Some thoughts on words:

[butterfly]

This was inspired by someone on my friendslist, who said that images have a greater effect on her than words.

I'm the other way around. Words are what touch me, more than anything else. I have a hard time listening to purely instrumental songs because I need words.

This is why I'm thinking that English/Writing is the way to go for me.

So. Books make me cry all the time. And when movies/tv shows make me cry, it's nearly always because of the words (there are exceptions). Some of Buffy's speeches have made me cry. "They said we're not supposed to move the body!" made me cry.

I love words.

Images are tricker for me. They're so subjective. A picture says a thousand words, but what it says to you, it may not say to me. Words are easier to sort and understand. Even when someone's lying or flirting with the truth, there's... a common ground. I understand words.

Sometimes... I feel like a moth beating against a light, only, I know that on the other side of glass, that's where the rest of humanity is. And they're there and I'm here and all that's in my way is some glass and fire. But that's enough.

I understand words.

Sometimes it feels like that's all I understand.

And I have no clue how a post on words got all maudlin.

Comments

[mark356.livejournal.com]

Great post, though! For songs, whether or not they have words, as long as they have something to focus on, some central melody or concept, it makes more sense to me, and words are a great thing to focus a song.

Absolutely agreeing you with movies/tv shows. In a way, they combine all previous forms of art, but they can still be described with words, and the spoken words are still nearly always central to the plot and themes of the show. I don't know if there's anything like a good speech at the end of a movie, when a character explains how he or she understnads things.

Also agreeing with you on images; it's very true that the thousand words a picture says for you may not be the thousand words I get from it at all. Modern art is even trickier, when different viewers may variously interpret a red blob as a tomato or a bloodstain or worse. Even with the most peculiar or arcane verses, they still are certain words to begin with, and you can take what you know those words to be and work from there. (The five-word sentences in the Old Testament that scholars see four problems with are a different matter entirely.) With written forms of art, the words will always be a common ground, even though the revelations they express may go far beyond the common ground, as numbers never will.

Yay for words!

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Glad you enjoyed the post.

Very good points, too. Words are great for focusing thoughts or emotions.