My relationship with language and compulsions

A few months ago I watched a YouTube video of a British woman explaining all the interesting things she learned in grad school studying literature. Of course, I found this entirely more gripping than the classes I pay for to study the same thing. Below is the line I took from the video, and my interpretation.

“Language is a net in which we are caught”

I’ve always been interested in the idea that language exists as not only a bridge for communication but also a barrier. Thinking of language as a net means that we are constricted depending on our personal accessibility to words. It’s easiest to delineate this when I talk about it through the process of reading and writing, so that’s what I’ll do. I’m also offering up some of my strange obsessions and how language has shaped them—so hopefully this isn't too boring. 

At some point, I cultivated a hyper fixation on the description of trees. I think it has to do with their flexibility in nature, they change with each season so dramatically, and it's incredibly telling of the time of year. I’m sure it was likely Donna Tartt who sparked this obsession; she probably called a tree deadly and I was like, wow she’s so genius, who knew a tree could encapsulate the entire energy of a setting, my life is forever changed. But I think this idea gets most fascinating when I started playing with language on my own. When I started describing trees in my stories they became a dominant figure in my physical life. I would walk down an ordinary street, but now in my mind, there were these intricate, beautiful descriptions of the trees. My narrative and that close access to language had expanded my perception of a thing that was once just a “tree”. Now I see them as gothic and divine—the bark a dusty brown that chips to reveal a pale and pure layer of white. Because I have these words to describe a tree, the tree becomes that just by the sight of it. If someone only knows one word to describe bark, then they just see bark. I am very aware of this, especially when I am around others. I go for walks with my roommate a lot, and there is one street that is so seductive to me. The trees have these huge trunks and the branches reach over the street and meet in the middle to create this rustic, undefined archway. I point this out to my roommate, who generally sees things symbolically like me, and she’ll be like “Yeah the trees are cool”. It does isolate you.

The tree isn’t a great example of this isolation, because it is still just a tree and it doesn’t really offend me if I’m alone in that perception; but the notion applies to all things tangible and emotional. It’s definitely prominent in difficult conversations, hence why the miscommunication trope is found in 9/10 romance books. It also happens very often in reading, which is why journalists are taught to use the most accessible language when reporting important news. That’s actually why I didn’t major in Journalism, because I want to use the word defenestrate freely. It’s also in day-to-day life, like when someone says a pretentious word in conversation, and people only use context clues to understand what it means. Hardly anyone asks, “What does that word mean”. It 100% matters what the word means, and you can not fully comprehend someone if you don’t know the word. That’s the net! So I make an effort to ask what a word means when I don’t know. I get shit for this actually: because I'm an English major who loves words, so apparently that means I should know them all. I think what makes me a proper English major, is the fact that I asked in the first place. By asking, I’m expanding my personal lexicon, and that way others can truly convey themselves to me. Asking that also makes people feel smart, which I think is a really kind thing to offer someone.

 “The experience of the reader is actually the limit of what you can convey. It turns around the notion that the writer has to give the reader everything. The reader brings to literature all of their experience. And the writer can only do so much.”

Here's a more interesting example: When I was young I was fascinated with my bruises. I played multiple contact sports so it was likely that I had a bruise at all times for six years straight. It was definitely a weird compulsion, but I was also like nine so I felt that it wasn’t concerningly abnormal. It was weird if you considered the photo album of the crazy ones I’d get on my shins from soccer—they were always so prominent. The obsession did die down, but still to this day I am amused when I wake up with one. I started describing bruises in my stories because I thought it was intriguing to have characters that fetishize them. People like to read about weird stuff like that so they feel less insane about their own compulsions. Because of these stories, I’ve used every synonym for purple and blue to describe bruises, and I’ve read far too many articles about the phases of bruises. They didn’t offer much besides the process in which the blood vessel pops under your skin. I’ve described them as slender, overt, acute, elongated, oval, polka-dotted. If I was not already fond of my bruises, I definitely am now. Now I see a bruise and it’s beautiful because I can associate the words violaceous and plum with it. It’s a really fun way to live, though probably harmful if you have too many loose screws. I would never intentionally do things to bruise myself. But I’m sure there are people who would do it for the sake of creative inspiration, like Van Gogh.

Without pushing my language and perceptions through reading and writing I would not think twice about a tree or a bruise. It may seem like an insignificant gift, but it applies to all things, even pain. Pain becomes purposeful because you’ve made it into art, even just in your mind. It changes your way of experiencing life, and someone who never interacts with literature may never have that. 

So Sylvia Plath was correct when she said that writing is a reordering of life. It absolutely is.

 This is not sponsored by a Thesaurus, though I'm clearly an advocate.