The Beauty of Words

There's some beauty in the use of a keyboard. To watch ones hands glide over key after key and produce something, something of truth, something that can be shared with the world by a mere push of a button. It is this beauty which draws me to typing. However there is something far greater, with much more beauty held inside it. It is the illegible scrawl from one’s own hand; the words which will be read by few, not many. Seen by a lucky minority, with wonder, with each ink spill, each incorrect word with a line through it or hurriedly scribbled out, each un-identical space, and letter the formation unique to that one person. That is the greatest beauty of all, as no one, not even the original author, can come to replicate the words on that page, that scrap of paper, that receipt from the coffee shop. They will never be written in the same hand, never with the same passion behind the eyes, fire in the soul, never at that moment, with that surrounding.

People tend to forget, it is not solely the author who creates the story, but every stimulus surrounding him at that time. It is not simply his thoughts put upon a page, but every experience and situation which affected him before and during those moments of creativity. When he slept and when he woke, it was those first sounds, the first conscious breath, the first thought, the first sight, smell and touch which created the precious text which one reads and loses himself to.

Along with these experiences of the author, it is every experience of the reader, the critic, which completes the story, as he reads and pulls his own memories into effect, brings his own thoughts to weave themselves in with the lyrical words of the author. He puts the meaning to the words, he decides the signified, and he creates the character, with some direction of the author but most from himself. He creates a completely different story to that of the person who read it before him and the person who will read it next.

And that is the true beauty in literature, meanings change constantly, due to context, personality, environment, beliefs and our understanding of the signifier. A story will never be read the same way twice. A text will never be given the same analysis. There will always be one person who finds a new meaning, a new beginning, a new end, a new reasoning. And our discovery of literature will expand endlessly as we expand with it. There is always more to know, and i am keen to discover as much as I can before my time runs out.