7 Comments to 'Ending the constraints of written expression - aka free form jazz'
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Now I have pellacor up and running; and slowly begin to develop the style and voice here: offline I have been experimenting with different forms of written expression trying to find ways to free up the written language from the tight constraints of syntax.
On a couple of occasions this has been sitting up in front of my laptop after I had been out drinking, lit solely by the light of the display, and as a jazz musician hammering words out like deep rumbling plucks of a double base broken with short shouts from a rambling horn. I was free from sentence structure, feeling the letters that tumbled effortlessly from my fingers were how it should always be.
But the morning hangover and bright sunshine had burnt away the intense emotion of the night
Mandan daran isisisiskkkk – garam bistu busto boto – HEIGHT – asss thee gulooomm – psst – psst
Doooodeedodeoidei basssuromk shhhhhhhhhhhhiiiooooooooffffff ananaananananan
Sfjhorgu
Manient
Ddeerrrooooo
Fh;eu
Weifhj garrotobu bintine binner sin
All I had left was random hard to read sounds, that without the subjective experience of the night before are completely meaningless. It wasn’t really the Nobel Prize winning written expression I was so sure I had captured and I was left feeling undone.
The hangover passed, in the slow manner it does now I am thirty, and my resolve to find a way to free up written expression returned. Another week past and after another night drinking I was again in front of my laptop with emotion swirling around me like smoke; my soul capturing the feelings and searching for a way to express it despite my incapacity to form sentences. The jazz returned.
This time I was compelled not just to express sounds but words interspersed with keyboard crashes that in the night sounded like hits from a full symphonic orchestra.
Life ‘oh[suohgd shared ;dfuaasidshu now sduo;fhf ever present fsfsgh questions ;sdf;gf meaning in everything f;udg;suh or nothing lsdfbeu;fh alone together alone lsdhufglseifulsfdfu;sh life
The cold morning again reminded me the feeling behind the expression wasn’t apparent at all and I needed a new approach.
In my cerebral way, I began to think about the issue. Expressing an idea in writing requires a precision of mind that constrains expression. Writing is imprisoned like pre-impressionist painting in a rigid form of realism, syntax and tense. I want to aspirate this form to explore expressions with words in other ways, to try to distil down principles of written communication.
Words are shadows of ideas, when we create sentences we have objects and subjects and verbs, we blend sounds, shifting shallow symphonies of assonance and alliteration. I want to destroy these relationships. I want to break the bonds of sentences. I want to be free.
Then it hit me.
Written language is a way of describing ideas, of thoughts, and the internet has opened up myriad of ways of describing this very same thing. Indeed this post on pellacor is described by its tags.
My new form of expression is a combination of poetry and tags, I call it tagetry.
A tagem about tagetry
Short, simple, sense, self, words, writing, free
Meaning, meta, myriad, morning, glow, pride, people
Liquid, changing, waving, wonder, never, none, all, even
Needing, frank, forever, stopping, exquisite, ideal, idea, identity
Glue, path, vision, vixen, parish, harbour, haven
Ending, broken, bramble, colour, complete
I see an arts grant around the corner Sam.
Thanks Jason, but I don’t think I’ll quit the day job just yet.
This is so freaking hilarious, yet has a point. 100 points! I am so going to link to this on SimonYoungWriters … just give me a few days while I get my blogging life in order
Thanks Simon, welcome, pleased you like it, looking forward to seeing you again soon.
dude, ditch the laptop, get a pen and some paper. Everything else is secretarial
Thanks chico, and I appreciate the sentimentality of old school, but truth be told: my hand writing is fucking appalling, seriously; not even I can read it.
In an earlier age I would have been taken for illiterate; and am just grateful for the written democratiser of typography.