read with the assumption that those writers are not actually “writers” as I refer to them here but a different group of people entirely that I will account for some other time.
But back to the initial question. Why does one write? So that others can read.
It seems simplistic and maybe it is, but there are implications. What’s really happening is there is an exchange of ideas that’s taking place, or at least that’s what the writer intends. The writer is like a salesman trying to get the reader to buy into the ideas he’s pushing. That’s whats important. The ideas. Any piece of writing has both words and unseen ideas. Anyone knows that, but what everyone doesn’t realize however is that there is a subtle relationship between words and ideas, that exists within the parameters set by their respective characteristics.
Words are like scalars. Ideas are like vectors.
To put it simply (and perhaps rob the analogy of a little of its accuracy) this just means that ideas have direction while words do not. But its a little more than that. They have a specific audience they are targeted at. Ideas have intent. Ideas have situational effect. Ideas have contextual conceptualization. Words by contrast do not. Ideas have personality while words are the faceless tools that an idea will use to manifest itself. Words are the slaves that an idea rules over with an iron nib. They do its bidding because they have no will of their own.
But therein lies the irony.
Because to everyone except the writer, an idea is only as good as the words that convey it. In much the same way that an insightful general’s genius strategy during a battle would mean nothing if the infantry were untrained or for some reason unable to execute it. Make no mistake though, this may not necessarily have anything to do with the quality of the idea in itself, only its ability to affect the recipient of the idea in the manner in which the author intended.
It does stand to reason though that the higher the quality of the idea, the better the words must be to be able to express it. A piece of writing is like a swordsman where the words are the sword and the idea is the man himself. If he is a good swordsman with a flimsy sword he is weak. If he is a bad swordsman with a great sword he is weak. But if both are of high quality then his name becomes legend.
THAT is the relationship between words and ideas. They are inextricably linked to and dependent on one another. Even the reader can feel it when a good piece of work comes together. The brilliant words increase the potential difference between the text and your brain. The ideas jump off the page because the smoothest string of words you ever read acted as a conduit for the flow of an idea to take place. You get just a little excited because you’ve bought an idea that exploded into a tiny little epiphany in your mind. And in some cases you become inspired to write something of your own, maybe even challenge the author, thus bringing the flow back around full circle and closing the circuit as it were. (There’s too many metaphors based on Physics here. Sorry guys.)
That’s the art of writing. Maintaining a balance between the two elements which in turn increases the likelihood of the transmission of an idea. Which can subsequently alter moods, challenge ideologies and even change character. And THAT is the power in writing.
Any good writer will keep the quality of his words and ideas high while still maintaining a balance. They will do all in their power to try and make you buy what they are selling. Unfortunately for writers everywhere however there is one thing that greatly affects their flow of ideas that they cannot control.
and THAT…is the quality of the reader.
So I’m sitting in class, bored out of my mind as usual and looking out the six by four foot windows that grace the classroom walls. I cant help but think that they’re a little elaborate to put in a class room but whatever. So I’m thankfully about to fall asleep when some IDIOT wakes me up to ask me a question. So I look the sonofagun straight in the eye all temperamental like and I says
“Why the hell would u wake ME up 4 sumn like that?”
“But sir,…you’re the LECTURER”
“Sit down boy, nobody likes a smartass”
The nerve of some kids. Makes me wonder why I even took the job in the first place. I’m still in the process of trying to get a restraining order against some girl. She made some kind of hostile gesture with her arm in class. Apparently she ‘just wanted to ask a question so she raised her hand’. Despicable, but I digress.
At this point im kinda pissed off and whatnot so I’m thinking of doing what every lecturer does in that situation. I open the window and threaten to commit suicide. of course normally, students wouldn’t care but it seems there’s a clause in the uni constitution that says that students all get F’s if the lecturer comes to any harm in their presence. the clause was added bcoz some kid got an A in CALCULUS!!! it has forever been assumed since then that some students may possess awesome mental powers that we cannot understand and that may be used to harm lecturers. I actually suspect that there’s a telekinetic in my class who im pretty scared of, but all things considered i’m just glad i didn’t end up wit the first kid; A IN CALCULUS??!!! musta sold his soul to the devil or something
Faking suicide. Melodramatic? Perhaps, but it tends to work bcoz everyone knows how sad most lecturers truly are deep down. (why else would they drone on endlessly about their achievements to students who don’t give one?). Besides which, the system is DESIGNED to encourage suicide. I mean honestly who puts windows that big in a glorified insane asylum? If that doesn’t show conspiratorial intent for mass murder then a redefinition is definitely in order. Anyway, the suicide bit doesn’t work bcoz despite my awesome thespian skills they’ve seen me do it about a hundred times and i guess the fact that the new hall this sem is only one storey high, doesn’t help.
So instead i give everyone an insane amount of homework that I KNOW I wont mark -because honestly, who has that kind of time, you know what I mean?- and blame it on the smartass kid. Confident that the world will be one smartass short when i leave, I walk to the door with a kind of b boy swagger thing going on so they KNOW that they cant mess around. I get to the door, stop and turn around wondering which borrowed tv punchline im gonna drop today. i toy with the idea of doing a dirty harry impression but i left my .44 magnum at home. Darn. So i think, maybe Gary coleman: (‘whatchu tawkin bout class??’) after which im embarrassed i thought ‘maybe Gary Coleman’. finally it comes to me…i take out my inhaler and other required paraphernalia 4 the impression and say with clipped tones “luke,…..i am…..ur father” and then walk out. dont get me wrong, of course i realised how contextually incorrect it was to use that line, im not an idiot. George Lucas wud be pissed!! (sorry george) but i just couldn’t waste the opportunity, i mean its not every day when you accidentally carry your Darth Vader mask to work with you is it?
peace losers, till next time ..|.,
kingzedek 