125 lines
6.9 KiB
Plaintext
125 lines
6.9 KiB
Plaintext
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Underground eXperts United
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Presents...
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[ The Day All Words Lost Their Meaning ] [ By The GNN ]
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____________________________________________________________________
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____________________________________________________________________
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THE DAY ALL WORDS LOST THEIR MEANING
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by THE GNN/DC/uXu
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Some years ago, at a conference in Amsterdam, a woman from Germany asked me
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what I would do if "the words lost their meaning". I sincerely replied that
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I had no answer, as the question was too hypothetical for me to relate to. I
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added that I hoped that such a day would never come, because that would not
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merely be the end of my creative capabilities, but also to my life as I knew
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it. I declared that I could not live without being able to write. If I ever
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lost that ability, I would presumably fade away in an asylum rather quickly.
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Believe it or not, but I did not intend to be melodramatic in any way. At
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the time, I had written hundreds of short stories in all kinds of styles and
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genres, some screenplays, dozens of articles, a little poetry, half a
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doctoral dissertation; and I was on my way to embark on what I considered to
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be my first major project as a writer - a 'real' long novel (it was
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completed the year after the conference and shortly thereafter accepted for
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publication).
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My urge to write was seemingly endless; my head was spinning with ideas day
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and night, I loved my keyboard and word processor, I was addicted to the
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feeling that a great American writer described as "being just a head with a
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pencil in the mouth". When I was not actually writing, my mind was exploring
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new territories regarding concepts, plots and characters. I saw pictures in
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my mind, I heard monologues and dialogues. Everything inspired me. I loved
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the art of text. I could not conceive words without meaning, because my life
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was to a large extent framed in their meaning.
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But I was wrong. One day all words lost their meaning. Not a single word
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formed in my head. The voice of creativity that had constantly spoken to me
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was silent. When I tried to force myself to write something, anything,
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nothing good came out. And I discovered that everything I had written was
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trifling and hollow. Evening after evening, night after night, I tried to
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find something valuable in all the words I had accumulated during the years.
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But it was hopeless. When I sat on the kitchen floor with all the magazines
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I had written for scattered around me, looking at my essays and papers and
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notes and speeches and stories, I just could not find anything good. I saw
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lots of words indeed, but never did they form any content, any meaning. It
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was just an endless array of insignificant babbling, boring concepts and
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lousy plots. My novel sucked, it ought never to have been published at all.
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My new manuscripts collected dust in a corner. I considered burning them.
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I wondered how I had been able to carry on for such a long time without ever
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noticing. Nine years. All these days, all these words, all these thousand of
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pages - just a waste of space and time. I had not been a writer, merely a
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typing mechanic. Why had not anyone told me?
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I was more angry than ever before. I turned into a cynic. I disliked all
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kinds of stuff. But what I disliked most was paradoxically that I liked it.
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I took comfort in burning up from the inside. I wanted to punch my fist to
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the wall until all fingers broke. To smash things was great, to really hate
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people without a cause was a relief. My mind was a black hole, a void, and I
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did everything I could to fill it. But what could I fill it with but rage?
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Nothing was good enough. Nothing took me to the ultimate limit, the end of
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the universe where there was nothing to be found but an unconditional
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passion of creativity and fantasy. I saw no pictures in my head, I had no
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stories. Nothing inspired me anymore. Being angry was the only thing I had
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left. More pain was the best remedy against pain. I was an enraged head
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without a pencil in the mouth. I hated it. I wanted to have something to
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say. I wanted to write interesting texts, good texts, texts that inspired
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other people, texts that learned someone something (including myself),
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anything at all. But I had nothing to say.
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My life as I knew it was over. At the conference in Amsterdam, I could not
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even imagine such a life. But now I had no choice. I really should have
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tried to answer the woman's question, not just shrug, because then I might
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have learned something. I had taken too much for granted, and must learn
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how to start all over again.
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I tried explain to myself that my 'insights' were not absolute facts, but
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rather irrational effects that stemmed from a terrible shock. My inability
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to write was more of an unwillingness, I told myself. I was not a lousy
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writer, I had just been painfully reminded of my limits both as a writer and
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human being. I realized that I could not collect my feelings on paper when I
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really needed to. A good writer can express himself. I thought of myself as
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a good writer, someone who can put down just about anything on paper. I
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wanted to tell the whole narrative about the four days in May this year that
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changed my life entirely. That was to be the peak performance of my writing
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skill. I was to express how I really felt. But I could not. Not a single
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word formed in my head.
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I craved to tell about the unexpected phone call early in the morning, about
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the long sterile corridors and white coats at the hospital, about the
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blinking and beeping respirator, about the sunny morning when all lines on
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the monitors went flat, and it was all over. I wanted to tell how I slowly
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walked out of the hospital with a lock of hair in my hand, how I went to my
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parent's house and put it in a music box from Japan, right beside the lock
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of blonde hair that my father cut from my head when I was just a couple of
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weeks old, twenty-six years ago.
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---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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uXu #566 Underground eXperts United 2000 uXu #566
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Call THE YOUNG GODS -> +351-1XX-XXXXX
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