Stephen Fry: "Context, convention and circumstance are all."

I am officially obsessed with this media form -- that is, typographic animation set to spoken word. And I love that it's so self-referential, that the language-benders are bending language to demonstrate how great language can be when bent.

A lot of my writing time lately has been spent on offline projects. I'll poke my head out on this and the other active blog I've working on right now, but fall always seems to snag me with a huge amount of work. But it's my last quarter as a full-time grad student, so I'm dedicating myself to a new form of caffeine (hello, coffee) and buckling down. But this video and others like it will be my study breaks, to remind me of why I'm doing it all.

A note on the video itself: I love that Stephen Fry distinguishes between lovers of language and the people who are annoying about it and ruin it for everyone. I often find myself frustrated with often-misused words (like the difference between "over" and "more than"), but I am reminded that language evolves, it belongs to no one, and it's no use to squabble over the small distinctions, especially in contexts where other aspects (like substance) are more worthy of focus. The crux of it is here: "Nor does the idea that following grammatical rules in language demonstrates clarity of thought and intelligence of mind." Grammar is a tool we use to communicate effectively, but it is not a mastery of grammar that signals achievement: You still need something substantive to say.

At the same time, grammar is important because, as Stephen Fry says, ignoring it gives the impression that you don't care. "You slip into a suit for an interview, and you dress your language up too." And so while mastering grammar is not the end-all means to achieve good writing, it's still necessary to understand it. It's the framework we've created as a culture, the test to pass to prove you understand not only what to say, but how to say it. "You can wear what you want linguistically and sartorially when you're at home or with friends, but most people accept the need to smarten up under some circumstances. It's only considerate. But that's an issue of fitness, of suitability. It has nothing to do with correctness. There's no right language or wrong language any more than there are right or wrong clothes. Context, convention and circumstance are all."

Hear hear!

For an aggressively inarticulate generation

Check out this short slam poetry piece by Taylor Mali, given the typographical treatment by graphic artist Ronnie Bruce. This is the best 2:45 you'll spend today.

Mali's poem is about speaking with conviction, about not ending every sentence with an uptick, as a question, thereby making you sound unsure of everything you say. (Ya know?) Bruce takes that performance and gives us the actual words, the hidden question marks, the metadiscourse of "like" and "you know." He portrays words as both shy and bold. He makes them into trees and axes. He fits everything together. The poem was poignant and funny and clever to begin with, but Bruce's execution has made it into art.

I love words so much. I think this demonstrates the power they can have if you're competent and you speak with conviction. And with an increasingly "aggressively inarticulate generation" learning literacy via text message and Facebook chat, it's a nice reminder that though language may change, the power it has when used effectively is enduring.

I mean, lyricists are writers too

As you may or may not be aware, Dear Reader, I've embarked on a second blog experiment. The other blog -- let's think of it as a mistress, really, because I loved you first -- is dedicated to celebrating "quality" music, where "quality" music is defined as "that which sounds as good if not better performed live" (as opposed to in a studio, within arm's reach of the auto-tune button).

Inspired by Friday Jams, the blog is called Dai(ly) Jams and (shockingly) it features one live music video per day. I encourage you to check it out, because so far I'm pretty much just talking to myself. Which, you know, isn't new, but it gets boring after awhile. I'd especially love video suggestions!

In writing Dai(ly) Jams, I've realized something of a paradox: Despite my intrepid insistence that I'm a writer, I actually spend very little time listening to song lyrics. I'm terrible at memorizing lyrics -- an ailment my band meets with bemused frustration, no doubt -- and I almost never fall in love with a song because of the words.

It might have something to do with my childish ignorance of and aversion to poetry. I tend to recoil from things that I need to interpret -- foreign languages, Wall Street jargon, Edgar Allen Poe, to name a few. And a lot of songs tend to be veiled homages to...whatever. Their long lost lovers' boyfriends' dog. Or something. But some poetry -- for example, this piece by Carolyn Forché -- is undeniably incredible. The writing is exquisite, the execution damn near perfect.

Maybe my problem with poetry -- like that of romance novels -- is that most of what I've read is bad. In that spirit, and assuming that my formal poetry education began and ended with Dr. Seuss, I'm taking suggestions for must-read poetry. Fire away.

White House Poetry Slam

This video apparently went viral back in the spring of 2009, but I missed it until my friend Franklin sent it to me this weekend. If you haven't heard of Lin-Manuel Miranda, here's a crash course: He's Puerto Rican, born in New York and in his early twenties he penned the music and lyrics for In the Heights. By age 28 he was playing the lead role in the Broadway production and winning Tony Awards and Grammy Awards and a bunch of other awards. He also helped Stephen Sondheim translate West Side Story into Spanish for a stage adaptation. Dude's brilliant, and his way of bending and mixing words is unreal. (He also really seems to "get" it: He taught English for awhile at his former high school in Washington Heights.)

I'm not terribly familiar with the slam poetry world, but sometimes a performance (or performer) just stops you in your tracks and demands that you listen. Miranda is one of those. And you have to love performance art that your high school U.S. History teacher would appreciate.

And look! We now have proof that Michelle Obama can snap. Of course, with those arms, we never really had any doubts.