Wednesday 27 July 2011

Sacred and Profane

There are two systems of speaking, one  lower resolution, one higher resolution
Everybody uses a mix of both.It is like painting, sometimes people start by sloshing on some background colour with broad brushes, "I like that music / person", then go on to clarify and add detail, "Well in general terms and here is something I especially like about it, but here is something I loathe about it "

  I love that song, well I love the tune but actually I think the lyrics are rubbish, well I suppose most of the lyrics are ok but there are one or two ideas in there that I strongly disagree with, but there are also a few ideas that I find uplifting. Actually it is really the intro of the tune that I like and after that it bores me.There are somethings that I like about it and somethings that I dislike about it.

I think it is better to speak in relative, subjective terms, 'I loved it', 'I enjoyed it', 'I found it so uplifting', 'It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up' or more negatively, 'I loathed it', 'It is torturing me', 'It grates on me', ' I can't stand it', 'I found it unbearable', 'Didn't like it'
  It is poorer to speak in objective terms for things that are subjective matters of taste, ' That is good', ' That was rubbish, bad, shit'. However as long as you are aware that when people say, 'That is shit' they mean, 'I didn't enjoy it'. It isn't a problem. The thing that interests me is to pit each system against each other.
   When I was a teenager I worried too much about not swearing, I made it into too big an issue. Now that I have identified what I think should be the emphasis of thinking in terms of your emotions and have made that my core position, I don't worry about swearing. I'm not so much trying to avoid swearing as trying to speak about how I feel about things.  As a teenager I was afraid of becoming someone who would swear all the time. At the time I thought there was a point to not using 'Gods' name in vain but I felt that saying, 'Oh sugar' wasn't the answer either. Now I can admit that the God idea causes people a lot of worry, fear and grief and so it is maybe appropriate that people say 'Oh God' when they are displeased about something.. Similarly the riddles attributed to Jesus would make anyone tear their hair out if you tried to make sense of them. Trying to make a coherent message out of the Bible is like trying to build a house of cards upside down. Once you accept that the Bible writings are just human guesswork then you can just pick out the minority of points that have some semblance of sense. But anyway with a Jesus that some say is able to save everyone but only chooses a few, isn't it fitting to use the name as a swear word ?
   If you look for sense , meaning, appropriateness, what is fitting, then swear words are sometimes apt
   It is just a pissing shower
   My bloody finger is bloody broken
   F'ing great sex. You are f'ing beautiful ( Fabulously? Flaming- intense love, intensely hot & exciting)
   Bustard, I've missed the bus
   I'm f'ing fuming ( Fizzing ? Flaming ? )
   Damn, the river has burst it's banks
   S**t, the toilet won't flush
   Get that flaming fire out
   Fie - contempt, disgust, irony, shame , impatience

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