I find that after I’ve been reading for awhile, my thoughts seem to write themselves in a more advisable and congruent fashion, which I very much like. It’s almost as if my inner monologue has just aced some vocabulary test or something, and in response the rest of my intellect is gladly operating on all cylinders just to keep up with this new, profound clarity. And all this is in spite of the fact that my internal eloquence is utterly, fruitlessly wasted on the very thoughts themselves, for, sadly, no one else ever hears them.
And, then, consequently I find that if I do choose to say these things, they are never as profound as they were before their expression. Maybe you know what I mean: it’s like the very fact of my keeping them to myself gave them an aura, a presence, a mystical formation that is true and real and beautiful, and to explain it would be to simplify and kill the mysterious beauty. It is almost like drowning in your favorite song and then attempting to define what it means to you. Or crying your eyes out at the end of a film and then being forced to talk about it.
Sometimes I am very frustrated with language, and I suppose this is its very problem. It is limited in ways that our experiences are not, and to communicate something clearly is not only a matter of choosing the right words, but is something of a tiny miracle, an illumination transferred from one mind to another.
I know a little bit of ancient Greek, which is probably one of the most useless things you can know as it is completely incompatible with today’s Greek (apparently - this is what people tell me. I’ve never really tested it). Unless, of course, you want to translate the New Testament (which is something I definitely do not do in my spare time). But Greek as a language is powerful - it’s complicated and logical (unlike English which certainly is complicated, but not so much what I’d call logical), not to mention beautiful, aurally (what I can tell anyhow) and in appearance. Sometimes I wonder if I could learn other languages like Latin or French or Chinese or some ancient, mysterious language no one else knows if I would find the language of humanity — something that can adequately describe our experiences.
I kind of doubt it. And I suppose that’s why I write songs — because music is maybe the closest thing you can get.
NOTE:
(The concepts found in this post contributed strongly to the writing in my first book, blur: finding jesus in a fuzzy world. Download your free copy here!)
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