Metaphors Are for Poets
Two times this last week I’ve had to think about my writing on the subject of women. You know that post Thermite and Tholeiite? That one caused some minor melodrama. I wondered why that particular post would cause any drama whatsoever. The thing is beautiful. I reread it when I feel shitty about myself. It’s awesome, thus it is in the Anthologies.
Of Awesome.
Anyway. Here’s my answer to the question I asked myself: because that girl actually exists. That post was 100% true with no bullshit, and no exaggeration. Just like everything I’ve ever wrote about her. That’s why. A friend of mine mentioned after reading something a few months back about the same girl (Later, Love) that she was jealous of her. Also, that other women reading it would be, too.
Then I have posts about guitars or rocks or cars that sort of sound like they’re about women. I can think of a few off the top of my head. They get comments, sometimes dirty comments, but they don’t draw emails or the type of comments that ‘real girl’ posts do. In some cases, no one even gets that I’m not talking about a real woman.
The reason I go into all this detail is that it raises a question.
What changes when I’m being honest, and how does it effect the reader?
Three pages, MLA format, due by class tomorrow. Oh, and class tomorrow is meeting at the at the bar.
April 30, 2009 at 5:35 pm
I wouldn’t go as far as saying other women readers would be jealous of her. The mark of a good writer is the ability to make the reader ‘want to be’ the person, and you do that very well in some of your posts.
For the record, I get your posts and the metaphors behind them though I don’t often comment to the effect.
As to your question, I can only speak for myself. I can sense raw emotion from words and I know how it affects me and that is my gauge. Well, one of them.
April 30, 2009 at 7:36 pm
we all want to have that power over someone. we all want to be ‘the ghost’. we all want that sort of magic – even when it never quite works out…
for me? it just makes me think about my own ghosts. wonder where they are. in one case, makes me wonder why i didn’t stick the scissors into his thigh while he was sleeping…
May 2, 2009 at 2:44 am
only into the thigh daisyfae?
May 2, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Can we start on the whisky before we start the discussion? I always find it gets the wheels turning more productively…
May 2, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Clea: Yeah, I spelled it wrong. I hadn’t thought of the want to be aspects. I think when I’m being honest, sometimes I wish I were more like that girl. I’m not, and never will be, but maybe people can pick up on my desire to be like her, jealousy, really, when I’m writing from that place. I think it’s the same with music. You can pick up emotion through some preternatural means, even when the notes are the same from song to song. I’m thinking about two versions of Hear My Train a’Comin’ by Hendrix. One has a completely different power to it, but I don’t know why.
Daisyfae: Just when I think bed time antics can’t get any kinkier.
Nursemyra: That’s what I said, too. Right after, “Why did you have scissors in bed?”
Anaglyph: Buddy, whiskey has been flowing. I could talk about it for hours just now. I drank myself brilliant again.