Love of Language

Have you ever just stopped and looked at or thought about a beautiful passage of writing? Perhaps you never have. We live in such an object-driven world that I think it's hard for us to appreciate the beauty of words because we're always looking for meaning amongst them. The problem that always seems to arise for people who don't like poetry is the fact that the poem "doesn't make any sense" to them. They try to see the meaning of the poem before actually stopping to think about the beauty of the words contained within the poem. While it is true that the meaning of a poem, coming about from the placement of words within the poem, does make the poem memorable/good for some people, I think we all should practice trying to love words for what they are. It seems that an ability exists for us, as users of language, that is quite special in the world; we can appreciate the beauty of what we say, not just the meaning, but also the word choice.

Someone once asked me if I liked little "sayings", and my answer was, unequivocally, no. I hate the cliche little motivational sayings, like "when there were only one set of footprints on the beach you were carried"etc., etc., because I think they come off as incredibly corny. Despite this, I like listening and thinking about word choice in songs/writing. For example, one of my favorite lyrics is from the song "My World" from hip-hop artist Illogic. It goes:

I'm traveling this maze,
With a javelin,
Taking aim at abdomens,
Stumbling as I guilt trip
From pixie dust particles,
Laced with the American way of conformity
I lash out in defense of culture to stimulate dormancy.

Do I have any idea what it means? Sort of, not really. Will I ever really know what it means? No, there's just no way. But I love the word choice; I love the imagery; I love everything about it. The fact that I don't "understand" it in no way diminishes how much I enjoy hearing the words. The saying "missing the forest for the trees" is all about how we focus on the little things while missing the big picture - something that's assumed to be wrong. In order to get around our tendency as a society to focus on the meaning of something while forsaking the thing itself, however, I often find myself trying to enjoy the trees before I even look for the forest. The forest is there, but it in no way diminishes the beauty of each individual tree.