quarta-feira, 5 de dezembro de 2012

Words. They enslave us.

I still remember the days when words flew. Light as feathers. Or leaves. When their weight was not yet overwhelming. When they were able to flow. Just flow. Like a river.


Not that I regret the road that made them the way they are now. Or rather the path that took them somewhere else. Because that is what happened, right? The further away words are from us, the heavier they feel, because you simply need to use a higher amount of energy to bring them to you. To write them. To force them to be here. It doesn’t even matter if literature purists find this explanation preposterous and impossible to understand. Come on guys and girls, this is writing and art and freedom - so stop living within your stupid, closed-box rules. You really can do everything, if only you open your eyes to the real world.

I suppose it’s as simple as this: words are complicated living beings. They have their own will, their own flavors, their own destinies. Even if they make it look like they are not. They look like they can be enslaved, but that will never be more than an illusion. Words enslave. That's what they do. And they create complicated illusions.

So where does this wide-spread idea of words and books and literature being wonderful for humans come from? Why do people believe that reading a book is indeed better than living your own life? Why are words so important?

The more you actually think about this, the stranger it feels. Why don’t we question such ideas? How can we simply agree with the fact that an activity which isolates us from the World (reading) and that makes us dwell on ourselves and on what we feel - and that indeed stimulates the construction of a world which tends to deviate from reality (whatever that is) - is good for us? Do we really feel better after reading an entire book? How do we act towards people after doing that? Is that sense of “I know much more now” really positive for us and for those around us? How is “feeling important” good for us?