An English major muses on web2.0 and writing
When I read a piece of good writing, it sings. The feeling is much like the chill up my spine on hearing a perfect choral performance or that sense that a dive or gymnastics performance just IS a perfect 10 — even before the scores show on screen. You just know. There is a sound a guitar makes–I believe called harmonics– that is beyond the earthly, normal, and delightful plucking or strum. That’s what GOOD writing is. It does not happen often. It stops me and says, “Did you hear that?”
Rewind–replay in slo-mo. Yes, I DID hear that, and it is just as good the second time around.
I worry about web2.0 desensitizing us so we no longer can hear writing that sings. Even worse, I worry about the sound simply being drowned out. It is marvelous that everyone has the opportunity to create that perfect piece, and ironically sad that no one will likely even know it is there. The ease of tools makes one wonder about craft. Web2.0 may be the equivalent of the introduction of the power tools into sculpture. With artistic creation so simple and so much faster, are we losing anything?
I am an art quilter. I celebrate the heritage of hundreds
of years of women’s quilts as the underpinnings (sorry—pun) of my work, but I also deny them in pushing the medium, cutting through it, redefining its edges into non-edges and its techniques away from a rigid 10-stitch-per-inch standard.
I don’t think writing should be subject to such a standard, either, but I will be truly sad if we can no longer hear it when it sings. Is there a way to tag a blog post that sings?
