20 Jun 07: some theory (the big humble work)

Collage wakes you up to the size and length of words--how long they take.
Collage wakes you up to the act of reading, of constructing while you read (the lines uneven).
Word play in collage wakes you up to the sounds of words.
Collage wakes you up to syntax--grammar becomes artistic.

We take these public words, these words that are not our own and we draw them into ourselves and we reshape them to say something truly meaningful to us... I am taking about everyday speech.

You lose yourself in someone else and find your voice still coming through. Your eye is unique and it picks out words and cuts them in your natural cadence. Yet you find yourself saying things you never would've said in ways you never thought to say them.

Words come first, then the meaning grows. Though not always. Meaning helps selection, too.

I am interested in--almost solely--emotional expression. A longing, a loss, a worry. (air in a house we all feel) We beat out our souls on these crude drums, believing we say something deep. Maybe it isn't deep at all (nature's entire lack of a plum)--maybe it is shuffling someone else's words and dealing them out again. We still speak when we know nothing. (everything is a kind of cowardly) Yet even if it isn't ontologically deep, it matters to us.

With collage you do not need to wait for inspiration to act—you dig right in and wrestle it out from the material. It halfway finds you. Revision is easy and often a surprise.

This is the big humble work. You have to understand I’m trying to say something really thoughtful here—not just thrown together but something that I really believe and mean to say. I’m thinking about people I know when I write these. I’m making philosophical and theological claims. I’m judging you. But it’s collage—scissors and glue—and what does that matter? Is this just a game, a toy?

While I work I feel very serious but when I am done I think it’s a joke.
I’m talking about human discourse. I’m talking about being human.