Love notes, wedding vows, divorce papers. Job applications, academic entrance essays, directions to the bar. The Bible, Torah, Q'ran. Watchmen, Curious George, The New York Times. All these ingredients of my life are written. Take away other's writing and my life is reduced to snapshots and film shorts. Take away my writing and I am reduced to a single desperate voice yelling, shrieking, moaning, whimpering in the void. Now hand me a pen, or a spray can, or your Helio. Suddenly, I put my thoughts into a physical form that moves through the world and lasts through time. I don't need to be present to speak to you. You may even lose the knowledge of my authorship, by my creation remains, staring up at you from the page, glaring at you from the walls, winking to you on the screen. It assumes you are there and invites you to respond.
Ever read something and find yourself shouting at the book or the billboard? We know that someone wrote that and we're responding to them, but it's because of their writing that we can even know what they thought at a later date in a different space. Make no mistake: billboards, video, neon signs and web pages are all evolved writing. They were thoughts, they become conceptualized and were written into their media. As the writing moves away from the writer it takes on its own life and continues to speak in its creator's absence. The written will serve its purpose long after the writer wanders off, loses interest, or dies.
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I guess this makes you the short blogger? My, you certainly are creative though. I enjoy your play with words and how you emphasize the various forms of writing that we use in everyday life. I've never given thought to how often I read or write in a given day, but now that you've brought it to my attention, I realize that I spend a good portion of my day writing. Like you, without writing, I would be "yelling, shrieking, moaning and whimpering in a void." Or, my head would just explode.
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