"In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?"
Lady Ga Ga's tattoo adorns her inner upper arm. It's a quote from Rilke's, apparently. I love Lady Ga Ga, I love writing and I love tattoos!
If I was forbidden to write, all these words would be floating around my head all the time and probably send me insane. They would be all queuing to get out and driving each other potty trying to compete with each other.
Words can make our day, brighten the hour, send our soul souring or they can break our hearts, destroy relationships, create havoc. They can be beautiful or ugly. They can feel nice on the tongue, in the mouth, the way they sound.
We need to watch the words we use or it could land us in trouble. They have to be politically correct in nature. They can start relationships or destroy them. Could we live without them?
They are part of our everyday existence. Could we live without words? Could we have a limited number of words given to us a day and only use those words we have been allocated? Will there ever be word police?
People and society can suppress our freedom of speech. We can be brought to task over our choice of words and criticised. We can be celebrated and made famous for the choice of words we use and the way we put them together.
There is nothing more beautiful than a sentence constructed in such a way that it makes us gasp with delight or joy or utter sadness.
Some words can not be taken back. Once out of the mouth they stay in the air around us, in our heads, in our ears, in our hearts. There they will linger for eternity and fade but always be there. To prick our hearts and make it bleed.
Some words need to be said over and over again to make us understand, confident and secure. They don't linger. They fade quickly and evaporate into the ether and leave us alone, floundering.
We need words like we air to breath. Without them we would suffer. We would shrivel and our souls would die. Our brains would dysfunction and hope would be lost.
If I were forbidden to write, I may not die but I would be a shadow, hollow and an empty vessel.I would be without my passion.
4 comments:
Couldn't agree more. A world without words is a world without understanding. Or, as Wittgenstein once said, 'whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent.'
I think that if I couldn't write down anything that was in my head I would explode... or live in a Musical and burst into song every five minutes.
Glad that it isn't a problem!
Beautifully written.
Lovely blog post.
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