I never knew my grandparents especially well. One half spoke little english and the other half felt so certain in their religious belief that there wasn’t a lot of room for much else. I love and loved them all regardless of our inability to communicate, and as I write that now, it makes me wonder about communication more generally.
I find overt communication, with words, to be less and less compelling. The things you’re able to get across with words have little feeling a lot of the time.
That’s not always the case, of course. There are some really beautiful books in the world and more than a few of them have made me cry, and a handful have changed how I think about the world.
But when it comes to honest to goodness expression, helping one person understand the interior of a skull, words feel like they fall short, a lot of the time.
Noam would have something to say about that, I’m fairly sure, but I’m trying dig deeper into what I wrote about yesterday.
Has anyone ever been as impacted by Shakespeare, fantastic as he is, as they were by a love letter?
Does someone honestly feel as much looking at a John Singer Sargent painting as they do looking at a polaroid of someone they love?
Some people, I’m sure, are quite moved by those things. Perhaps more importantly -many- people are moved at least a little bit by those works of art.
Is quantity what’s important here?
What I’m getting at is a science fiction or fantasy novel about a society where art is entirely singular, would be really cool.
That’s not always the case, of course. There are some really beautiful books in the world and more than a few of them have made me cry, and a handful have changed how I think about the world.
But when it comes to honest to goodness expression, helping one person understand the interior of a skull, words feel like they fall short, a lot of the time.
Noam would have something to say about that, I’m fairly sure, but I’m trying dig deeper into what I wrote about yesterday.
Has anyone ever been as impacted by Shakespeare, fantastic as he is, as they were by a love letter?
Does someone honestly feel as much looking at a John Singer Sargent painting as they do looking at a polaroid of someone they love?
Some people, I’m sure, are quite moved by those things. Perhaps more importantly -many- people are moved at least a little bit by those works of art.
Is quantity what’s important here?
What I’m getting at is a science fiction or fantasy novel about a society where art is entirely singular, would be really cool.