Turning Phrases
Sidenote: Upon writing this post, I noticed it falls under a certain sub-category that’s starting to emerge here on The Sudden Walk. Outside of the regular observational/update model that I’ve used to frame this page, posts like this one are acknowledgements of developments/jumps that I’ve noticed in my writing. These are new wrinkles in my approach that I didn’t know I’d come across, but are nonetheless indications along the way that I’ve improved—or failing that, that I’ve changed my approach.
As I gather a few more of these different types, I’m going to try to categorize the Sudden Walk archive in a slightly more structured way to make this page more functional as a learning tool.
Now to the article.
Grappling with Poetry
Despite spending years of my life thinking about words—the order they should go in, considering whether they’re right for a certain sentence, whether that sentence is too long or short, the list goes on—I haven’t considered writing poetry even once.
I’ve tried to read it with limited success. Though I can respect its utility as a skilled use of language, and perhaps an opportunity to express another type of creativity, the suggestion of attempting to write in that form holds no interest to me.
This aversion doesn’t really make sense, because when you boil it down, what is the difference between prose and poetry?
A bit more of a focus on rhythm, a bit less focus on a linear story; appealing to emotion with fewer apologies—
In some ways I think my more abstract ideas might even be better served in this form. I love to leave a story open to interpretation.
But I just can’t do it.
There’s something about the thought of writing poetry that immediately makes me cringe. It induces a similar nausea in me as the thought of singing does. I played in a band for years and had no problem writing music, introducing it to the rest of the band, playing those songs live. But when it got to the bit where you wrote words down?
It felt too pretentious, too self indulgent, too weird.
But recently I had a dream which changed my mind on this.
What was that I said about being pretentious?
Bear with me. I’ll qualify this.
I’ve got an obsessive personality and it works like this:
Whatever my latest fixation is at a given time—guitar, snowboarding, Jiu Jitsu—when it solidifies a primary position in my mind, it begins to play at a low volume at the back of my head regardless of what I’m doing.
At work? Ideas for guitar riffs and licks, a laid over everything I’m doing.
Driving somewhere? I’m picturing snowboarding lines I could take on the surrounding hills—jumps, grinds, drop-offs.
This phenomenon follows me into my sleep and makes up the texture of my dreams as well. Sounds like a bit of a nightmare when I state it like this, but trust me it’s not.
From the fragments of neuroscience that I’ve been able to retain from articles I’ve read, It sounds like this is neuro-plasticity at work—it’s the brain’s way of training new skills, like a computer running lo-fi simulations to integrate new information and work out any kinks before you next engage in that activity or interest.
If you haven’t noticed, writing currently holds the number one spot as far as my fixations are concerned and as stated above, it’s followed me into my dreams.
But what does a writing dream look like?
This is where it gets interesting.
See I’ve been writing for years, and during the day, premises and plotlines for stories are always popping into my head. In the fashion I described above, I’m constantly digging for my phone to jot down an idea that’s come to me out of the ether.
Curiously, until now, this has never translated into dreams like my other interests used to—and I think there’s a simple reason for this:
After all, this type of thinking—narrative and storytelling—is essentially what a dream already is. Your subconscious is throwing out hallucinations and your mind is making sense of them.
What am I doing when I’m writing?
Throwing out hallucinations and trying to make sense of them.
But recently, I’ve noticed a shift. Recently on top of all these plot points, character traits etc that my brain has been feeding me, I’ve started noticing isolated turns of phrase—a string of words that make me jump up and think, “shit that’s good, I’ve got to write that down,”—starting to come to me as well.
That’s what this writing dream was. An isolated string of words that jumped out as original and interesting. (I won’t quote it here, because 1. I want to use it in a story and 2. there’s no way it will read as “original” or “interesting” now that I’ve labelled it that.)
What caused this?
I suspect this might be a result of how much reading I’ve been doing lately, I’ve been stretching the range of what I read a lot more and increasing my volume of reading as well— trying to consume as many versions of “good” writing as I can.
Is this a good thing?
This is both an exciting, yet suspicious development for me, because, I’ve never considered myself “that” type of writer.
I’ve got a visceral memory of visiting the John Lennon wall in Prague a few years ago—which is covered in graffiti and various quotations—and overhearing the girlfriend of what I assumed was an aspiring writer saying, “Maybe one day one of the quotes from your book will end up here.”
I remember mulling that over at the time, considering my own writing and thinking, “that’s probably never going to happen for me,” not because I’m not hopeful of success, but rather, because I didn’t see myself as “that” type of writer.
