I have spent years crafting my language. No, not English specifically, I’m not responsible for that mess, but the English words I choose when talking or writing are my language.
And you have your own language as well. When you tell a story there are grammatical constructs and turns of phrase that you favour. Even your choice of spelling when there are options speaks to “your Language.”
And there are many things that have informed my language, I want it to make people think, I prefer it to be a bit witty, I want it to be clear and concise without being dry. And no, I don’t think I’ve succeeded at all those things yet, but my language, just like English, is a work in progress, a living language.
What brought this on?
It’s Spring. And I’m a new father of a five month old. And he is starting to listen to me when I talk. And he’s starting to talk back … in something that I suppose is his language.
He doesn’t yet understand me and I sure as hell don’t understand him. But we don’t seem to care. Let’s face it, I’ve always been more interested in whether people are listening to me than whether they understand me. Okay, that’s not true, I like both, but first they have to listen.
My wife is happy with the idea that her son’s father is a story teller. She calls my talking to him “writing” because I make up stuff to tell him all the time. I pointed out that neither he nor I retain these “stories.” She still calls it writing and I guess it is.
And then it clicked
Suddenly I realized there is something more important about story telling. Listen to me or don’t, understand me or don’t, but tell me this … did I leave an impression?
If I do nothing with my songs and short stories and even that damn half finished novel that haunts me even though it isn’t a ghost story, if I do nothing beyond leaving a vague impression that I was there, there in the words, there in the emotions, then I am happy.
I once read a story …
A long time ago a village was building a church. (I’m trying to remember this story but this that you’re getting is actually my impression.) One of the elder craftsmen was working in the steeple, a place no one would frequent once the building was complete. He was taking days and when someone looked at his work they realized it was beyond what was needed, it was perfect. He was asked why he was wasting so much time on something that no one could see and he replied, “God can see it.”
I thought that was brilliant at the time and it stuck with me despite my not having a god in my life. The old man’s faith and his honouring of that faith was touching.
But I also thought about the idea that something built properly on the inside where no one could see it was far more likely to be strong and solid and the best it could be.
And while I loved the story, I chose to follow the old man’s example for my own reasons. If you want the story teller’s version, my answer to why I waste so much time on things that might be unnoticeable would be, “Because I can see it.”
You are a story teller …
… whether you think you are or not. When you write, when you talk, you leave an impression.
It takes very little real time to hone your language, though if I’m being truthful, the language department in my head has rented massive amounts of space and devoted vast quantities of time to my words and grammatical structures.
Words and structures that no one notices because they only see the results of all that work. They don’t see all the discarded phrases and paragraphs left on the floor of the editing rooms in my mind.
But … I see.
