The Written Word

Writing, no matter what your fourth grade teacher told you, is an art that speaks levels of difficulty beyond what any simple picture can hope to capture.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, is it not simpler, then, to turn from the difficult and seek solace in the easy?  Paintings, although beautifully mastered and rendered in the greatest of detail still fail in one vital aspect, they can be altered depending on how they are viewed.  What the artist has given, has painted, is all there is.  Although people search for the deeper meanings, the pain and the anguish that must be the signature of all great artists, debating about the gender of some, they miss the simple beauty that lies within.

With writing, however, one can create an entire world as unique as the individual themselves, bring light to a kingdom shrouded in darkness, give voices to those who fought and died bravely in wars long since faded to memories.  Yet I fear that the beauty that can be created by the written word is fading, authors becoming a dying breed as their words become mangled corpses, and simple wraiths as the younger generations begin to butcher the world around them.

Where once words could be used to twist and weave a type of magic that could leave the reader dazed and filled with a euphoric feeling, they are being mutilated into short-hand by applications, turning what could have been a beautiful symphony of words into simple trash.  A recent posting to a certain website, with both the poster and the website remaining anonymous, read thusly to his significant other; Sup bb, gud 2 see dat ur lukin so gud!  Wud h8 2 thnk u eva lukd bad.  It tears my soul, rending it from my body, to read such words, reduced to such a form.  People exclaim in wonder that the literacy rate in the world is fading fast, yet when such writings are becoming commonplace, how can they be surprised?

Taking it upon myself to aid this clearly failed post, I lent a helping hand to the man by rewriting it into what it should have read for one’s significant other.  The writing was simple, albeit a little flowery, but read; The golden-red light of dawns soft glow flickers across the ocean that is your beautiful cerulean-blue eyes, sending its golden waves through the tresses of woven wheat that frame a face as flawless as the marble carvings of ancient Rome.  To think, to but fathom, a day when the light of love fades from thine eyes is too much for my soul to bear, for the light would have left my very world, plunging me forth into the darkness of the abyss. 

Mistake me not, for I claim no mastery over writing, but I fear for what the world will become as the generations that write with the inability to complete, or fully form, thoughts comes into power.  Writing is a form of art, as surely as painting or acting, and yet it so often goes unnoticed in the daily lives of people.  Put down the controller of a video game, tear your eyes away from the glow of your computer screen and read a book, learn the language and delve into what the world once was or could one day be.