Walter Rhett: Wordkill

[DemocratsForProgress]

Writing is easiest for me when it’s story-telling; when all of the elements of sentence structure, unity, coherence, tone, therapy, insight, and creative channels are balanced and stirred in like a good perlo or gumbo—a one-pot dish that bring its own satisfaction and holds its character and taste over time.

For others, it seems, writing is an easy path and aid to lying and mischief. When writing or using language, they are unaccountable to craft or subject (or self!). The gifts of sounding ideas to the eye, of recalling, describing and interpreting actions is used to cast a net of darkness. I call it the looking glass syndrome—writing which is only a mirror of images planted by the observing eye—that ignore what the eye really observed.

Is the yawing child sleep deprived or happily satiated? Is a government that will defund the nation’s entire organized healthcare system one that is providing for the common good or one pushing an ideological agenda—blind to human costs off the balance sheet? Why would any writer use their gifts to lie, mislead, and arrange words that, if followed, would bring death? Words that to the intimacy of a reader’s eye, bring in blame, bring what bullets bring; and murder by word.

After this week’s Navy Yard murders, and Newtown, and the Boston Marathon bombings, be reminded there are many ways to kill. The crack of the gun puts us on edge; we hear it in our deep invisible space. But on its heels is another weapon, the word—written and spoken...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/09/18/wordkill/