On Writing

Sure, “actions [may] speak louder than words”, and “a picture [may well be] worth a thousand words”. But then why, still, do words persist, moving with neither strain nor shutter? Why have they become not dogged but boisterous, not captured but captivating?

One word, champion of all word-ly causes: IMAGINATION.

Ripe with the fruits of underbrush and undertone, of connotation which molds to each individual palate, words can exceed the grasp of shallow splashes and frozen-frames. Simultaneously, a string of words can take hundreds of different journeys in hundreds of different minds.

They congeal from nondescript parts and embody ideas of unknown origin, endowing upon man and its mind an eternal landscape and an infinite tabula rasa. Literate, man assumes the power of Zeus, able to birth from his forehead many “novel” existences.

So the keepers and defenders of words, may we never allow words to become shadowed in the might of more visually attuned communication. Let us pen a world where words can come to life. Otherwise, we may find ourselves in the climate of which Ray Bradbury warned us—one where temperatures climb to Fahrenheit 451, and words are incinerated. For with their departure the colors of our imagination too char into monochromatic monotony.