Words like you and I, they are meant to
console you, assure you that yes, you exist, I exist, and we are all family.
The irony of their emptiness is part of their charm. See, I’m already referring
to them as things, objects, people, who have qualities that distinguish them
from others. Our language is a populated place, with words neatly arranging
themselves in rows, or strewing themselves in pathways, there are
always...things that occupy space, written space, narrative space, discursive
space, physical space. In other words, in all this jostling, we (the beauty of
language) are afforded with a space which we can inhabit. There are others who
would uphold that words are not expressions but are spoken, enunciated in an
endless system, self-perpetrating, self-sufficient. Who can dispute their
position? But we, who wander in these little white spaces between this and
that, that and this, climbing from word to word to climb onto more words, we,
who are entirely dependent on them as a matter of distinction, find their
hollowness consolatory, their lack of substance reassuring. We find no trouble in being endlessly
replicated through them, or acting as a medium through which they can be
enunciated.
Systems are important. I’m not disputing
that fact. Rigour is the only thing that can lead us anywhere. There are many
who would say that in fact, rigour is not the means, but the end. I despair to
hear suchlike. For I am naturally not given to rigour, but to ease, as if the
fairy that presided over my birth conferred this little property unto me. But
of course, situations have been such that they have allowed this native ease to
exist, rather than attempt to evict it, but I say, yet. There is no glass into
the future. If thrust into a situation that demands rigour as an alternative to
dissipation, I might have to choose the former, swallowing all my personal
predilections. But is it a crime to exist on ease, in ease? If situations
haven’t formed me, am I not formed? Isn’t this particular combination not good
enough? Not enough variety, you say, not enough resilience. Am I a plant?
These spaces allow me to be intensely
polemical, intensely defensive, helping to bolster my flagging self-esteem. But
how long does it last? Words, are after all shells we play with.