a l l _ y o u _ c a n _ s a y . . .

People like to talk. Talking requires that sounds come from your mouth – usually in the shape of words. Mostly, people like to talk to other people. This implies that the other people are listening, but in actual fact they’re just waiting for their turn to make mouth noises that seem like words. Sometimes the words are about something that happened to them or maybe something they want to happen to them, but mostly the words are about other people. That is if those words are about anything at all. Most words are just noise to fill space and time.

For example, people will say “How are you?” or “How are you doing today?”. This is a formality that allows them to give the impression that they’re not in fact waiting to say a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with you. Generally, those issuing this query don’t actually about the answer and are not really prepared to have anything given back to them except for “Fine”, “Okay” or perhaps “Great”. It’s a sort of politeness instrument designed to let the other person have the first crack, but then allowing that person full rights to steam roll in after the other person has stopped making their mouth noises. I used to respond to this inanity with “I am”. But that was too short and confusing and just led, ironically, to complicated explanations. I switched to “I am a living”, which has sufficient syllables to mostly just go completely unnoticed. It does occasionally draw a chuckle or a remark and it has actually once caused some unintended awkwardness when said to a person who had recently experienced the loss of a relative. That person was no longer “a livin’” and so there was some repose and hesitation.

People also just like to say things just to have something to say – to either fulfill their turn (thus avoiding uncomfortable silence) or as a result of forcing themselves into the mix without actually having prepared a thought to surround with word noises. So they’ll repeat back whatever the current speaker just said. Or they’ll say “that’s funny”, or “that’s interesting” or “I know what you mean”.

Generally, people just want to talk. Listening is difficult and requires concentration which is work and work sucks. Ideas form and then they need to get out and into someone else’s ear and really that is all that matters. Dialog is virtually impossible to find. Banter probably evolved into our brains as a result of some kind of useful evolutionary mechanism – though it’s very difficult to imagine the specifics. It’s very like the chewing of cud: something that soothes the sated beast and helps with digestion.

Try this: the next time someone is speaking, even ostensibly, to you – just listen. Not just to the sounds, but to the words and the meaning. Ask questions. Hear them, pay attention and absorb. Think about the thoughts that their words summon and figure out what they really want to say. It’s hard work and I don’t make any guarantees that the results will immediately garner worth – but the exercise will. Once you get the hang of it, go a step further: challenge the talker. What do they really mean to get across? What are they really thinking? What lead them to carry forward on this topic of discourse?

No, you won’t actually do it – anymore than I will. It’s damned inconvenient. The people around me who engage in this verbal mouth breathing activity are generally there as part of some scheme in which my participation is required in order that my mortgage gets paid and my internet service continues. Or else I choose to immerse myself in their presence because the alternative is a bleak monologue of echoes that would certainly make me even stupider than I am now. The risk is too high – though I do see the reward as almost, but not quite, tipping the scales.

Prose is the normal form of writing – obviously. It’s what you see in newspapers, magazines, novels – every piece of reading material you make use of. The normal course of writing is to be explicit and direct and grammatical and generally easy to use. We like that. Occasionally a good writer will take some liberties and attempt some flow or pretend some substance via an affected linking of words or playing of metaphors. But generally speaking, nothing we read would trip the squiggly green underline of MS Word. We write according to rules and try not to get in our own way when conveying meaning via written language. This is a good thing and something for which I am all in favor.

But prose is not the end of everything. There is more out there in the dangerous world of thought and concept conveyance. For every 10 strictly photo-realistic portrayals of human experience, there exists at least one mad attempt at stretching the imaginations of a witness with a twisted shape or a crooked pallet of abstraction. In words, there is poetry.

The thing about poetry is that almost one hundred percent of it is smelly, puss-oozing, shit-stained crap. To give insight to my opinion, understand that I hold the same objections for abstract art. Jackson Pollock was a clever fraud even if VerMeer never touched a brush. Generally, poetry is too easy just as much as splashing paint on something may as well be an accident. Really good poetry is rare, even when the author takes great pains to make it great. Maybe even especially so. My idea of a really great poem is something like Blake’s burning tiger. Stuff like you read in 6th grade and maybe yawned at.

But those were clearly different times with different motivations and structures for rewarding or cursing those with a desire to string together words in an artful and compelling way. I don’t necessarily think that times and people are all that different today than they were 200 years ago when Coleridge doped himself up and wrote about sailors. I almost guarantee that he and dudes like Wordsworth would be equally successful in 2008 as they were in 18 whatever – but instead of straight written words, they most likely would’ve written songs. Or maybe commercials about fast-food and fizzy sugar water.

Regardless, poetry in the strictest definition of it is stupid crazy rare today. There’s just no market for it. Writing it is mostly an affectation of art-fagdom, not something someone seriously takes up as a form of self expression. People who might be good at it would simply take too much heat from their drinking buddies to ever write some shit down, much less share it with anyone who might read it. All that is probably for the best anyway.