Lines, forms

I forgot about this.

The first thing I want is a definition of style. Style is the words rubbing together. I do not know how this rub works, how one winds the feeling about the words; some of it must have been made by the past, by all the reader’s readings, by everything she has heard, murmuring, murmuring; but it feels intuitive too, something throaty and warm and strung from the navel. It must be built out of experience; words are built out of experience; it feels remarkable, then, this net through which every word must be sifted must be an intricacy of interweaving, but it has been so densely done it feels like one’s own strings.

I like those writers who can move in and out of styles. I am a cynic by instinct, and do not like that which tastes too strongly of belief in one thing, in one feeling, one thought. These things pass. To be human is have many voices, to be open to being a multitude. Belief can close you in. Style can shut you up, darken the sight. Thus I love irony. But I do not, of course, believe in it. It is not the final style. Belief is beautiful.

How does a writer’s style open or foreclose possibilities of expressing meaning? What does this mean? to express, to press, down and in. One pulls it out, draws it slowly out of the stomach, leaves it, and it sits. Another picks it up, opens it, draws from it. Three things.

Lately I’ve been interested in books with writings and drawings and images collected together. Drawings and images give the eye forms and lines different from the usual 26. Those twentysix they make you weary. Different forms and lines freshen and inspirit letters. They make a writing cleaner, stronger. I like things that are clean and strong.

We give the world its forms. I like forms, lines, the feeling of moving along the curve of a thing. I would have as many lines as I could.