Bibliopath #26: In which we dance around the subject
Dear reader,
Here's our topic sentence for today:
But writing, whatever its medium, is made of words, and words are bodily, made with the body and the breath, received by the body, felt with the body, and the rhythms of words are bodily rhythms.
If there's one thing that I'm obsessed with it's how does writing do what it does? How can it be that I can type words onto a keyboard in Sydney, and have you feel something or know something somewhere else in the wor(l)d?
If there's two things I'm obsessed with, it's how our contemporary philosophies and theologies have largely forgotten about the body, treating it as an ugly byproduct of a mind, or a thing to be hacked, or overcome, or stimulated, rather than a companion on the journey.
(Hint: I'm obsessed with a few things.)
This sentence from patron saint of Bibliopath, Ursula K. Le Guin, comes from her essay on 'What Makes a Story', and brings both these ideas together: a word is a bodily vessel, or, conversely, a body can be filled and felt with words. The essay is brief and well worth reading, especially as she cheerfully disarms the bad old bear of the three act structure ("It's a recipe for steak, not for tamales.")
In Steering the Craft, she describes her test of a sentence in similar vein:
The sound of the language is where it all begins. The test of a sentence is, Does it sound right? The basic elements of language are physical: the noise words make, the sounds and silences that make the rhythms marking their relationships.
Our topic sentence, of course, passes its own test, the rhythm and repetition of both "words" and "body" circle in and out, like rhythm, but also like breath—both are "received" and "felt". If "the rhythms of words are bodily rhythms" and she asserts at the end of the sentence, then the conclusion is startling: we must move the realm of words back a little from the precipice of the mind towards the haven of our bodies.
The latter half of the essay goes on to describe a story as a house, a place one might be directed through, or simply a place that might exist, ready to explore.
If you're having trouble writing (and especially if you're NaNoWriMoing), consider this: what kind of house are you inviting your reader into? And what kind of rhythms are you building your house from?
From a body made of words,
Guan