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.
