- Why Words Deceive
- Announcement From Marcel Proust
Why Words Deceive
Let me cut right to it. Words may breathe life into poems, songs, stories and novels which lift the soul and weave wisdom into our lives. But when it comes to conveying experiences words are noble failures. Frustrated warriors. Beguiling deceivers.
Think about it. We have an experience. An experience is multi-sensory by nature and specific to a moment. An experience is non duplicative. In other words, we experience the experience. Then we try to describe it, convey it through words. Yet, words can never fully capture the nature of the experience the way the experience was fully experienced. Try as they may words fall short of the fully variegated, multi-sensory richness and nuance of the experience. This is frustrating and why words and experience are not happy together. They frustrate each other even though they are fated companions as long as we humans have the need to communicate our experiences to each other.
And, as with words, so with art. Both deceive.
That is why Cezanne declared "Art is harmony that runs parallel with Nature." He threw up his arms. No mas. Art cannot be the same as nature, as art cannot be the same as experience.
What are we to do?
Words are words.
Art is art.
Experience is experience.
Each is nothing more, nothing less.
The tension between them is where creativity lives.
The truth is that words and art are lies which create a new truth.
Announcement from Marcel Proust:
"Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were."
Memory especially deceives.
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