>>> Item number 25227 from WRITERS LOG9402A --- (71 records) ----- <<< Date: Thu, 3 Feb 1994 01:30:03 JST Reply-To: WRITERS Sender: WRITERS From: Mike Barker Subject: TECH: Meditating on Writers and their Context (being a rather abstract look at the same problem we've been kicking about anne frank, bosnia, area writers, and so forth...) Start with the notion that people largely think in patterns - A happens, B happens, and people derive a pattern mostly by taking the common elements - most differences are tossed and lost. So the worm in the head builds ruts for itself... Now, what does communication do? back to the old times - we get to send uncle joe around the other side of the mountain, then listen to him to figure out whether or not to go there. if he just says it's more of the same, skip it. If he says there's good eating around the corner, well, maybe we all take a hike. If he says they's monsters and they is coming this way, for sure we all take a walk the other way... if he says there are golden temples and nymphs and fawns dancing in the mists, we clobber him on the head and have dinner (what a kidder that uncle joe was - there really were mists around there!) anyway - the key is that we use communication to extend the territory covered by the ruts the little worm doth spin. 's aright? but suppose (just suppose) that there aren't so many virgin frontiers waiting to be crossed. still there are some interesting possibilities hidden behind or between the silky walls of the ordinary ruts. I.e., while the writer may find the easiest task is simply describing what's on the other side of the mountains, an interesting variation on this is helping the little worm break through and build some new ruts right here at home. Notice that in any case, the job of the writer is never to simply repeat the well-known plodding ruts. even worms get bored, I guess. This notion of writing as extending, building anew, breaking down, or reworking the perceptual grid through which we structure experience (virtual, fantasized, actual, whatever) is rather interesting to me. If this be true, then it seems as though humor (which generally involves a sharp change in perceptions) may be an integral tool in the process. For that matter, puns (rather than being a corruption of literary purity) are one of the tightest forms of writing, since they always involve two (or more) meanings (well-rutted patterns) being brought into conflict in a very compact form. Admittedly, many readers may feel more comfortable with slower alterations in the internal scenery. Walk them along the ruts with just enough new stimuli to let them wallow in their torpid placidity, and they will reward you well for it. But perhaps the writer has claustrophobia and wants to open the windows... hum - this argues that the writer whose background or context differs from that of the readers may have an easier time constructing a message which provides that taste of strangeness that we learned to love in ancient times (exogamy - the love of the stranger - was a practical necessity to survival of the species, as inbreeding does some very bad things in small groups). At the same time, they may have more difficulty linking their message to the well-known ruts of the readers, and I think most readers need some help in getting up speed before they tear through the edges of their own webs... (remember poor uncle joe!) writing, then, may be considered as one way to counteract the staleness of inbred thoughts, to avoid being trapped in the labyrinth of tiny little passages that all look just the same. I like that. tink