The Nature of Writing

I'm going to do something a little different with this post. As you might have come to know, Smooth Stop's format has been quite varied, and generally tends to reflect my thoughts in whatever way I find appropriate. Well, this time I'm going to be putting up a short essay on my thoughts about the written word in general. it's almost self-referential to the content of the blog itself. Kinda intersting. Oh, well, enough chit-chat. Enjoy.

There are very few organic things that we do anymore. We garden with power tools, we eat processed food, and our waste travels to a centralized facility. However, there is still one thing that we do that is completely organic: we converse.

Our vocal chords shoot vibrations out into the air, open to anyone who wants to listen in. Usually, though, these waveforms are only intended for a single person. We say something, they listen with their ears and process the language in their minds, and they respond. The result of this discourse can be anything from a friendly exchange of pleasantries to a polarized debate.

Today, live, vocal conversation as one's main source of information is a rarity. We gain the majority of our knowledge from mechanically reproduced sound and written material (1). Both of these concepts are totally inorganic. As such, their permanence can be all but assured. This gives the material more clout, but it also removes some of the human work that goes into a project. However, audio does give us a reasonable representation of a human being; it is similar to a simple one-on-one conversation. Writing, though, is quite different. It has many odd qualities that separate it from verbal discourse.

Writing is an abstraction. When we read an author's work, we do not immediately imagine the author. We imagine people, places, concepts, and things as they come. There is no anchor, no definitive information towards the writer's identity--only a vague style. Writing is one of the most isolated forms of communication as it only acknowledges the existence of the reader; the author is merely implied by the presence of new ideas. While audio can spur the same kind of imaginative thinking, we still encounter a voice. We still have concrete, semi-organic information to work with.

Writing is not temporal. When we read, we can take a book and read it up to a certain page, put it down, and resume days later without missing a thing. If we have trouble with a word, we can look it up. If we are slow thinkers, we can dial back the rate at which we read. Conversations, audio and video are meant to be consumed at a set pace. It would be very difficult to leave in the middle of a conversation, or slow down an audio track to half speed and try to listen to it properly.

Writing is one-sided. When we converse, we are expected to respond immediately, and to continually determine the direction of the dialog. When we read another's work, we may respond to a group of other readers or to ourselves, but never directly to the author. We rarely have the opportunity to change the way the author thinks.

Writing, therefore, is an odd anomaly. It does have its advantages; however, it also has qualities that make it foreign to our normal biological experience. If one were to choose an inorganic medium to deem as the most human, yet expandable, it would be audio. I believe people are beginning to realize this with podcasting and the like. We're pretty holed up in a world where living things aren't cherished much. If we can at least move towards a more aural environment, I think we could be a little bit happier.

(1) We also gain information from video, but I omitted it from this essay as it is an incredibly concrete medium that is very far distanced from the written word.