A Discreet Dictionary

Banal

Michael — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 15:25:14 +0000

Of, or pertaining to, a bee’s bottom.

Yours

Michael — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 11:59:03 +0000

I’m sorry this is such a long letter; I didn’t have time to write a short one.

Blaise Pascal

Writing

Michael — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 11:06:11 +0000

The blinding glare of the blank page hurts my head. It is like the sky: more of an absence than anything else, but vast, a depth of nothingness that my mind cannot fathom.
I’m suddenly worried that I’m better at writing about my writing than actually writing stuff.
Writing is a mechanism whereby I am attempting to communicate. This raises many questions, and as a statement, is founded on several flawed assumptions.

Wright, Frank

Michael — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 10:03:20 +0000

Tenor saxophone and violin played with a bassy grating – like dumb machines when the factory’s closed.

Words

Michael — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 09:47:55 +0000

1.
Mandarins & Mangolins
Mandolins & Panjandrums
Ampersand
Pencil in penicillin

Ce qu’on conçoit bien
S’annonce clairement
Et les mots pour le dire
Arrivent aisément.

Art Poétique, Boileau

3. Words are used as verbal tools and as expressive signs. In the former case, our vocabulary is shared with all common speakers – it is intended to have simple meanings and is generally thoughtless in its application. The latter case includes art, but can generally stretch to include any occurrence of emphasis.

A verbal tool has nothing to be emphasised. Therefore to provide this accentuation, the word must be invested with more complex meanings and associations. These can be literary, comic, personal etc, but are not necessarily communicated to the reader. Their effect is to raise the word to the status of sign, and the reader is anyhow encouraged to look for complexity.

In written texts, a word cannot be elevated unless it gains a mark of its elevation, eg italicisation or underscoring. Alternatively, the word can be replaced. An unusual or foreign word will immediately have the status of emphasis as the reader will have to hold their focus on this word in order to recall or guess at its meaning or translation. But which word is now being emphasised? The original, which has been emphasised by its replacement? Or the replacement, which emphasises itself by the eccentricity of its use? Is the ghost of the original word still held within the context?

This approach can lead the reader to make associations and discover meanings that are quite unrelated to the writer’s intent, either in the emphasis of the original or in the presence of the replacement.

Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right sense.

Collected letters, William Butler Yeats

Witch

Michael — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 19:35:04 +0000

Old, I think, or maybe just made to look old. A fairly blank face to passers-by, although she tells them what she is – but if you look, there is a trace of menace within, never expressed, ever implied. Pockets, empty then full, empty then full. Fluids frothing forth, foul liquors caged in ice. The witch has the capacity to drown your sorrows; to drown you.

Wishes

Michael — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 19:32:07 +0000

Grasping at wishes.

Where am I?

Michael — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 19:30:51 +0000

Weather

Michael — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 19:29:34 +0000

It was a lovely day, full of bluster.

Wastebook

Michael — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 19:27:56 +0000

I am not Watt; I am whatnot.