I write this to you before I have received your letter to me to truly write back to you, but these words have been sitting on my mind the last few days I feel I need to get them out. I know it is almost a sin to write a letter before gaining the next part in our conversation and I shall keep that side of a talk going nevertheless. But what is burning in my mind now, I have to get out, and I have to tell someone about the ideas.
I do not know if it is an odd thing or not, but I wrote this letter a dozen or so times in my mind. I even spoke the words out loud in the car to make sure they were right, and can you believe it now, those words are hard to find. I guess, I should state right out what I wish to speak about, for I fear this may be taken the wrong way, but I wish to speak on something dear to my heart – writing.
I have been thinking about this craft for a while now and the power it holds in it. There is a great power with writing, with words, and I think we as people forget that too easily. In the Bible, my book of faith, this is proven to me in two ways. I know you are not a believer which does nothing to change our friendship and maybe one day we can have a great conversation on the matter, but for now, indulge me a little. Play along with the words I am about to write.
I do not have to go be on the first page of the Bible to prove my point there is power in words. God spoke everything into existence. He used words to place us in this great play call life. He used a simple word to give us life. His words breathe into us touching our souls. All He did was speak and use the power of words.
The second part I will use to prove my point how writing is powerful, and I don’t even have to open the Bible to make the statement. God is all His grant wisdom chose to use a book to speak His truth. What more do I have to say? And since you don’t believe in God then I will state this, a book like the Bible has changed the world. The world is changed by mere words, ink on a page, and written to us.
Yes, writing has power.
I know it has power. I have willed that power more than once and do so now writing to you, but I have been thinking about something else. Can we as writers or poets use our tools, words, for the mere enjoyment of the word? This might be an odd statement so let me explain a little.
One of my favor painters is Mark Rothko who was born out of the American Abstract expressionism movement. He painted this great works of color to place emotion in you. Rothko like many of the painters in the movement, one you might know of is Jackson Pollock, believed images could no longer do the job of making the viewer feel like they once did.
After the horrors of War World Two and the bomb, how could they paint an image every that stack up to those events? They do have a point, don’t they? We have all seen pictures of those horrors. The mundane terrors of the past and I use the word mundane for a reason. Those pictures of the deaths of the Jews or the blackened city after the bomb have been seen so many times, it becomes dull and mundane to the point that we glanced over them now.
I put myself we in the statement above, but that is why I try my hardest to drive deep into the literary hell about those events. The pictures do nothing to stir any kind of great emotional outcry in me, but the words that I have found in some books have never left me. I have a great list of books which I would not give out to anyone. Not because the books are bad but because the books will leave their mark on you. I have read about the Rape of Nanking and drive deep into the Columbine massacre to the point where it has eaten away at my dreams.
The words in those pages stay me because I do something different when I read them. The first thing I do is the same thing you do when you read about true evil in the world. You place yourself in the shoes of the victims, of the people who are seeing the monsters in all the bloody glory they are. This is a natural way to read any books, but I always go back read the book again, and I try to place myself in the shoes of monsters.
What would it take for me to be the SS officer at the Death camps? How close am I to stepping over that edge? The better question is how close are you?
Now, I can hear your protest before you ever said them or write them. I wouldn’t do that. I am no near the edge of becoming a monster like the demons on the past in those camps. I wouldn’t do it. I am of too high of a moral character to put a gun to the back head of child and end their life. I am not a monster. I can see monsters. I can fight monsters, but I will never be a monster.
And yet, when you stare into the abyss, it does stare back.
But how do you know you are not the monster? How do you know that you are not far closer to that edge then you think? And when read a book about those demons and place yourself in their shoes, then you truly where you stand. It is a task, and I’m not sure I wish you to do. Like I said those words have never left me, they have stepped into my mind like rats behind the walls.
Because the pictures have become dull and Mark Rothko is right there had to be a different way of showing the world emotions. He chose to do with painting and my friend if you can go see one of his works do so. They are huge walls of color, and at first, you are not going to understand them. You will look at them with a shrug, and when you shrugged them off, you should walk right to the painting about twelve inches from it and look. The colors that he used will swallow you alive and then they will be hunting every step you take for the next few days. They will follow you home and then you will see why he painted the way he did.
Mark Rothko like some of the other realized that painting should be about the paint and the paint so the emotions in us. So, can we make writing about the words?
I hope not. I hope that is not where we go when it comes to writing. The words we speak have power and to have them be nothing more than mere words will lose all that power. I, as a writer and you, as a poet should shutter with the idea of people wanting to use powerless words because there is no such thing.
With a Handshake,
Chase
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