To that point I’d never felt capable of producing one liners of that kind, the type that might be put in between quotation marks.
Despite putting a lot of thought into the language I use, I’ve always considered my style of writing as an amalgamation of ideas. A premise, building upon itself in interesting ways, but not necessarily hook-filled at the sentence level.
My default aim with language is closer to a type of hypnosis. Not something that draws attention to itself but rather a means to stimulate the visual system of the reader’s imagination and keep them locked into the fictive dream. For that end, all that the inclusion of “memorable” quotes do is pull you out of it.
Yet, lately these one liners have been cropping up in my head more and more, I’ve been taking notice of “good” lines whenever I hear them.
As I said, it’s exciting—maybe I’m becoming more capable of writing in “that” way?—yet….I can already feel myself starting to cringe at the thought of it.
The foreign world of poetry
It’s this hang up about poetry that makes me suspicious of where this development may lead. I’ve got a deeply engrained sense that, “this is not for me. Poetry is for other people.”
—a point which I don’t disagree with.
I didn’t grow up in that world—consuming poetry, discussing the pros and cons of certain work. I don’t know the conventions the customs. I’ve heard the big names, but I couldn’t quote you lines from them. There’s so much backstory to learn, so much of that landscape that I’m oblivious to.
In short it’s a world I don’t understand—and really, a world I’m not naturally interested in. Therefore it feels far too late to start.
Realistically, if my writing suddenly took a poetic turn, how deep down a learning curve hole would I have to venture before I came back to the surface with something readable?
I definitely don’t want my writing to devolve into a clutter of purple prose, extravagant words, self-indulgent spirals— all in desperate pursuit of that “quotable” line.
God is there anything worse than amateur poetry? It’s bloody hard work.
When I say I’m no, and will never be a poet, I’m fairly adamant. Anyone who knows me will agree. I’m definitely not “that thing.”
So should I just ignore these one liners that I’m starting to notice?
No…I think this is a framing issue.
See, although I am unequivocally not a poet. I do appreciate a clever turn of phrase. In both music and film, there have always been certain lines that have stuck in my head.
There’s an alchemy to how any given Tarantino, or Guy Ritchie film can leave parroting off certain lines for years to come, simply because of their "cool” quality.
Then there’s the inspiring genre of quotation in speeches or inspirational movies,
“Just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom!”
“Who’s gonna carry the boats?!”
You might not call it poetry, but this is a world of phrase turning that I am very comfortable in. When viewed from this angle, there is no need for me to start from the bottom. I could compile a whole thesis on my personal tastes regarding good dialogue vs the bad. Where it falls short, feels contrived; I could provide lists of instances where screenwriters have shot for something and fallen short in the eyes of an audience.
And when it comes to music? I’ve got a semi-autistic capacity to recall lyrics.
During my history degree, when asked me to retain any important dates or a names, my memory had more holes in it than a monstera plant, but ask me to complete some obscure Chris Cornell lyric from 2001? Easy work.
See I’ve been consuming and analyzing forms of poetry for years, I just didn’t know it. Forget Keats or Burns; Vedder, Cave, Homme, Yorke, Keenan and Turner have given me more turns of phrase than any. It’s not always high brow, but there’s energy, thought, and at times a distillation of a life that I’ve got a much higher chance of relating to than any dusty poet.
”I change by not changing, at all.”
“God loves all of us, don’t remind me.”
“I've seen your frown and it's like looking down
The barrel of a gun”
“Later in the evening, as I lie awake in bed, echoes from the amplifiers, ringing in my head.”
Try not to read into that selection of quotes too deeply, they’re the first that came to mind, but do you get my point?
There’s a reason why these lines may or may not resonate. They are more than the sum of their parts.
That’s why I’m no longer so suspicious of these isolated turns of phrase that have started coming to me lately. I think the only reason they stand out to me as “good” is because they’re not just some contrived attempt to come up with a poetic line. They’re emerging out of real life. Each of them has some unique quality that some part of me recognizes as universal.
There’s a reason why I haven’t been able to write from this perspective until now, it had to be organic. My internal alert system is far too high strung to let me do it if it feels self indulgent, this is the only way for someone with my temperament to venture down this road.
With that said, I’m still at the beginning of this development—not as far behind as I initially expected, but still at the beginning nonetheless.
It’s yet to be seen how well I adopt a more lyrical approach and integrate it into my writing. I’m being careful to only apply it when it feels natural.
I’m sure it will become more noticeable once we’re a bit further downstream, but we will see. Maybe it won’t become noticeable at all.
